Re: Skill synergy bonuses

**Admin** Wed Mar 03, 2010 8:10 pm

That seems fine. I can't really see any immediate problems glancing over it.

Rainbay Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:06 pm

Saint Jiub wrote: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.

We have completely forgotten restoration magic. It just occured to me. I knew we seemed we were missing something, but I hadn't figured out what. Restoration spells are massively important.

Saint Jiub Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:09 pm

Rainbay wrote:
Saint Jiub wrote: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.

We have completely forgotten restoration magic. It just occured to me. I knew we seemed we were missing something, but I hadn't figured out what. Restoration spells are massively important.

Shit, you're right. Maybe drop Necromancy (or make it GM-approval only and don't give it any synergies), move Alteration to Gross Magicka, and put Resto in Subtle Magicka?

Rainbay Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:16 pm

I really like the idea of necromancy being a skill. Can add interesting depth to the game. The Party could play as a group of evil outcast necromancers. Or a member of a mostly good party could roleplay as a necromancer trying to hide his abilities the best he can. We can also make some spells beyond just reanimating the dead necromancy. Maybe absorb spells and turn undead spells could be necromancy as well?

I'll head to uesp wiki and try to find a solution to our issue of skills.

EDIT: Thaumaturgy was mentioned in the first thread; perhaps that could be a school of magic as well, as it was in daggerfall. What the wiki describes it as:

Thaumaturgy refers to the School of Thaumaturgy, one of the six avenues of magica study. A Thaumaturgical spell does not change the appearance or structure of a force or object, but can manipulate laws temporarily, as evident in such spells as Levitate and Detection

Sounds pretty good as another spell to help even things out, now just one more thing.

Outlander Wed Mar 03, 2010 9:21 pm

Turn Undead, and even the raising of the dead, have always been (to my understanding) simply an application of Conjuration. It's not a different skill, but a different philosophy governing that skill's use. In any case, we should probably be discussing this in the main skill list thread.

Rainbay Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:44 am

Well, we seem to have solved the problem with necromancy rather handily in another thread. Go team. Thaum too.

The current match ups make alot of sense, but we could also try to go with the way Morrowind breaks things up, ei, more along the lines of stats that each one uses. Just a thought, since this is very much so just in the thinking stage.

LessRudeScrib Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:45 am

Could you expand a little more on that? You mean set it up so that skills that are based off, say, agility give synergy bonuses to eachother?

Rainbay Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:52 am

Yes, exactly like that. In morrowind each skill was governed by one of the different stats. Thus athletics, hand to hand and unarmored were all governed by speed, much like how we have it. It might not be a good idea to synergize by this though, I was just throwing out ideas.

However we will need to get it laid out which skills are governed by which stats, so we can figure out how they factor in, and which skills will end up raising which stats.

Saint Jiub Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:54 am

I think if we wanna go that route, we might as well just have abilities give bonuses to skills. Use some sort of 10% system or something - for every 10 in an attribute, you get a corresponding 1% bonus to skills? I'm not familiar with Dark Heresy, but they use a similar system iirc.

Rainbay Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:58 am

Saint Jiub wrote:I think if we wanna go that route, we might as well just have abilities give bonuses to skills. Use some sort of 10% system or something - for every 10 in an attribute, you get a corresponding 1% bonus to skills? I'm not familiar with Dark Heresy, but they use a similar system iirc.

My biggest issue with this is that we have 30 skills and 7 attributes (luck don't count!). Thus some of them are going to end up divided unevenly. That's why I brought up how we are going split them up, since some are going to have more skills governing them than others.

LessRudeScrib Thu Mar 04, 2010 1:04 am

Possibly by converting some of the skills into "prestige" skills like we talked about with necromancy. i.e. skills that let you do sweet things, but take some sort of penalty or extra commitment - in this case it could be that you don't get the +1% for every 10 points in an attribute?

edit: had some wrong tenses there, sorry. It's almost time to go literally sleep on things.

Rainbay Thu Mar 04, 2010 1:08 am

Yes, but altering any of the skills would upset our bundles of synergized skills, we currently have thirty. To get 3 and 7 to go into the same number we'd need 21 or 42.

We could always change the groupings to make each group larger, but I've grown kind of fond of how they are now, nice and cozy.

LessRudeScrib Thu Mar 04, 2010 1:19 am

I think that'll become clearer as we figure out which skills get which attribute. It may be that we need to bring back luck and assign a skill or two to that.

Rainbay Thu Mar 04, 2010 1:27 am

Luck was never gone. I said "Luck don't count!" because it never, ever, ever get's assigned skills that it governs. Really, outside of perhaps gambling, what skill would be governed by luck? If it's governed mainly by luck, it's hardly a SKILL at all.

LessRudeScrib Thu Mar 04, 2010 1:30 am

Yeah, you're right about that. It may be that INT or STR or END gets an extra skill or two.

