Skill Perks!

Now that we've got a fairly solid skill list worked out, it's time to start discussing Skill Perks. Mengleten, the your is floors!

Subtle magicka -
Mysticism
Illusion
Restoration

Gross Magicka -
Conjuration
Alteration
Destruction

Magic-crafting -
Enchant
Alchemy
Armorer

Crime -
Stealth
Security
Backstab

Marksmanship -
Archery
Crossbow
Thrown

Martial arts -
Hand-to-Hand
Unarmored
Acrobatics

Brute weapons -
Axe
Blunt
Polearm

Finesse weapons -
Long Blade
Short Blade
Block

Speechcraft -
Etiquette
Streetwise
Mercantile

Armor -
Heavy Armor
Medium Armor
Light Armor

Adventuring -
Athletics
Medicine
Survival

Armorer
Apprentice: Able to upgrade armors and weapons
Journeyman: Can work with enchanted items
Expert: Able to craft new armors and weapons from scratch
Master: Able to expend one hammer and upgrade a weapon or armor. This upgrade is temporary, similar to in oblivion where you repaired an item past 100% durability. This upgrade will stack with other upgrades from using armorer, just working as a temporary bonus. The size of the bonus goes with the strength of the hammer used up.

That is a start. I don't know how I feel about making things such as item crafting be a perk, but I couldn't easily think up better perks... If anyone can do better, I ask them to please do so.

Crafting your own weapons and armor requires 75 skill? I'd say we move that one to the first rank. But putting it after repairing magical items seems a bit backwards to me.

True. Good point. But what about upgrading items and such to make them better? I don't like the idea of having to wait until 75 armorer for that. I was thinking that would be pretty central to the skill. Perhaps have that not be a perk at all, and just be a part of the skill itself?

Now THIS shit I can help with! I've been feeling pretty useless overall, despite me being the other with Admin that started this project. I'll try writing up a full list of every skill and we can review em together

Hexx wrote:Now THIS shit I can help with! I've been feeling pretty useless overall, despite me being the other with Admin that started this project. I'll try writing up a full list of every skill and we can review em together

Woo! I'm terrible at this. If you had noticed, My skill "perks" for armorer were actually just me taking the ability to do something away, and then giving it back at a certain level.

Can't wait to see what awesome stuff you come up with, after the way you hype it. No pressure of course.

Rainbay wrote:

Hexx wrote:Now THIS shit I can help with! I've been feeling pretty useless overall, despite me being the other with Admin that started this project. I'll try writing up a full list of every skill and we can review em together

Woo! I'm terrible at this. If you had noticed, My skill "perks" for armorer were actually just me taking the ability to do something away, and then giving it back at a certain level.

It's cool, don't worry! I'm gonna be worried for the magic and armor skills though. I want these skill perks to be VARIED but as of right now I can't think of anything past this:

Armor skills: increased efficiency, no spellcasting penalties etc etc
Spell schools: Able to cast higher rank spells
Speech/social: bonus to rolls

I want to make them and make them GOOD. I want light armor bonuses to be different from medium and heavy! Something to make every skill stand out on it's own.

Can't wait to see what awesome stuff you come up with, after the way you hype it. No pressure of course.

And you edit that after I post THIS. I feel like poo :<

One perk for the heavier and perhaps medium armors is decreasing encumberance when they are worn, similar to what oblivion had.

Perhaps one of the perk for streetwise could be allowing calculations to factor in strength as well as personality for bonuses to rolls. Hard to say no to someone who is flexing biceps the size of your head. That way when you intimidate someone, it takes a bonus from /10 of peronality and /10 of strength, rather than just one or the other. Just a thought, I am bad at this remember.

Also, don't feel so bad about me adding the last thing. Once, I made a post and only afterwards realized how stupid the last bit of it was. So I quickly edited that part out, hoping no one had the chance to see. Seconds later, the thread updated with someone quoting what I had already edited out and pointing out that it was stupid. Lovely.

Hmm, the flexing/STR thing sounds good, but it sounds more like a STAT perk if we're having those. Being good at manipulating people doesn't mean you're inherently STRONG. You could just have the best silver tongue ever seen.

Hexx wrote:Hmm, the flexing/STR thing sounds good, but it sounds more like a STAT perk if we're having those. Being good at manipulating people doesn't mean you're inherently STRONG. You could just have the best silver tongue ever seen.

Yes, but you'd be able to add in a strength bonus. Normally, you wouldn't get the chance to do so. So say at journeyman streetwise (pulled out of my ass) you can add in strength modifiers as well as personality. If you have 100 strength, the modifier would be 10 or 20 or something, at 10 strength you'd only get 1 or 2.

