Skill synergy bonuses

Here's my proposed solution to the problem of "why can't I swing a dagger for shit even though my long blades skill is at 80?"

I was thinking we could divide skills into broad "groups"and have the highest skill in the group grant a slight bonus to related skills. Just a synergy bonus of somewhere between 10% and 25% would be good. Perhaps make it so that un-tagged skills give 10%, minor skills give 15%, and major skills give 25% of their total value as a synergy bonus. So if your long blades skill is a major weapon skill and it's at 60, all your other weapon skills get a boost of +15 (but this obviously can't raise them above your long blades skill). If the skill is at 60 but is not tagged at all, the bonus is +6.

In the same way, the higher of Acrobatics and Athletics would grant you a bonus to the lower. If we're separating Speechcraft into Etiquette and Streetwise the way they did in Daggerfall, those two can synergize. Magic skills could do the same thing. Your best armor skill will enhance your other armor skills. And so on.

Comments, ridicule, etc.?

I think this is a good idea, but I have to wonder if there's not a more simple way of doing it.

GURPS has similar weapon skills default to each other, typically at -3, where skills normally range from 10 to 18, so a 14 in long sword would give you an 11 in dagger. Riddle of Steel has a radiating system of defaults that I don't understand because I haven't read the book, wherein you get more of a bonus to certain weapon skills based on how similar they are, so 7 points in dagger gives you 6 to pugilism and 5 to wrestling. I don't know why I'm mentioning all this, since defaults don't really fit the flavor of the game as well as the synergy bonuses you described...

The only problem I have with the system you described is that I don't like calculating percentages all the time. If it were just a flat 10% or 20%, rounded down to the nearest 10, that would cut down on the amount of math I have to do in the middle of combat and likely speed things up a bit. If Longsword is 63, I don't want to stop and figure out what 15% of that is to add to my Short Blade skill, I just want to say 6 or 12 and be done with it.

Yes, I like this idea. 25% seems the most logical, as it is big enough to have an effect, but small enough to still make you want to use your main style if you can. As for Synergies, we could go with styles, basing it around the three specializations (stealth, magic, combat) which give bonuses in themselves. However, this could lead to strange things like being skilled at stabbing someone in the back makes you a better jumper. It's easiest this way, I'd say, but OP is right about linking similar skills together more.

The skill groups can't be too broad, though. I think it's a pretty neat idea, but we can't just group it into Stealth, Magic, and Combat, otherwise we run into too many bonuses. If you have 100 in Destruction and Alteration, for example, you shouldn't have a +50 to every other magic skill. Instead, I propose groups of two or three thematically linked skills, rather than large categories.

Here's a (very) cursory list of proposed groupings. Note that there will be some overlap between groupings. Just ask for justification, by the way.

Heavy Armor and Medium Armor
Light Armor and Unarmored
Lockpicking and Stealth
Acrobatics and Athletics
Ettiquette, Streetwise, and Mercantile
Destruction and Restoration
Alteration and Illusion
Enchant and Alchemy
Medicine, Alchemy, and Backstab (if we choose to keep that skill)
Crossbows, Archery, and Throwing
Long Blade and Short Blade
Axe, Blunt Weapon, and Spear
Spear and Acrobatics
Conjuration, Mysticism, and Necromancy (if we choose to keep that skill)
Armorer with all armor skills

Thoughts?

I was saying 25% of only the highest of the Group of skills. So if you have 80 long blades, 5 short blades, and 70 blunt weapons, you would function at a level of 25 short blades, until you actually leveled it up to 26.

Looks solid, but make it so you can only gain one synergy per skill. That way you can't have a 75 in spears just by virtue of being good at axes and maces. The idea, as has been stated, is to make synergy helpful in a pinch, but to encourage using the skills that you've trained in forever.

Rainbay wrote:I was saying 25% of only the highest of the Group of skills. So if you have 80 long blades, 5 short blades, and 70 blunt weapons, you would function at a level of 25 short blades, until you actually leveled it up to 26.

That makes sense, but I think that it may be a bit powerful. Now, that's just my gut talking, as I haven't tested it and don't know how it would work in actual play. But it seems like the bonus it provides is, if not actually that large, than too broad, in that it provides a bonus to too large a number of ancillary skills.

Admin wrote:

Rainbay wrote:I was saying 25% of only the highest of the Group of skills. So if you have 80 long blades, 5 short blades, and 70 blunt weapons, you would function at a level of 25 short blades, until you actually leveled it up to 26.

That makes sense, but I think that it may be a bit powerful. Now, that's just my gut talking, as I haven't tested it and don't know how it would work in actual play. But it seems like the bonus it provides is, if not actually that large, than too broad, in that it provides a bonus to too large a number of ancillary skills.

Oops, I screwed up my math. At 80 longsword, it would be 20 in the other skills. You'd have to literally be a master of a skill to even have the others to function at 25, and they wouldn't get any higher until you actually raised them for a while.

I think we should have this synergy bonus as it is, but at the groupings Admin proposed. Hefting an axe or mace is different than swinging a sword. Swords use the slashing aspect and more finesse in swinging, the other 2 focus on flat-out bashing/chopping with brute strength. Makes sense to group them like that.

Admin wrote:

Rainbay wrote:I was saying 25% of only the highest of the Group of skills. So if you have 80 long blades, 5 short blades, and 70 blunt weapons, you would function at a level of 25 short blades, until you actually leveled it up to 26.