Dagoth Durr Thu Mar 04, 2010 8:10 am

Saint Jiub wrote:
Brute weapons
Axe/Spear/Blunt

Mostly good, but this here seems problematic to me. Spears don't operate at all like axes or maces. Axes are right out, and the only blunt weapon similar in use to a spear is a quarter staff.

Maybe make staves their own thing and keep blunt as maces and hammers?

Rainbay Thu Mar 04, 2010 9:26 am

Dagoth Durr wrote:
Saint Jiub wrote:
Brute weapons
Axe/Spear/Blunt
Mostly good, but this here seems problematic to me. Spears don't operate at all like axes or maces. Axes are right out, and the only blunt weapon similar in use to a spear is a quarter staff.

Maybe make staves their own thing and keep blunt as maces and hammers?

Staffs are more like blunt than they are like spears though. And that would disorder the list. It has to be even, so as not to give any skills an advantage or disadvantage. Staves are a rather small weapon area as well, and I don't really think they need their own group. Remember, spears include halbreds and polearms and the like. Those are handled more like axes and blunt weapons than just normal spears, so it works out better.

EDIT: I just realised that medical was left out of the list. I rather liked this skill, perhaps if we include it and necromancy, we could group by groups of 4, not 3? Just a thought.

Outlander Thu Mar 04, 2010 11:14 am

Replace Spear with Pole-arm. Staffs are now Pole-arms. Problem solved.

Saint Jiub Thu Mar 04, 2010 11:47 am

I was thinking about Medical as well...
perhaps we should include a "survival" skills group of some sort? The skills that a self-sufficient adventurer would do well to have. Medical, something about finding food in the wild (foraging) which, if we want to make it less cliche ranger stuff, can also apply to scrounging from trash cans, getting handouts in the city, and similar, and maybe tracking? Again, tracking doesn't have to just be finding a guar in the swamp, it can include finding that slippery Bosmer cat burglar who's been plaguing Sentinel city.

Tentatively, something like this:

Survival (til we can come up with a better name:
Medical
Scrounging
Tracking

[edit]
Oh, and I like changing "spear" to "pole arm" and adding staffs into that group. A lot of spear-fighting involves using the butt end of the spear as well as the point, so in that it's somewhat similar to quarterstaves.

Rainbay Thu Mar 04, 2010 11:54 am

Outlander wrote:Replace Spear with Pole-arm. Staffs are now Pole-arms. Problem solved.

I rather like this idea as well. Also adds some more range to the skill with different yet similar styles. Wow, good idea sir! And all it took was changing one word. Now I can imagine a battlemage weilding a spear instead of a staff. Especially nice, since spear/pole-arm is an endurance based skill, not strength. Mages need all the endurance they can get for hp!

Saint Jiub Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:14 pm

You are now imagining a badass mage with a spear instead of a staff and wondering why wizards ever got stuck with staves in the first place.

Manually.

Rainbay Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:17 pm

Saint Jiub wrote:You are now imagining a badass mage with a spear instead of a staff and wondering why wizards ever got stuck with staves in the first place.

Manually.

Staves have the best enchant values of any weapon. Wondering done.

LessRudeScrib Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:26 pm

Rainbay wrote:
Outlander wrote:Replace Spear with Pole-arm. Staffs are now Pole-arms. Problem solved.

I rather like this idea as well. Also adds some more range to the skill with different yet similar styles. Wow, good idea sir! And all it took was changing one word. Now I can imagine a battlemage weilding a spear instead of a staff. Especially nice, since spear/pole-arm is an endurance based skill, not strength. Mages need all the endurance they can get for hp!

This actually brings up something I'd been meaning to ask about. Are we having it so that tarting stats are set (i.e. every Khajit male has X STR Y END Z Int, etc), and if so, how are we managing the problems of characters who start weak and stay weak?

Saint Jiub Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:26 pm

Rainbay wrote:
Saint Jiub wrote:You are now imagining a badass mage with a spear instead of a staff and wondering why wizards ever got stuck with staves in the first place.

Manually.

Staves have the best enchant values of any weapon. Wondering done.

Psh; that's a copout. Enchant staff, stick sharp metal bit on end. BOOM! Magic spear.

Saint Jiub Thu Mar 04, 2010 12:28 pm

LessRudeScrib wrote:This actually brings up something I'd been meaning to ask about. Are we having it so that tarting stats are set (i.e. every Khajit male has X STR Y END Z Int, etc), and if so, how are we managing the problems of characters who start weak and stay weak?

Favored attributes and Birthsigns can remedy this, to a point. We're looking at (with reasonable, balanced birthsigns, not like The Lady in Morrowind giving +20 to 2 stats or whatever atrocious thing it was) +10-15 Endurance. Or you can just rely on meatshields like the squishies of days long gone...

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