Re: Skills!

[Bjørn Georg Ludvigsen <bjornlu>]

>>But, to prevent this, I propose adding a new type of books to the
>>game, books which give you the nessecary theory to practice the skill
>>on your own. You must agree, one simply cannot learn Monster Lore
>>without some theory to back it up. "book of Monster Lore".
>  I like this much better.

I'd rather have places to learn skills, to add in a taste of realism
too.

>  Weapons skills are related.  The same muscles and experience that
>allows someone to swing a sword around probably also allow him to
>use other weapons effectively also.  It is easier to pick up a second
>fighting skill having learned the body control necessary for one.
>Therefore, even training in a specialty should also be applied in
>part to training in the general skill.

As a solution to relating skills to each other, I suggest another,
more flexible way of measuring skills. By an integer as before, but
the integer now represents how many points are put into the skill.
Let's take an example. Skill point table (I'll keep it short) : 

 lvl    2pt     8pt
-------------------
  1 :     2 :     8
  2 :     4 :    16
  3 :     6 :    24
  4 :     8 :    32
  5 :    10 :    40
  6 :    12 :    48
  7 :    14 :    56
  8 :    16 :    64
  9 :    18 :    72
 10 :    20 :    80

2/8pt are skills with base cost 2 and 8, respectively. Now, let's say
(for now) that Broadsword is a 2pt skill, and General Weapon use is a
8pt skill (more on this specific skills later).

Let's say you've put 20 points into Broadsword. This gives you a lvl
10 skill. Now, let's say Broadsword has a 1/5 relation factor to
General. This means that 1/5 of the points in Broadsword go into
General too. That's 4 points. Now, if you want to learn General up to
1st level, you'd only have to spend 4 points. 

>  As a real life example, black-belts in any martial arts disciple often
>advance *very* quickly in others.  They have built up the necessary
>coordination, agility, stamina, and mental discipline which are the core
>requirements of all martial arts.

Thanks for the example. You will find that all of the above mentioned
abilities are stats. (Which I'd implement as reduced base cost to skills)

>  Having picked up ANY fighting skill, then, should reduce the cost
>of picking up a second fighting skill by a very great deal, and the 
>third should also be reduced even MORE.

Dunno about the "very great deal", not to mention the "even MORE", and
I also don't know about the "reduce the cost of picking up a second
fighting skill". I don't think reduced cost is it, I'd rather have the
skills relate to each other like i mentioned. If we do it my way, you
receive skill levels in other skills as you train a skill. If we do it
your way, it'd be easier to learn the second skill later, but you
wouldn't benefit from this until you put a few points in this second
skill. I think my version serves reality better.

>  Also, my fencing is weak, but it seems to me that skill with the
>Broadsword is so readily applicable to Long Sword and Short Sword that
>it is unnecessary to distinguish between them.....

Agreed. (again, now)

>  So the fighting skills should be thus:  
>  Sword--Ball & Chain--Polearm--Axe & Hammer--Sticks--Archery

Pity there are no polearms and only one stick... But this could/should
be added shortly. But the idea of splitting weapons into categories
like this is a great idea. I suggest adding a new category, though.
Two-Handed. I don't know if we should divide it further into
two-handed swords, two-handed sticks and two-handed ball & chain
weapons. What do you think?

Another thing is two-handed weapons. Like most polearms, and also
really the quarterstaff. An "easy" way to implement the use of
two-handed weapons would be to keep a record of which hands are used
on the player. This could be boolean in it simplest sense, and a
complete every-location-pointerstructure for the really bored ones out
there. (which I would recommend, as it could be used to check if the
player was wearing (metal) armor, the weight of wielded weapons etc
for a really good spell-failure system) But if we stick to the simple
keep-track-of-two-boolean-values-theory, a simple way was to say that
any two-handed weapon requires two hands, which is represented as
false i both of these values. Any one-handed weapon and all shields
both occupy one hand, or one of the values. Is this really that hard?

If we're feeling really cool, let's add a field in the playerfile -
arms. And when a player wields a weapon, int free_arms in the
playerstructure is deducted by the arms usage of the weapon/shield.
(two-handed full body shields are also possible) Wouldn't it be cool
to have a race that had say four arms? Do I hear six?

>  No one would ever want to train in any skill other than Sword, then,
>because all the coolest artifacts are swords.  Holy Avenger, Defender,
>Darkblade, Demonbane, Dragonslayer, Stormbringer, Mournblade....
>These are the best, and these are all swords.

We need to add new artifacts.  But this is the funny job, and
shouldn't really pose a threat to the project.