But you're the skill perk guy, not me, so you prolly understand this better than I do.

I just realized a thread about Skill Perks would do well to have a nice reference list of all the Skills right atop the page. So there it is. Atop the page.

Saint Jiub wrote:I just realized a thread about Skill Perks would do well to have a nice reference list of all the Skills right atop the page. So there it is. Atop the page.

Thanks man Appreciated!

Right, I made up a small list of the skills i could think of from the top of Saint Jiub's OP. I tried avoiding simple bonuses and penalties to rolls where i could, preferring to go with unique-ish abilities to make every skill stand out more on it's own.

Subtle Magicka -
Mysticism: Natural sense of creatures in the vicinity / a natural telekinesis field around you for a few feet, say 20
Illusion: A homonculus of someone (you'd have to have some item of theirs, like making a voodoo doll) / A shadow self so they could try something dangerous without putting your actual self in danger
Restoration: Regenrative/Curative Auras

Gross Magicka -
Conjuration: A daedric servant/familiar / access to daedric "gifts" (powerful artifacts depending on which daedric prince but with large flaws to compensate)
Alteration: Constant water-walking/water-breathing on self
Destruction: An elemental sphere familiar, acts as an extra magical attack when you cast destruction spells or can amplify spells for a certain amount of times per day/adventure etc

Magic-crafting -
Enchant: Access to more armor parts, possibility of constant effect, less effective soulgems required or none at all
Alchemu: less items needed to brew potions, ingredient sense out in the field, can substitute more and more ingredients with better efficiency
Armorer: What Rainbay proposed, more effective temporary boosts depending on hammer quality, able to craft more items, some special items being permanently bound to yourself

Crime -
Stealth: Can hide in plain sight like a chameleon of sorts
Security: Can create skeleton keys, can substitute lockpicks and probes with other materials like a finger bone or shears etc

Have yet to cover Backstab for the Crime subtype and the rest. I'll get to them once I can come up with something. But for now, here's these to ponder

Wooo, awesome work Hexx. For the constant water-walking/water-breathing, they need to be able to be turned off. So you can choose to drown if you need to for some reason. That way the skill isn't a negative in some (very rare) circumstances.

One thing for backstab could be similar to in oblivon, have it pierce defence at a certain rank.

Pretty good ideas so far there, Hexx, although I don't think that your proposed Illusion perk really fits the Lore, and might be a bit too powerful besides. For the former, Illusion only manipulates perception and senses, not reality, so allowing an illusion to have an actual effect doesn't really fit. On the second point, I can't really give you a good reason for why it would be tremendously overpowered other than my gut says no.

Admin wrote:Pretty good ideas so far there, Hexx, although I don't think that your proposed Illusion perk really fits the Lore, and might be a bit too powerful besides. For the former, Illusion only manipulates perception and senses, not reality, so allowing an illusion to have an actual effect doesn't really fit. On the second point, I can't really give you a good reason for why it would be tremendously overpowered other than my gut says no.

I took the shadow self trying something dangerous to mean more along the lines of scouting for traps or ambushes and such. Send it 'round the corner, and if it is attacked by a fleet of enemies, you'll know what's waiting for you.

EDIT: Similar to reloading a save, now that I think about it.

Rainbay wrote:

Admin wrote:Pretty good ideas so far there, Hexx, although I don't think that your proposed Illusion perk really fits the Lore, and might be a bit too powerful besides. For the former, Illusion only manipulates perception and senses, not reality, so allowing an illusion to have an actual effect doesn't really fit. On the second point, I can't really give you a good reason for why it would be tremendously overpowered other than my gut says no.

I took the shadow self trying something dangerous to mean more along the lines of scouting for traps or ambushes and such. Send it 'round the corner, and if it is attacked by a fleet of enemies, you'll know what's waiting for you.

EDIT: Similar to reloading a save, now that I think about it.

That's it, it's official. I am no longer a "savescummer." I'm a Master Illusionist.

To balance out the power of the shadow self, we could make it a once per day power that expert or master illusionists get. That way they could only use it once per normal day of adventure.

Another solution could be to have it have both a magicka and fatigue cost. Casting it is instant success and takes some magicka, but instantly adds a point of fatigue to you, perhaps via normal fatigue roll or no save. You can use it, but you risk crippling yourself later every time.

MOAR perks!