That makes sense, but I think that it may be a bit powerful. Now, that's just my gut talking, as I haven't tested it and don't know how it would work in actual play. But it seems like the bonus it provides is, if not actually that large, than too broad, in that it provides a bonus to too large a number of ancillary skills.

If we use the groupings of 2 or 3 stated elsewhere, the purview of each skill will be maybe 2 or 3 others. It makes sense for mercantile, etiquette, speechcraft, and streetwise to help one another, because they're all manipulations of people. Just like blades should play off one another.

Saint Jiub wrote:

Admin wrote:

Rainbay wrote:I was saying 25% of only the highest of the Group of skills. So if you have 80 long blades, 5 short blades, and 70 blunt weapons, you would function at a level of 25 short blades, until you actually leveled it up to 26.

That makes sense, but I think that it may be a bit powerful. Now, that's just my gut talking, as I haven't tested it and don't know how it would work in actual play. But it seems like the bonus it provides is, if not actually that large, than too broad, in that it provides a bonus to too large a number of ancillary skills.

If we use the groupings of 2 or 3 stated elsewhere, the purview of each skill will be maybe 2 or 3 others. It makes sense for mercantile, etiquette, speechcraft, and streetwise to help one another, because they're all manipulations of people. Just like blades should play off one another.

Right... And Spears? What do those go with? And Hand to Hand as well? Would spear be with long and shortblades, and Hand to Hand with axes and Blunt weapons?

Hand-to-Hand should probably be connected with Unarmored, and Spear is kinda it's own thing, although we could easily stick it in either the Axe/Blunt group or the Swords group. From a purely balance perspective, we should probably stick it with Axe/Blunt because those are usually slightly less powerful mechanically than the various swords.

Stupid suggestion maybe, but nobody thought of putting Hand-to-Hand for Social? Or perhaps Backstab/Anatomy if we do it.

Hexx wrote:Stupid suggestion maybe, but nobody thought of putting Hand-to-Hand for Social?

You are a dirty, dirty man, sir. Or I am. I'm never quite sure.

Hexx wrote:Stupid suggestion maybe, but nobody thought of putting Hand-to-Hand for Social? Or perhaps Backstab/Anatomy if we do it.

I love it! Backstab I would see as definatly stealth, but hand to hand could easily be sorted to social.

I don't like HTH as a social skill, but I do think it would make sense to allow HTH to give synergy bonuses to backstab and unarmored. After all, there are strikes that can put a man down or kill him in one blow, but you have to be damn good to do it.

I think that's fine. So, are we in accordance that skill synergy of some sort should be in? I really like it, and think that it's quite a neat idea. Now we just have to agree on how it's going to work...

I think we've all agreed it's a good idea. And we've already got a pretty decent foundation - everybody so far seems okay with 25% (especially keeping in mind that getting a skill to 100 takes a fucklong time).

How about having each skill influence two others? So Short Blade would give a bonus to Long Blade and Hand-to-Hand, Medium armor would give a bonus to Light and Heavy, Heavy armor would give a bonus to Medium and... Athletics?

Well, what do you think of my proposed groupings? Can you see a way to improve them, or should we leave them as we are? As it is, I think that we should focus more on how to play the game basically right now, instead of worrying about skill benefits just yet. Don't get me wrong; I think that it's an excellent idea but maybe we need to lay down the groundwork of the system before moving onto more complex issues like this.

Admin wrote:Well, what do you think of my proposed groupings? Can you see a way to improve them, or should we leave them as we are?

I don't like that some of the groups are larger than others, and the fact that only some skills appear in multiple groups. The reason I proposed having each skill effect a set number of others is to make it seem more even. No skill should, from a game balance perspective, be better at synergy than another skill.

Keep in mind, though, that some skills will likely be less desirable or weaker than others. Allowing weaker skills to have larger groups is a way of balancing as well. You do raise a good point, though. Do you have a suggested grouping?

If some skills are weaker than others than we have built the game wrong, the GM is fucking up, or both. My suggested grouping is to give each skill two that it gives bonuses to. Graphically you could imagine arranging all the skills in a wheel, so that each skill affects two others and, likewise, is affected by two others. It's hard to have an exact set of groupings until we've finalized the skill list, though.

Well, we can add one more skill to my proposed list to get 10 groupings of 3, or we can subtract two to get 9 groupings of three. If we ditch Necromancy and Backstab it'll work perfectly.

But I really like backstab and necromancy being in there. What if we consolidated the ranged attacks back into Marksman? I


Social
Mercantile/Streetwise/Etiquette

Ranged
Crossbows/Archery/Throwing

Thieving
Security/Sneak/Acrobatics (this includes jumping and climbing)

Martial
Hand-to-Hand/Unarmored/Athletics (this includes swimming and running)

Brute weapons
Axe/Spear/Blunt

Finesse weapons
Long Blade/Short Blade/Backstab

Armor Use
Heavy Armor/Medium Armor/Light Armor

Crafting Skills
Armorer/Alchemy/Enchant

Subtle Magicka
Alteration/Illusion/Mysticism

Gross Magicka
Conjuration/Destruction/Necromancy (Tentatively)


How do these triads look to everyone? If the group names look a bit wonky we can fix them, but how do the groupings look? Do they make sense? Keep in mind that Backstab being in with bladed weapons doesn't mean only blades can backstab. It just reflects the necessity for blades to be precise. If you like, we can rename that to Critical Strike (another skill that was in Daggerfall and got removed for Oblivion) and either ditch Backstab or put it somewhere else.