more possible skills

[ttlanhil]

from over in this thread:

Do you have any good ideas for other skills?

sounds like a challenge ^_^

 

after a short while, I came up with some ideas. in order to avoid filling up this thread, they're over ...

 

none of the following are revolutionary, and some(like playing music) may already be intended in some manner

 

 

racial abilities, passive & active

passive will be things you alays have, and get no experience from. for example:

every ten levels of <race ability>, your gain: (+1 cold resistance)draegoni, (+5 to carry cap)dwarf, (+0.1% to chance of invention[note below])gnome, etc. each race will have more than just one passive bonus, naturally

you can also gain active skills, obviously tied to your race. orchans can learn to sharpen or poison their weapons(getting more effective with skill) ability to cast a harm-equivalent ability(optionally against all enemies attacking in multi-maps), regardless of magic level, and not needing essences(or maybe less) (obviously you can extend the racial-special spells a lot more. with the new magic system coming, i think we'd be able to integrate race-magic with spells reasonably easily)

note on gnome invention: start at 0% chance, and each 10 gnome levels you get +0.1%. then at the end of each hour, the gnome has a chance that they sold an invention and gained some cash. just one wild example of a racial trait

 

performing arts

singing/instruments/dance/acrobatics/etc. I probably don't need to expand on this too much; but I do think we could pack enough into it to make it worth being a full skill. this ill be a social skill, or something you do 'just because'. optionally, there can be benefits given beyond the social aspect, a good performance can increase heal rates, etc(alternatively, bards could drive enemies mad on the battlefield with noise )

 

 

gardening/prospecting

should we ever have depletable resources, this skill will be the compliment to harvesting. with gardening you can make the bushes grow, and prospecting you can open up more ore/etc. you can use similar levels to harvesting since you're dealing with the same items(and hence have an instant, fleshed out level structure). you can probably even copy the harvesting events for this(since it'd have to be automatic as well). until we have depletable resources, this skill isn't really worth looking at

 

 

scholarly abilities

initially used to make make the tools of the trade. wittle quills, prepare paper, bind into books, make and enchant ink.

then used to scribe magic scrolls. with a scroll of <spell>, you don't have any chance to fail (alternatively, you can have a low chance based on level). you may require ethereal points to use the scroll, but no essences. the essences are used either during creation of the ink, or when making the scroll itself (and you have the chance to lose your essences then as well). because the magic is powerful, you can't stack the pages on top of each other (non stacking items, helps from making magic too powerful)

scrolls will be made from essences(unless these are used in making many types of ink), paper, and enchanted ink

another ability at mid to higher levels will be to tutor someone. using this, you provide guidance to them, so they might get a +50% to sucess, or an effective +(your level-their level) levels when that's checked. in return for greater sucess, you get 25% (say) of the experience for what was made(which might be split between scholar and <X>, eg smithing). realistically, it's not worth your time to do this for the XP. but the same goes for using remote heal at beam once you can cast higher level spells. it's not done for the XP

higher-level scholars can attempt to copy research books. rationality and skill are checked, and the check is repeated pages/rationality times (long book = more chances to fail). alternatively, you can have a progress bar of some kind (similar to current research bar?), and each time you use-with your quill on the book you want to copy, you attempt to write <rationality> pages. this way would be preferable, but may not be as intuitive at first. because of the costs involved in making the paper, binding into books, and producing the ink, long/hard books, even if you don't make that many mistakes and lose the stuff for that page, this will mean that buying a copy from a scholar won't be much cheaper than buying from a bookseller. and the scholars' costs can be to an NPC as well, so the money sink still exists

 

 

all of the above are doable without huge amounts of work (for a counter-example, allowing players to learn construction skills and make/modify houses), they can add depth to the game without necessarily increasing challenge too much, they don't (necessarily) conflict with the need to drain coin(apart from performance, if NPCs pay), and give us more to do (especially performance as a social skill)

Edited November 21, 2005 by ttlanhil

[brain]

Cool ideas

but if racial abilities come in game would we have chance to change our race for free? just to the free races for free ofcourse i ment

Edited November 21, 2005 by brain

[ttlanhil]

Cool ideas

but if racial abilities come in game would we have chance to change our race for free? just to the free races for free ofcourse i ment

I doubt it. the racial abilities would be tailored to match the racial descriptions and backgrounds though... if you read the descriptions and picked the one that suits your playing style, you'll probably be happy with the racial perks you'd get

[TheDoctor]

Now come on....a year ago were there even descriptions in the first place?

