Various Skills

Dagoth Durr wrote:Actually, while necromancy is frowned on in most provinces, it's pretty damn common in Morrowind. They just don't call most of what they do (conversing with dead ancestors, crafting bonewalkers and ghost fences, etc) necromancy.

ORDINATOR! ORDINATOR! I HAVE TO KILL THE NECROMANCERS!

No, Nerevarine, YOU ARE THE NECROMANCERS!

And then Nerevar reborn was killed by the Temple. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.

Dagoth Durr wrote:Actually, while necromancy is frowned on in most provinces, it's pretty damn common in Morrowind. They just don't call most of what they do (conversing with dead ancestors, crafting bonewalkers and ghost fences, etc) necromancy.

Bam! And now we have a new target audience for necromancy. Any Dunmer character.

Of course, you call it necromancy and they'd probably murder you. With the undead monsters they had been creating.

What did they call it, anyway? Ancestor Relations?

I imagine that Necromancy would govern the creation of soul-fences, permanent undead, and black soul gems. It really sounds like a crafting profession, unless anyone can think of combat applications.

Regardless, I think that a "prestige skill" system is a neat idea. They can never be chosen as a primary or secondary skill, and always start at five points, but they can be raised up to 100 by all characters and cost a little bit more for each skill increase than standard skills. Are there any other "prestige skills" we want to include? Because right now all we've really touched on is Necromancy and Shouting. Maybe mounted combat could also be a prestige skill, given that it doesn't really fit well into the other synergy groups that we're discussing.

Necromancy, Shouting, mounted combat - divination maybe?

Well, we still have to finalize the "core" list first. I propose ditching Backstab completely, seeing as how it would add another roll to combat, move Thaumaturgy to a prestige skill and have it govern spell-creation, keep Medicine to represent non-magical healing, and move Necromancy to prestige as well. Or, Medicine could also be a prestige skill given that doctors might not be all that common.

And, this is a bit off-topic, but I want mounted combat in as a prestige skill so that I can ride a giant flying wasp.

Admin wrote:I imagine that Necromancy would govern the creation of soul-fences, permanent undead, and black soul gems. It really sounds like a crafting profession, unless anyone can think of combat applications.

Regardless, I think that a "prestige skill" system is a neat idea. They can never be chosen as a primary or secondary skill, and always start at five points, but they can be raised up to 100 by all characters and cost a little bit more for each skill increase than standard skills. Are there any other "prestige skills" we want to include? Because right now all we've really touched on is Necromancy and Shouting. Maybe mounted combat could also be a prestige skill, given that it doesn't really fit well into the other synergy groups that we're discussing.

I know it doesn't have much basis in the game, but perhaps some sort of geomancy? The ability to actually mold and gain strength from the world around you could be interesting. Shape shifting is always a favorite as well.

Well, the Bretonny witches can shapeshift, so it has a place in lore. I'm unsure how to incorporate geomancy, and I'm probably not really going to touch on it. That's not to say I don't think it should be included, mind you. I just have no idea how to do it.

LessRudeScrib wrote:Did we ever hammer out skill advancement, or is that still on the table?

Ok, I have to run for a bit - but I wanted to propose a skill advancement (and possibly overall advancement system).

I'm a huge fan of KenzerCo's HackMaster 4e. For those of you who haven't played it, it's a combination parody/reworking of AD&D 1&2e. When I say reworking, I mean it was KenzerCo's attempt to make their own 3rd edition - keep the core of the system, but make it more playable.

That said, the system is still really goddamn complex. One of it's complexities is the sheer number of things derived from each primary attribute. One of the one for wisdom is "chance to improve skill."

Basically, if you roll under a certain number during a skill check (I think it's under 05 at 13 WIS, and gets higher as wisdom goes up), you get to add an additional mastery die the next time you try and raise that skill (which is a fairly arcane process that I'm not going to get in to here). So, instead of adding just your attribute modifier, you'd add your attribute modifier + 1d6, 1d8, whatever.

So, why mention this? I think this might be a good way to advance skills in this game. Obv it wouldn't be so low, but we could keep the idea of having it tied to the attribute that the skill is based on. So, if you make your roll, and get below some threshold, you'd get x number of points towards your skill advance, and then y number of skill advances get you points towards attributes (much like the leveling system in Morrowind works).

That's my suggestion. Go to, pick it apart, make it better.

Closest thing we have to wisdom is intelligence. A warrior, or perhaps even a rogue, wouldn't often be using any skills that would raise intelligence. This would make wizards and mages have a very unfair advantage in raising their skills; battlemages would become better at combat than a warrior.

