Re: CF: skill categories and sub-skills

[Kimmo Hoikka <Kimmo.Hoikka@Digia.com>]

> > i don't know that we need to have multiple disarms as i think disarming
> > traps is pure mechanical knowledge anyway. Meaning that if you understan
> > mechanics you understand most of the traps. Magical traps however might be a
> > different story. We may want a seperate catagory for them or not. They could
> > be explained differently and may even fall under Mental.
>
>  disarming magical traps is always sort of odd.  How does someone disarm that
> rune sitting on the floor?  Presumably it is not being triggered by some
> mechanical means, but rather by someone touching the rune.
>
It should be logical in the way that physical traps can be disarmed with
physical skill (disarm) and magical traps can be disarmed only using
magic. There are four actions concerning traps and all these must be in
connections with the level of the trap.
the actions are: arming a trap, noticing a trap, avoiding a trap and
disarming a trap. If a 10 level mag sets up a magical rune the rune
would then be level 10. It would require say level 10/3 = 3 level in
magic to sence the trap when coming near it. the avoiding of it would
then require 10/2 = 5 level in magic and the disarming of the rune would
require level 10 in magic. those are the safe levels (100%) and with
lower level it would require some luck or an artifact "of Warning". the
same logic would go for physical traps. the disarming of magical trap
would be an extra magic skill or a spell. perhaps better both, diarming
with skill would be more risky but would not require mana usage.


> > 2) Have the max %age for the skill be taught, with the usual teaching
> > costs for play balance, but have the "real" %age work the way you
> > suggest.  When the player hits his 75% skill limit that he's paid for,
> > there's no point in jumping up and down on the spot to train the skill.
>
>  Certainly something more than just money is needed for advancing in skills?
> While it is easy to justify that with enough money you could learn anything,
> that doesn't seem to make for a very heroic game.  I think it would also
> penalize some class (spell casters) more, as they tend to be spending lots of
> their money on spellbooks.
>
>  I remember some game (eamon maybe) in that your chance to improve your skill
> was taken as a percentage of your chance at failure.
>
>  So if your chance of success was 20%, and you succeeded, you had an 80% chance
> of that skill going to 21%.  however, that was a text based game - in crossfire,
> I think after the first adventure, you would see that fighter with a 90% skill
> in combat.
>
there are two ways to learn things. either by doing or beeing taught.
for the player the best and the most common way is by doing, killing
monsters, hunting foor food, searching for hidden doors, arming /
disarming traps, etc. the learning way should only be a way to learn new
things. for example a wizard is beeing taught a new spell by his
guildmaster. then he gets a basic level to use that spell, but only by
using the spell in real action gives him real knowledge and confidence
in using the spell. so there should be some maximum which is the highest
you can obtain by teaching and after that you have to use it for real to
become a master in that skill.

I have played nearly hundred different role games from real dice and pen
oriented to text based and 3d graphics based ones and the best way of
advancing in skill is similar to that described above. Each time you use
a skill you get a skill use point. then when you advance in levels your
skills are beeing modified. for each use point in a skill you get a
chance of improving that skill. the chance is (100% - current skill%) /
skill learn rate. skill learn rate defines the learning modifier for
that skill and has to be adjusted separately for each skill for play
balance. in practise the rate is something from 10-30. the characters
learning ability and other stats can improve that rate with a modifier.
for example you have 50% in swimming and you use it 10 times
succesfully. In skill modification you get 10 chances to be improved in
swimming. if skill learn rate would be for exmple 10 the first chance is
then 5%. if you then succeed your skill raises to 51% and then next
chance will be 4.9% and so on.so when you are at 90% in sime skill you
would statistically need 100 succesfull uses to get to 91%.
this way of advancing gives a quite easy way for a beginner to get into
play but it requires really long time to be a grand master in a skill.
the skill advancing can be either when you advance in level or for each
skill differently after n succesfull uses. there can also be a character
skill learning modifier which comes from the character class and
background and is different for each skill per class. a fighter would
have a +5% for fighting & physical skills and a -10% for magic skills
then his learning chance for physical skills would be (105% -
curr%)/skill lr and (90% - curr%)/skill lr for magic skills.

>  Also, how to deal with spells get a little more complicated.  I guess you could
> say that each spell adds a 5% penalty to successful skill usage (which means if
> you do use it, it is 5% more likely your skill will advance).  In this way, some
> skills would have 200% or even higher probabilities.  But then how do you scale
> damage for the spell?  I think that may be a bigger question on any skill system
> - combat skills and things like disarm traps are pretty simple to deal with, but
> how do we deal with the spell skills so that they make sense?  Currently, damage
> scales with level, but if we get rid of level in teh skill, what do they scale
> with?
>
the damage of the spell comes from the might of the caster. magic users
must have a way to obtain more power during the game play. it makes
sense that experience gives levels and power increases with levels. the
exp could be divided into skill categories and different categories
would then have different levels as it is for now. the skill% would then
describe the talent and the skill level would deside the damage you do.
it would make sence then since you could go to a guild and learn to be a
quite succesfull in some skill but without real usage of the skill you
would not make much damage with it.

>  Note you could do like might & magic and have a spell casting skill for each
> spell path or major school of magic to spread out the load so to speak.
> -
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>
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