Skill Perks!

Perhaps a master perk for long blades could be to two hand a 1 handed weapon and 1 hand a twohanded weapon. Each is weaker overall than a normal 1handed or 2handed long blade, but it will allow you to only have to carry one blade for both more powerful and less powerful hits. Maybe an expert perk intead of master.

So you have a longsword. It can hit for 40 damage or so normally. You could two hand it and inflict about 60 damage, while still having the long swords better bonus to hit than a normal twohanded weapon.

For a two-handed sword, you could one-hand it in the opposite fashion. A claymore that would normally do 80 damage might only do 60, along with it's lower to hit bonus, but you get the benefit of having a shield.

This might also make a good ADVANCED SKILL instead of a skill perk, but I like the idea.

What if we make Alchemy and Magic unable to handle long-term medical care? Yes, a healing potion will clot your blood and let you keep fighting, but a broken arm doesn't just magically fix because you chugged a poultice of saltrice and daedra heart (with a hint of peppermint!). You'd need medical to set bones, suture wounds, treat diseases, diagnose poisons, and things of that nature. Plus, alchemy and magic can be detected, drained, nullified, bottles get broken, etc. and potions especially are probably going to be somewhat expensive.

Granted, I'm still kind of stuck on perks, but maybe magical healing will leave behind fatigue levels or attribute drain that can only be restored by proper doctor care?

Rainbay wrote:Perhaps a master perk for long blades could be to two hand a 1 handed weapon and 1 hand a twohanded weapon. Each is weaker overall than a normal 1handed or 2handed long blade, but it will allow you to only have to carry one blade for both more powerful and less powerful hits. Maybe an expert perk intead of master.

So you have a longsword. It can hit for 40 damage or so normally. You could two hand it and inflict about 60 damage, while still having the long swords better bonus to hit than a normal twohanded weapon.

For a long sword, you could one hand it in the opposite fashion. A claymore that would normally do 80 damage might only do 60, along with it's lower to hit bonus, but you get the benefit of having a shield.

This might also make a good ADVANCED SKILL instead of a skill perk, but I like the idea.

Actually, Rainbay, I really like this as a perk for Long Blades, although you might separate it into two skill levels. Two-handing a one hand sword is somewhat easier, but one-handing a two hander is a helll of a trick. So any schlub Journeyman can hack two-handed with a longsword, but only a master can wave around a claymore like it's a rapier.

Saint Jiub wrote:

Rainbay wrote:Perhaps a master perk for long blades could be to two hand a 1 handed weapon and 1 hand a twohanded weapon. Each is weaker overall than a normal 1handed or 2handed long blade, but it will allow you to only have to carry one blade for both more powerful and less powerful hits. Maybe an expert perk intead of master.

So you have a longsword. It can hit for 40 damage or so normally. You could two hand it and inflict about 60 damage, while still having the long swords better bonus to hit than a normal twohanded weapon.

For a long sword, you could one hand it in the opposite fashion. A claymore that would normally do 80 damage might only do 60, along with it's lower to hit bonus, but you get the benefit of having a shield.

This might also make a good ADVANCED SKILL instead of a skill perk, but I like the idea.

Actually, Rainbay, I really like this as a perk for Long Blades, although you might separate it into two skill levels. Two-handing a one hand sword is somewhat easier, but one-handing a two hander is a helll of a trick. So any schlub Journeyman can hack two-handed with a longsword, but only a master can wave around a claymore like it's a rapier.

I wholeheartedly concur.

Dual-wielding two-handers is an awesome and fairly staple RPG skill, but i was thinking we should keep it unique. The dual-wielding 2-handers I'd have made doable with axes, long blades AND blunt weapons..

Having 3 weapon types with the same Master perk will be fairly useless ._.

Hexx wrote:Dual-wielding two-handers is an awesome and fairly staple RPG skill, but i was thinking we should keep it unique. The dual-wielding 2-handers I'd have made doable with axes, long blades AND blunt weapons..

Having 3 weapon types with the same Master perk will be fairly useless ._.

Could always make it an ADVANCED SKILL. Although then you'd have to think up up to 6, maybe 7 different new perks. Because remember, each skill (not counting ADVANCED SKILLS, they are thier own perks) has 4 different perks for the 4 different ranks above novice.

And we don't HAVE to let this tech go to other types of weapons. Could keep it as a long blade skill to change the way to hold the different sword types, and come up with different and unique perks for the other weapon skills. I don't really see Warhammers being hefted one handed much anyways, or maces two handed.

