Skills

[Kvetch]

Virisin had posted something about the awesomeness of how Skyrim has their skill trees and I'd mentioned having people try to figure out how to do our skills about the same way.  So, I gave the list of all the skills... Still waiting...  And while waiting I got bored (don't know why, I have plenty to do) and began doing a little bit of my own.  Here is what we currently have - with prereqs of skills and all:  Even after all that though, it leaves an awful lot of skills that don't have any prereqs.

Current Prereqs for skills:
Hand to Hand
- Backstab
-Bash
-blackjack
-Hamstring
-Kick
-Longarm
-Parry
-ShortBlade
-Grapple
- - <advanced melee>
-- grapple
- - <mounted combat>
-- joust
-- trample
- - <backstab>
-- slit
- - <longarm>
-- thrust

Melee
-berserk
-disarm
-dodge
-face
-smash
- - <backstab>
-encircle
-advanced melee
- - charge
-master melee

Longarm
--<face>
- behead
- - <grip>
-cleave

Riding
-mounted combat

[Kvetch]

So, while I was thinking along those lines and looking at the Skyrim stuff and my D&D 3rd ed stuff, I started writing down some possibilities for skills that could improve (or maybe hamper) the game.  I'm not really sure how well our ranged weapons work now (at one time they didn't) so I'm not sure if any of the ranged ones would be viable.


Suggestions:
Create armor profiencies to be able to wear particular armor – downfall, lots of builder work once classification of armors were decided.  Unless this is done via a check for AC to decide light (bad AC), heavy (best AC), and medium (everything that falls in between). 

Light armor would be things like:
Padded, Leather, studded leather
Medium armor would be things like:
Chain, Scale
Heavy Armor would be things like:
Splint, Banded, Plate

Create a survival skill and base the following skills off that:

Forage
Filet
Riding
Snare
Tame
Track
Trap aware
Scalp (?)
Woodsing (?)


 Create a Ranged Skill and base the following skills off it:
- crossbow
- firearm
- sling
- throw
- opens up other skills for ranged weapons like bow and any other weapon that would have to be aimed. 
Perhaps even some spells would need a ranged skill if fired in a direction at something.
- Skills like:
point blank (can use bow if in the same room as long as someone else is tanking mob)

Add skills based off Martial Arts:
- Deflect Arrows
-Stunning Fist



Get rid of Mount.  After all, what does it really do other than create an extra skill needed to ride something?

Create more two-handed weapon fighting abilities other than just “dual”.
- dual rend (bonus damage if you hit with both weapons)


Perhaps more skills based off dodge: Lightning Reflexs (bonus to dodge)
Create a shield profiency so you can be good with your shield.  Opens up the ability to have some shield attacks like shield bash. 
 - also sizes of shield could create AC bonus/Dex penalty.
- could add a type of “weapon” called a shield spike that could be added to a shield to cause damage if you succeed in a shield bash with the shield.


Other possible skills:
Blind-Fighting – the ability to fight while blinded (basically would negate the blind spell, though player still would not be able to SEE the room)

[Kvetch]

So, then I got really crazy and went and looked up the type of weapon hits (ends up being weapon type) in OLC to possibly come up with some weapon skills (so you have to know how to use a piercing weapon to use a dagger, or a blungeoning weapon to use a club...) and there are these types of weapon hits:  Which brings out the thought of having a whip proficency (for whips - HELLOOOO Saints!), though the list doesn't seem to be as interesting for much else - whip, slashing, piercing, bludgeoning...

0) hit                 
 1) sting               
 2) whip                 
3) slash               
 4) bite                 
5) bludgeon             
 6) crush                 
7) pound               
  claw                 
9) maul                 
10) thrash               
11) pierce               
12) blast               
13) punch               
14) stab                 
15) kick                 
16) gore

[Molly]

You go, Kvetch!

I really, REALLY wish some coder would take on the task to just rearrange the existing skills into logical trees.

We probably need matching defence skills against all offensive skills, so those would also require skill trees.

And I particularly love your whip proficiency idea. That's a long-time wish of mine - to have an Indiana Jones type whip skill, where you could not just hurt your target with the whip, but also snare and trip them. (Snare would stop them from leaving the room, while trip would cause them to fall on their ass, like bash. Only if you are wielding a whip type armor of course).

[Kvetch]

...though the list doesn't seem to be as interesting for much else - whip, slashing, piercing, bludgeoning...

