Re: CF: skill categories and sub-skills

[Mark Wedel <>]

David Andrew Michael Noelle wrote:
> 
> What part of it is too refined?  Having seperate categories for swords
> and knives?  That list was just a rough approximation of the general
> idea I'm suggesting, and admittedly was influenced by weapon skill
> categories from AD&D2.  We definitely need something in between what
> we have now, one skill for any and all melee weapons, and having a
> seperate skill for each weapon archetype, some of which are merely
> different pictures of "a sword".

 Your list below is a bit more appealing than the first.  My issue is that I
would target crossfire to have about 30 skills or so at most - more than that,
it gets to be overloaded.  also, in your prior list, you had broken alchemy out
to at least several sub categories, and I think that starts to get too narrow.

 I generally agreed with most of what you said before.  Some notes below:

> 
> That's exactly the problem.  I didn't say all unlearned skills should
> count as "exp 0", which is level 1 in Crossfire (and most other RPGs I
> know of).  I said they should be "level 0", which doesn't exist yet.
> Currently, unlearned skills cannot even be attempted and cannot be
> learned short of application of a rather rare and expensive magic
> item.

 True.  If a 'level 0' is added, the problem is then how linear is it - for
example, if the gap from level 0 to level 1 is basically the same as from level
1 to level 2 (in terms of success rates), that level 0 may not mean much.

 The problem of both a mage and warrior starting out with the same effective
ability in melee weapons (ignore the difference in stats which would likely make
the fighter better) is a valid one.  One solution to this is to give the skills
that are native to a class some bonus level/exp.  Now it would be odd for that
start character to have 'level 2' in spellcasting.  But I wonder if we even need
to make the level of the skill public - you could instead go by just more
verbose listings.  Sure, the experienced player will know that 'your are a
master in melee weapons) means his skill is in the 20-25 level range (lets say),
but you can't help that.  But by giving out descriptions and not absolute
numbers, at least you don't get what is apparantly odd behaviour.  I note that
literacy against written items uses this logic - it doesn't say you need 5
levels before you can read it, but instead uses 'you are few/many/tons of levels
away from reading this' type of messages.

 The ability of items to give skills is pretty odd.  I think the more correct
behaviour would be that the skill is needed, but you may need to use some other
object (lockpicks, holy symbol, etc) to use the skill.  This is effectly true
with alchemy - you need that cauldron to actually make something.

 One problem with the current skill system is awarding experience.  Some skills
are used so infrequently (simply because you can't use them that much), that you
get lots of exp for any use of them.  I would wonder if there is a soluation to
that.


> Examples: (not a suggested solution, just for clarification)
> 
> Skill           Category        Learned         Difficulty
> ------------    ------------    ------------    ------------
> Literacy        Mental          teacher         2
> Human           Literacy        teacher         3
> Dwarven         Literacy        teacher         4
> Elvish          Literacy        teacher         5

 Until a lot more use of written stuff is added, adding sub languages doesn't
make a lot of sense.  I would note that in terms of realism, once you have
learned one literacy skill, that skill could teach you other languages (think of
many of the language books currently in use today).  But even if other languages
are added, just as good a solution would be to have books written in those other
languages need a higher literacy skill.


> Oratory         Social          by use          2
> Bargaining      Social          by use          3
> Singing         Social          by use          4

 While I know the above 3 skills currently exist, I wonder if it may not make
sense to collapse them some.  Oratory and singing have pretty similar affects,
and you would also think that oratory and bargaining would go pretty hand in
hand.


> 
> Find Traps      Mental          by use          3
> Disarm Traps    Agility         by use          2
> Disarm Pits     Disarm Traps    by use          2
> Disarm Needles  Disarm Traps    by use          3
> Disarm Glyphs   Disarm Traps    by use          4

 The disarm skills have the problem I mentioned above - lack of places to
generally use them.  Subdividing them further would seem to generally make it
harder for these skills to become usuable.

 My personal thought would be to remove the top level experience categories
(mental, agility, etc.).  Make the skills still stand on their own.  The
abilities (str, dex, con) would still make a difference - having high stats
would increase your chances of using the skill and thus increase exp.

 Now this is my personal opinion, not sure what others think, but my own
preferance is to have a game that is easy to play and get experience up in more
or less what categories you want without having to worry about managing what
skills I use where and how I use them.

 Re followup message on woodsman & mountaineering:  I would say if there is no
risk/challenge in using a skill, getting experience for the skill doesn't mak a
lot of sense.  For mountaineering at least, you could add the risk of falling,
for woodsmen you could add a risk of getting lost (ie, losing time or going in
random direction), but both of those are probably pretty harmless.  The problem
is that those two skills are probably the ones that are easiest to use as much
as you want, so granting experience for them seems like it opens up to all sorts
of problems.

 Now one thing you could do is have experience for those, but it doesn't
contribute to the players overall experience.  So sure, if that player wanders
through the forest all the time, he can move pretty quickly through it.  But
that won't give him any more hp/sp/grace (you could argue that hp should be tied
to physique/melee experieince, sp tied to magic use, and grace to praying and
not tied to overall level in any case).  For the later two, that makes more
sense and probably doesn't really harm anything.  For the first one, it sort of
throws playbalance off or would force other classes to use melee just to get the
experience total up.  One option would be to use the highest level in any skill
to base hp off of.
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