[ttlanhil]

Now come on....a year ago were there even descriptions in the first place?

there were on the EL homepage as far back as I remember. besides, apart from draegoni (and maybe orchan, though you know they're a race of warriors), all the races are common to many fantasy settings, so you know what to expect of them

[Hyperion]

I like your ideas Ttha... specially the recial magic... I think that would be realistic since different races use different magic to... for example orchans could have agressive spells since they are a race of warriors like you stated above...and elves for example could have defensive spells since they are harmless creatures who prefer to stay unnoticed without battle(they will fight if needed tho ) also a dwarf could have something like an spell to help him with mining since dwarves are a race who mine a lot and work in mines... they also make weapons maybe you could add a spell with a blessing for example not the normal enchantments we have now like thermal... but something like Blessing of the dwarfs is upon this sword, your sword gained 2 in critical damage and now gives 3 more defense or something like that...

 

I like the rest to tho it would spice up competition in this game, and would add great pleasure if you ask me....

 

Greatz hype

[trollson]

When you talk about new 'skills', do you mean entirely new skills in addition to Manu, Crafting, etc., or new abilities/knowledges which use existing skills to enact?

 

What of the above could be fitted into the existing skills? Making pens and paper are relatively simple crafting tasks (done myself in RL), making ink may be alchemy. Restricting the who can learn what knowledge should be easy to implement (and the knowledge needn't be limited to coming from books).

[ttlanhil]

When you talk about new 'skills', do you mean entirely new skills in addition to Manu, Crafting, etc., or new abilities/knowledges which use existing skills to enact?

entirely new skills. there may be gaps in the current skills, but they're reasonably well populated.

making quills, paper, and ink could be part of existing skills, but copying books and mentoring other players would be a lot harder to fit in

if there's something that can be fleshed out enough to be a realistic and interesting skill in its own right, then it ould be good to add it. just adding a few items to an existing skill doesn't give all players something new and exciting to do the way a new skill can

 

as to dwarves being able to give something a blessing... i don't think so, not even if it only lasts 5minutes. dwarves are a mechanically-minded race, not magical. but there is the option of them being able to sharpen swords(you get +1 to accuracy and damage until it goes into storage... to save the storage slots). this is an ability (and would require the appropriate tools), not magic.

also, don't expect to see skills for a certain race that stop anyone else from being able to do something... just like the lack of classes, all races should be capable of all skills and tasks... it's just that some can have an advantage (IMO anyway)

[danespen]

higher-level scholars can attempt to copy research books. rationality and skill are checked, and the check is repeated pages/rationality times (long book = more chances to fail). alternatively, you can have a progress bar of some kind (similar to current research bar?), and each time you use-with your quill on the book you want to copy, you attempt to write <rationality> pages. this way would be preferable, but may not be as intuitive at first. because of the costs involved in making the paper, binding into books, and producing the ink, long/hard books, even if you don't make that many mistakes and lose the stuff for that page, this will mean that buying a copy from a scholar won't be much cheaper than buying from a bookseller. and the scholars' costs can be to an NPC as well, so the money sink still exists

I was thinking loudly about "inventing" a teacher skill, and ttlanhil told me about this thread.

 

A teacher would be one that could teach the content of books that he/she had already read to others.

 

- The teacher would have to be next to the "student" and pressing a button to teach

 

- - a) it would be a skill

- - b ) it would depend on one or more cross attributes, say charm, percpetion and rationality

- - with the above, you would be able to teach faster (starting at say 5% of normal book reading speed) when getting levels/attributes up

- - c) it would be an expensive perk, and you would be able to teach at 50% of normal book reading speed

 

- There could be a limit at 1 teacher and 1 student for teaching, or no limits for both

- With no limits for student amount, it would make it a little slower the more students

- When teaching, you would have to eat more often

- When learning, you would have to keep the food level over 0 to learn anything

 

- Teaching would need either

- a) both student(s) and teacher(s) having the book

- b,c) student(s) or teacher(s) having the book

- d) no-one having the book

 

I'll add if I come up with more ideas...

Edited November 27, 2005 by danespen

[Dimov]

Theres no point in this way, since you can just read the book, (you can do other stuff during that time) it has to be faster.

[danespen]

Theres no point in this way, since you can just read the book, (you can do other stuff during that time) it has to be faster.

 

I see your point, but with good tweaking I think it would be useful:

1) You don't have to pay for the book, the teacher would charge a small fee

2) At a high skill level/attribute level, it *would* be faster (say 100% faster or more)

 

Imagine gathering by the fire to let ttlanhil teach us about Skeleton Fighting

^_^