0) hit                 
 1) sting               
 2) whip                 
3) slash               
 4) bite                 
5) bludgeon             
 6) crush                 
7) pound               
  claw                 
9) maul                 
10) thrash               
11) pierce               
12) blast               
13) punch               
14) stab                 
15) kick                 
16) gore

Though a thought does come to mind of having a “natural weapon” proficiency.  Of course, that would require races that had natural weapons (though if we don’t, it’s something that mobs could have…).  Once you did that you could have bees that could have a sting proficiency so when they get their sting attack they could hit better with it and do more damage.  Dogs that could bite, Cats that could have claw.  My thought though would be to add in races like a minotaur that could have a natural attack of gore.  See some other post on Races.

[Kvetch]

any chance of beig able to set that up perhaps, and then possibly getting into new skill sets that create weapon specialization/focus? Ive always felt longsrm and shortarm were far too simplistic. Id relly lime to see staff, shortblade, logblade, mace (bludgeon), and so on. Each class having a focus of a weapkn type but not being limited to it. Ya mnow, skill perk or something. Anyway ill stop derailing your thread now

Took this out of a different topic because I thought it felt more like it should be here.  Being able to have people focus on different weapon types would be a way to make people slightly different - at least at the lower levels.  I'd like to know other peoples thought on this.  I had a few other skills I'd thought could be adapted from D&D, but don't currently have the list with me.  So other thoughts of skills would be useful as well.  I know people want things that are different than what's already in the game, and using D&D books, I could add a few, but my thought's always "how would it be possible to even attempt to code something like that in the game?"  One example of that being "forsee" which would allow the ESPer to forsee the move the person they're fighting would make so they can react in time to defend against correctly.  Other skills like ones that are already in the game would be something like "taunt" in which case the rogue would taunt the mob into fighting them - basically it'd be like the fighter's rescue.

[Kvetch]

Bah, reopening this topic because I can. 

Had a thought on possible new skills tonight while reading through some pdf's I downloaded trying to get my head back into the gaming/roleplaying/building/etc mode so I can get done what needs to be done.  While doing so, I came across some things and thought, "hey, I wonder if 4D could do something like that" and so, here I am.

Thoughts of new skills:

Mages:
Redirect blast (effective when fighting other mages)
Exhaustion (cast this on a character that has to use stamina for their skills - I think there are a few of those - and wear down their stamina quicker.
Web (kind of like snare for magic users - just a little stickier)

Warriors:
Iron grip (harder to disarm - though I'm not sure how often players actually get disarmed in the game).
Whirlwind attack ( or perhaps a better name if someone comes up with one - splits damage across all enemies in the room - or do we have something like this and I don't know it?)

Another thing that would be interesting would be to have damage reduction against certain materials - like fey creatures (faeries, leprechauns, etc) for instance should be harder to hit, unless you're hitting them with a cold iron, skeletons should have a dr against anything other than bashing weapons, etc.

What's everyone thoughts on this and any other ideas?

[Calypso]

Re: Whirlwind attack

We do have attacks that hit all enemies in the room. This is not to say that we couldn't use a different one, possibly one that uses a different elemental. I am wondering if you were thinking of an innate like truestrike and phase rather than being an AOE skill on its own. If so, I have some thoughts on that.

It would be cool to have an innate skill that automatically divides the damage to all mobs in the room. This would effectively make all attack skills like an AOE. I assume that hitting one person with a skill would do more damage to that one person than it would if I were using that same skill as an AOE against more than one person at the same time. But this would give certain melee classes the ability to have good AOE skills to counter caster's mana blast.

A downside I see to this is that a PKiller with this innate toggled on would have to be careful if grouped, but that is something all PKillers are supposed to be careful with anyway.

Re: Web
YES!! That sounds great! Let's give casters their own midas touch equivalent!

Re: Irongrip
Sure, why not? Disarm is a useful PK skill, so adding irongrip as an innate would be useful as a counter to it. Perhaps it could be disabled when it blocks a disarm. That way it doesn't completely render the disarm skill useless. Or have it work a percentage of the time, like sanctuary.


Re: Exhaustion
There are poisons and subskills that do this type of thing. Maybe exhaustion could be like it but different. Perhaps make it less effective than certain poisons and subskills,or have its effectiveness depend on the attacker's own stamina/strength. (like manablast:mana for casters). Or exhaustion can be very strong but very short lived and have along delay between uses.

Re: Redirect Blast
This sounds like mirror shield. Is that what you were going for? Or am I misunderstanding?