Possible Polearm perks:
Some kind of shield-style deflect bonus
Bonus attack with the butt
Bonus reach
Bonuses (or a reduction of penalties) against mounted targets (that's what spears are all about, after all)

Backstab perks might include bonuses, or reduced penalties, for using bigger weapons to sneack attack, and the Master perk might even let you land a backstab without sneaking at all (though this would need to be limited somehow)

Saint Jiub wrote:Possible Polearm perks:
Some kind of shield-style deflect bonus
Bonus attack with the butt
Bonus reach
Bonuses (or a reduction of penalties) against mounted targets (that's what spears are all about, after all)

Backstab perks might include bonuses, or reduced penalties, for using bigger weapons to sneack attack, and the Master perk might even let you land a backstab without sneaking at all (though this would need to be limited somehow)

I agree on these, but I wanted to make every perk some "unique ability" due to me always hating plain boring bonuses in every RPG ever..

Or perhaps the Master perk would be an abilty that defines the proper mastery, something nobody else can do, but the 3 other perks are simple bonuses? Would keep things fairly simple and would keep the "end-all perk" exclusively for the diligent.

Unique abilities are tough. Perhaps for now, we should just get some basic perks out, just so they can all have something. Better to have a complete list of perks with some being repeats, than to not have the complete list at all.

I'm thinking a possible suggestion for all magic casting skills, either as an expert, but more likely a master, is to simply make it so spells of that class cost half the normal magicka. This is extremely simple to understand and implement, but at the same time very very useful when you only get up to 100 magicka per day normally.

Another suggestion that could apply to all magic skills is to make it so that if you fail to cast a spell of that skill, you don't expend the magicka on the spell. So say you attempt to cast super-fireball. It costs 50 magicka. Normally if you fail to cast it, you still lose 50 magicka. With this perk, you still fail to cast it but you retain the magicka that would have been lost. If this is too good, we could instead go with retaining half the magicka used to cast the spell if you fail to cast it.

Or we could mix the two a little. Make it so that if you succeed in casting the spell, it only costs half magicka, but if you fail it still costs full, or vice versa.

These are just some suggestions that could easily be applied to just about all magic skills, quickly filling up the perk list so we can at least get something done. We can always go back and change things later if we come up with a better idea.

Also, one possible perk for survival could be that when you gather ingrediants for potions, you get twice as much. Leave nothing, waste nothing afterall. There might be some exceptions, such as daedra hearts, but for the most part this makes sense. Perhaps have this be the journeyman perk.

Another possible perk could be increased gains on rest. When you rest, you'd need only half as much time in order to gain back your magicka and fatigue and health and such. So say you have 100 magicka maximum and are currently out. It might take 10 hours of rest to completely restore that, but with this perk it would only take 5 or so. Extremely useful when in a hostile enviornment. I can see this as being good as an apprentice, journeyman or expert perk. This could also work by making it so you don't need to have a bed or bedroll or anything to rest, the ground is good enough.

Another perk could be the ability to reduce negative effects from potions and food and perhaps enchantments even. Let's say a potion heals 40 health, but inflicts 20 magicka damage. Well with this perk, that might only be 10 magicka damage, or disappear completely. Food that is spoiled could also be used without getting ill. This would work well as an expert perk, but depending on how it is implemented it could be another one.

Finally, a perk that is most certainly the master perk: Survive. Once per session, when your character dies, you get the chance to make a roll to see if you survive. My thoughts are this roll would be rolling under your either highest or lowest attribute. If you succeed in the roll, you manage to keep going and are returned to 10% or maybe 25% of your max health. No doubt about it, this is the master survival perk.

How do those four perks sound?

All sounds pretty good to me. Pretty strong bonuses, but characters with master skills should be pretty uber. We'll just have to make sure the combat and stealth oriented bonuses are as powerful as the magic ones.

Did we ever decide on how/if called shots would work? Because perhaps the master marksman perk could be an automatic success on one called shot per session?

I think called shots were included, but the only bonus is the chance to hit a less armored part of the body. Because of that, I don't think a single sure to hit called shot deserves to be a MASTER perk, but it could certainly serve as one. Perhaps make it be an expert perk and make the odds of getting a called shot double. Since called shots aren't really that powerful, this wouldn't be too overpowering. And since called shots are achieved by rolling another dice to see if that part succeeds before you see if the hit rate works.

A perk for thrown could be the ability to throw things besides weapons, at a penalty. The penalty and damage modifier could be equal to the encumberance rating of the item. Maybe make this a novice or journeyman perk.

A master perk for crossbow (or maybe expert) could be the ability to use the crossbow with a shield, similar to thrown weapons. I don't know what to think about this, but it might work if we can't come up with anything better.

Should be possible with the smaller crossbows. A lot of medieval crossbowmen actually had huge half-shield half-movable wall things called pavises.