Martial arts -
Hand-to-Hand: Can knock people out for a while, making them usable as decoys, bait etc

Brute weapons -
Axe: Same thing as Blunt, but adds a damage over time bleed effect? Needs fixing
Blunt: Activate ability to hit with uber blunt force trauma, ignoring any armor completely and stunning for some time. Think pudding in a box

Finesse weapons -
Short Blade: Able to put a knife to the target's throat and use them as a temporary human shield and generally taking someone hostage
Block: Anyone using Block most likely has medium armor at least, probably heavy so they have dodge penalties. I propose we add a direct damage spell-reflect chance perk to block

Speechcraft -
Etiquette: Able to challenge people to a friendly duel to settle a big fight. Imagine your party gets set upon by 20 bandits in a mountain pass and your bard-type character wins the duel, saving you from a big fat game over!
Streetwise: Higher chance of being given a gift/bribe on success / putting an STR roll modifier like Rainbay proposed
Mercantile: Can place special orders on weapons/equipment/items etc from decent-level merchants

Adventuring -
Athletics: Double your run speed or dodge without a fatigue penalty
Medicine: This is very difficult. I can't see any point for this skill when you have Restoration (magical), alchemy (anything needing ingredients) and Survival (basic survival).
Survival: Item-sense/Can scavenge more items, food, money etc from things and places/Can create improvised items from junk only he can loot (Say you kill a Guar. Most people take the meat for food. A survival guy can take some bones, an eye and some skin as extras and create a Daedric Claymore). It's essentially the McGuyver skill afterall.

Still need to do: Backstab, Archery, Crossbow, Thrown, Unarmored, Acrobatics, Polearms, Long Blades and the 3 armor types. For the armor types especially i'm coming up blank :/

Thanks to Slotha Sil and Rainbay, I has an idea for Unarmored!

A Soak/Deflect type passive ability. gives you a chance to absorb a blow completely or deflect it, thus either disarming them or opening them up for an attack of opportunity.

You could explain an unarmored guy absorbing a hit from a claymore by imagining the guy moving in such a way that he is hit by, say, the blunt edge of the sword instead of the part guaranteed to take his leg clean off. this perk would be active even after an attempted dodge so because Unarmored gets no Damage Reduction whatsoever, I think it deserves 2 rolls for defence for balance.

Some of those ideas seem like things that should only be handled through the GM.

For medical, how about a once per session ability to save someone from death (assuming you actually can take an action and aren't distracted)?

One for hand to hand is, since it is the weakest, make it have a chance to inflict a fatigue penalty on strike. So you hit someone, and it adds a fatigue tick to them so they roll lower. Perhaps make this only available a few fights per day, in order to balance it, or add a penalty for doing so somehow. Just an idea.

Hmm... both very good ideas, especially the hand-to-hand one. Makes more sense than mine since H-2-H ingame always damaged fatigue before damaging health, therefore tiring you out THEN beating the shit out of you.

The medical is a great idea, I just can't see the point of the skill in itself when you have 3 other life-related skills. Dagoth Durr's perk could be applied to Survival, say you got poisoned and a Survival guy can suck the venom out before it's too late, saving you from death.

Rainbay wrote:One for hand to hand is, since it is the weakest, make it have a chance to inflict a fatigue penalty on strike. So you hit someone, and it adds a fatigue tick to them so they roll lower. Perhaps make this only available a few fights per day, in order to balance it, or add a penalty for doing so somehow. Just an idea.

There's already the penalty that hand to hand is weaker than any weapon. The fatigue damage was the only thing that kept it playable in the games, as I recall. Some ideas for H2H:

Apprentice: Chance of Fatigue damage
Journeyman: Ability to choose not to do HP damage.
Master: Ability to throw an opponent in combat, and/or a chance to disarm.

Hexx wrote:Hmm... both very good ideas, especially the hand-to-hand one. Makes more sense than mine since H-2-H ingame always damaged fatigue before damaging health, therefore tiring you out THEN beating the shit out of you.

The medical is a great idea, I just can't see the point of the skill in itself when you have 3 other life-related skills. Dagoth Durr's perk could be applied to Survival, say you got poisoned and a Survival guy can suck the venom out before it's too late, saving you from death.

Could be a different perk, sucking out poison but that poisons you instead of them. This could allow a big burly warrior with hp out the wazoo to save the life of a feeble wizard who has ended up getting poisoned.
EDIT: Also, about hand to hand. The Expert one could add a chance to paralyze, perhaps. Similar to the master power attack in oblivion.

I think medical can be balanced by the fact that 1. It doesn't use magicka. and 2. Alchemy is going to take a lot of time and resources in this game so you aren't necessarily carrying the potions you need.