>  I happen to think that learning the spell of Small fireball should make
>it easier to learn and be effective with Medium Fireball, and Large Fireball,
>and might even help with Burning Hands, and other missile spells like
>Comet, large bullet, magic bullet.  I think dividing magic skills by spell
>is bad.  Dividing by path is better, but I think the whole field of channeling
>mana to produce effects is so inter-related that learning in any one area
>should enhance all the rest.

More on this in a later post.

>>I'd like there to be a possibility to learn a spell very good and
>>perhaps not to be equally good at another spell.
>  This is already sort of in the code.  The level dependencies on spells
>address this issue.  A spell you've just learned (it's level is near yours)
>is cast more weakly than you learn how to do it later when you've gained
>some more experience.

But, you HAVE to learn/do automatically learn the spell better as your
level increases. You cannot choose to concentrate on one spell.

>And i don't see why a great mage couldn't learn say, burning hands
>for the first time, smack his head, and say, 'oh, i see, how trivial'
>and really blast out awesome burning hands spells right off.  Also,
>rgg (Rupert) has added spell-paths, so broad areas of spells can have
>different effectiveness for different players.

If he has a lot of points in a related path, this is quite ok. More on
this later.

>>In general, not making everybody know the same things equally good
>>gives each character more personality.
>  True, true.  But not even MUD's have this capability, I think, and
>they don't have to deal with the additional complexity of having an
>x-interface, etc....  Mud players introduce personality into their
>characters by WHAT THEY SAY......

With the not-so-good (shitty) talk/shout-interface presented to
characters now, I'm surprised they say anything at all. And, they
rarely do.

>>That might very well be the case, indeed. But what I don't know is if
>>the audience would be pleased with implementing your system and stopping
>>there, or if they'd like my system on top of yours.
>  A great many people have expressed support for the 4-skill proposal i made.

I'm not ready drafting up my proposal yet, nor making my mind up as to
what would be better. But soon all this will be gathered, and we'll
see what people think. 

But to see which way this is going, what do you think about the things
you've heard so far, folks?

>>Would you like to stop after implementing your system, or would you
>>agree to my compromise mentioned on top of the message?
>  Quite frankly, yes, I'd be happy to stop.
>I can see pretty clearly everything needed to
>put in the 4-skill system, and have an idea of the complexity involved.
>The major weakness is the Thief area.  I cannot do everything required
>to do justice to Thieves.  

Can you with my system? I think my system would be A LOT more
flexible. And, to use your own words against you: what if someone
wants to chunk out everything, redraw all the pixmaps and make this a
sci-fi game? He'd have to do some extensive coding to adjust/remove
the four "skill areas" you're suggesting. As for my system, he could
remove/add the races he wanted, remove/add the skills he wanted and
have a very functional system indeed.

What are we striving for, making a good fantasy game or making a game
system? (a darn good one, I might add)

>>One could of course pick any lock, including the ones on the doors
>>which you now have to bash down if you don't have a key. I'd say there
>>are a lot of locks out there, just waiting to be picked.
>  The code support is not there yet.  You cannot say 'pick the look on
>this door', and have it open yet.  The door cannot have traps in it yet.

I'm not sure you understand what I mean. Any door could be picked.
Don't tell me you haven't run into a door on your journeys? You know,
you smash the door with a bonecrunching sound? These are the doors I'm
talking about.

>  What I'd like to do is make it so that doors are trapped at random.
>Any door at all might have a trap.  This would remove the necessity
>of editing all the damned maps to put in trapped doors.  Same with
>chests.  Severity and level of traps would depend on the difficulty
>of the dungeon.

I think there should be a possibility of adding un-trapped doors, and
also adding trapped doors. We could have a random-trapped-door too, of
course. But not random only.

>>effect? Having traps without being able to disarm them isn't very
>  Yes, that's true.
>>cool, and I think it would be a rather big addition to add your entire
>>system as well as traps in one batch. But adding both our systems
>  Which is why I propose doing the traps/thief stuff first.

What is this stuff you're talking about? You DO have to add the three
xp pools etc to get the thief stuff, don't you?

>>The reason thieves had no purpose before, was that characters had no
>>skills. Thieves are skill-based characters, as opposed to all other
>>classes (in crossfire). 
>  No, the reason thieves don't exist is because opening doors is riskless,
>traps don't exist, chests are QUITE safe to open, and there are no hidden
>buttons, doors for them to search and find!  You'd be amazed by how much
>people will start acting like thiefs if they could die from a bomb in a
>chest.

Depends on how you see it... I mean there shall not be a skill without
a purpose, therefore Disarm Traps wouldn't exist without traps to
disarm. You mean that it's because there are no traps that thieves
don't have a purpose.

I mean that skills are needed to make thieves, you mean the things to
use the skills on are needed to make thieves. Pretty similar, really.
It all sums up in adding skills, one way or the other.

- Bjorn