A perk for Etiquette: One of the perks could be a lowering of the way factions dislike you based on your faction. Perhaps make it all improve by one. So if you are in the mage's guild, the telvanni have a -3 modifier to you. That would be reduced to -2. Or maybe -1 even.

Makes sense. Simulates you learning about other people's social customs.

Perhaps as a bonus to spear, at journeyman level you gain the ability to block with your spear. This would function as a bonus of 10% of your spear level and perhaps 10% of your blocking level increase to your to-hit defences. How does that sound?

Just a post to let everyone know I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I'm just trying to compile as good a list as possible since i'm thinking of 5 perks per skill >_<

Please bear with me here. Also, keep going with the ideas, these are all brilliant! Much kudos

Hexx wrote:Just a post to let everyone know I haven't dropped off the face of the earth. I'm just trying to compile as good a list as possible since i'm thinking of 5 perks per skill >_<

Please bear with me here. Also, keep going with the ideas, these are all brilliant! Much kudos

I thought there were only 4 perks per skills, at 25, 50, 75 and 100. Five would mean 20, 40, 60, 80 and 100. That would certainly lighten your load. However, if you do have 5 for each skill, that would be even more awesome! But I don't think anyone was asking for it.

How about we just try to get 4 out for each skill, and then if we have 5 for some, we can pick the ones we like most. And if we can manage to afterwards get more for the ones that only had 4, all the better and we can have 5 for all of them!

Good idea Rainbay. I just thought we are gonna have a perk for Novice too since we reach that at 25 skill. but maybe 25 skill is too shitty to deserve a perk.

Hexx wrote:Good idea Rainbay. I just thought we are gonna have a perk for Novice too since we reach that at 25 skill. but maybe 25 skill is too shitty to deserve a perk.

No no no, Novice is what you start out at! All skills start out at "novice" rating. They then grow to Apprentice at level 25, journeyman at level 50, expert at level 75 and master at level 100. At least, that's how I imagined it. How did you have it planned out?

Oh! never mind, I had a colossal brainfart. I had thought 0-24 is like...un-named. That would be pretty retarded *facepalm* I never actually questioned it >_>

I'm trying to keep things progressive. Such as at Apprentice in any weapon skill, you gain access to critical strikes. at Journeyman you gain a called shot bonus when using said weapon type. At Expert you could gain a weapon-skill specific PASSIVE perk such as for short-blade you gain a higher critical damage bonus (because they are the stealthiest weapon and can be jammed in weak spots easier) while the Master perk would be what I proposed: The ability to take someone hostage with a knife to their throat.

That would keep the skills fairly balanced and the unique perks would only show up after you have invested enough time/effort into your favourite skill while keeping other abilities not completely useless.

Taking someone hostage with a knife to their throat doesn't strike me as a terribly complicated thing to do.

Yeah I think any random bandit could do that.

Maybe give them the ability to ignore armor on a called shot at master level? Simulates finding gaps and such.

It was just an example really, but yeah good idea

I'll finish most of the skill's non-specific perks and try to finish specific Expert bonuses as well so we can discuss master perk abilities in more detail.

EDIT: I came up with these as fast as I could, just a little brainstorming:

Any weapon skill (Axe, Blunt, h-2-h, long blade, short blade, polearm, archery, crossbow, thrown):

25 - Apprentice: Access to critical strikes
50 - Journeyman: Called shot bonus

Any armor skill (Light, Medium, Heavy):

25 - Apprentice: Full speed allowed (If you're a stranger to a type of armor, you won't be able to move properly)
50 - Journeyman: Armor degrades at 50%

Any magic skill: (Mysticism, Illusion, Conjuration, Destruction, Restoration, Alteration):

25 - Apprentice: 50% magicka cost reduction (I think it would be balanced because even if you have halved magicka cost, a knight or thief will still only have a small chance to cast and a tiny magicka pool. Whereas a mage would have lots of magicka and so has more to work with)
50 - Journeyman: Critical strikes/heals/procs (I do this at 50 cause magic tends to be stronger than melee and more versatile/accessible)

Alchemy skill:

25 - Apprentice: Extra roll on potion making (to increase amount)
50 - Journeyman: 50% increased potency
75 - Expert: Halved Material cost
100 - Master: Triple strength on potions you make and drink yourself (300%)

I'm trying to think up something decent for Unarmored and Enchant but i'm coming up blank. I can't just add extra dodge rolls everywhere cause that make unarmored have something stupid like 4 rerolls per dodge.. Any ideas?

Also, off-topic, there hasn't been many posts lately. Are people alright or losing hope? Just a question

I was gone for a week, and then came back and found that the conversation had galloped ahead of me, so I'm just trying to catch up and see if I can contribute anything.