The only other system I've seen proposed here that I liked was simply putting a tic mark next to skills you use during the session. Perhaps you can only do this if you get a critical success on a roll (under a certain threshold like 10 or 5), that way people can't just make completely unreasonable attempts at everything in the list each session and use that as an excuse to level the skill up.

Rainbay wrote:Closest thing we have to wisdom is intelligence. A warrior, or perhaps even a rogue, wouldn't often be using any skills that would raise intelligence. This would make wizards and mages have a very unfair advantage in raising their skills; battlemages would become better at combat than a warrior.

No, it wouldn't just be INT, it'd be anything. If you used your shortblade, the threshold would based on your speed, if it was longblade it'd be based on your strength, lockpicking would be agility (?), and so on.

Outlander wrote:The only other system I've seen proposed here that I liked was simply putting a tic mark next to skills you use during the session. Perhaps you can only do this if you get a critical success on a roll (under a certain threshold like 10 or 5), that way people can't just make completely unreasonable attempts at everything in the list each session and use that as an excuse to level the skill up.

One thing when I'd proposed this in a pre-historic thread was having levels for each skill (apprentice, journeyman, master, grandmaster), and using those to determine where you'd have to roll for advancement.

Sorry, I didn't quite understand your post. Actually, lockpick was intelligence in morrowind too... although we can change that.

The issue I see now is that this would make it hard to level up early in the game and easier later in the game. Remember, unlike D&D and other systems, stats rise as well as skills in morrowind.

One way to balance that would be to make the window progressively smaller. So Apprentices would need to roll under a 20, Journeymen under a 15, and so on (just for example).

On the topic of non-crafting uses of necromancy: the Sload created a horrific plague that killed a huge percentage of the population of Tamriel using necromancy.

Unfortunately poisons and attribute damage are currently under destruction...

Are you guys planning on implementing diseases in this game? Because unlike destruction effects diseases are permanent, which could be used to differentiate the effect from the destruction version.

I was thinking we would include diseases; in a land as blighted as morrowind, it is an important thing to have. I just didn't think we had reached that point yet to decide how diseases would work. Perhaps similar to fatigue: after a battle with a diseased enemy is finished, roll to see if you caught it.

And I was somewhat hoping we could include the more oblivion version of applying poisons. Makes the alchemy skill more useful since we are weakening it anyways, and perhaps even limiting potion intake. PLus it gives more reason for backstab to exist; alchemy makes the poison, but the backstab skill decides if you can get it in their body effectively.

Alright, here's my proposed list of finalized basic skills. If no one has any changes they'd like to make, I propose we just get this thing finished so that we can move on to how each of them function, relates to one another for subsystems, or other details. We need to get this agreed upon first before we can do anything else.

Mysticism
Illusion
Restoration
Conjuration
Alteration
Destruction
Enchant
Alchemy
Thaumaturgy (for making custom spells)
Stealth
Security
Backstab
Short Blade
Archery
Crossbow
Thrown
Hand-to-Hand
Unarmored
Acrobatics
Axe
Blunt
Spear
Etiquette
Streetwise
Mercantile
Long Blade
Armorer
Athletics
Block
Heavy Armor
Medium Armor
Light Armor

Aww, shucks, finding a way to include Thaumaturgy, just for lil' ol' me? You shouldn't have :3
I do like the spin you put on it, allowing for custom magic crafting. I hadn't even considered how that would work!

Besides the fact that "Spear" is now "Pole-arm" in order to include staves, there are no issues that jump out at me. This means you're as likely to see a Huge spear weilding battlemage as you are a staff weilding regular mage. Awesome.

Well, I knew you really liked it, and I thought to myself, "Well, Admin (because I totally refer to myself in the real world as my unchosen online persona), Thaumaturgy is basically the magic of magic, right? Now, how can magic manipulate magic?" Then I realized that we hadn't touched on spell-creation at all, and the rest fell into place. I imagine that we can cover it with the same basic crafting rules as the other stuff, like Armorer, Enchant, or Alchemy.

So are we not gonna include the Survival skillset? Or at least Medical (since someone sounded interesting in non-magicka healing, I think)?

Oh, that's right! I completely forgot about those! Alright, just add on Medicine and Survival and we're good to go. We really need to get this list finalized, but debate is fine so long as we don't get too off-track again.

Shit! I forgot about medical, and I actually liked it! Do you think we should include it, or would it make the jumble of skills to hard to balance for synergy? I like the idea of having a way to treat wounds and diseases besides potions and restoration.

EDIT: Nevermind, woooo.

Synergizing the skills should be the first step, so we can figure out how to balance things and what won't work.

I think that calls for a new thread. Can we start synergizing with the list from this page?