[V6 Draft] Chapter 2: Skills

[ShadInquis]

Wording suggestion:

With Invent, the description talks about "forging". There is no such action in the KT. While we can guess to what it refers to the "produce" action, some clarification would be helpful.

[Darksider]

This may be because I am still rather new but I can't seen to tell if you can start with a 'Expertised skill'. The only thing in relation to this being:

If a skill is Expertised, it demonstrates that your character has trained even further in that particular area, and can be considered an expert in it.

And this neither tells me if you can start with a 'Expertised skill' or how much 'Skill Points' it would cost in relation to the default SP requirement.

As I am new however I can't tell if this information is elsewhere/is somewhere here but I'm blind/forgotten.

[Mat]

Hi Darksider! Traditionally (in past versions) you get 12 SP to purchase skills. You can spend the base cost of a skill +1 to learn the expertised version on signup. So, for example, if you wanted Leader(e) at signup it would cost you 4 SP (3+1). You can only do this for one skill, though.

During the game you character will be able to learn more expertised skills by using the Study personal turn action, but initially you can have only one. From what I gather v6 will have a signup similar to v5. You can check out those rules here:

viewtopic.php?f=267&t=10365

[Darksider]

Thank you Mat.

[Mat]

Happy to help. Hope to see you still around when v6 starts.

[Dong He of Jian Ye]

I know that in the past "negative" skills or some sort of weakness in order to get an extra skill point were dismissed because of min/maxing. A duelist taking a point that makes him develop agriculture worse is essentially a free point. However, what if there was some sort of stat requirement on these? For instance, in order to take a skill that makes you start with 10 less HP in duels you would have to have a WAR of 90+? That way a developer can't take it for a free point but it still allows extra customization.

[Xeniphon]

While there is no chance of that for V6, we just need to pound out the rest and start rather than trying to revise and redo what is already finished, it is possible to make the concept of taking a disadvantage work. Now please take note that I say "possible" and say nothing of it being "advantagous." Not only would an idea like this need to address potential abuses and balance with the rest of the system but implimenting it would require that a reasonable argument be made not only for the change being benificial but also that it somehow improve a part of the game. With a game as complex as ours (a LOT of baloancing goes into it behind the scenes) even a small change sends ripples through the whole system, and that is before you even start contemplating all the creative ways players can make it dance in strange ways you never considered....

So yes it is possible to make dissadvantages work and yes there are ways around many of the common abuses that have been pointed out for it, but how does it improve the game? I don't just mean "its cool" or "its more realistic" but how having something like that in place would make this game better for everyone. Only once you have an idea of that will ways around min/maxing and so forth start to carry soem weight.

I'm not saying this to discourage but rather so that players can consider their suggestions in broader game terms, and so they take the time to contemplate how their suggestion would affect the rest of the game's balance. Considering these things will let players make better/more feasible suggestions where the consiquences staff must consider have already in large part been addressed. This in turn will lead to those suggestions being more likely to be adopted, or at least carefully examined.

With the suggestion of disadvantages the major (obvious) affected areas are signup, skill study/tutoring, KTs, PTs, Battle, and Duels. However you also need to consider things such as how having additional SP available would allow a p0layer to include more skills that synergize, how being able to study/tutor such skills would affect the balance of studying other skills, how a specialized character might be able to use it to stretch the formule even further (super spcialized characters really give staff headaches because we have to balance them againse less specialized characters while keeping both effective, the more bonuses you pile on the harder it is to balance the formule).

My own personal suggestion, as a player rather than as a staffer, is to look at existing mechanics to see if any of them could be adapted to your suggested purpose. Why? If a mechanic is already tested and part of the system, only needing a little alteration/adaption, then it becomes very easy to make comparisons to mechanics that the staff have experiance balancing (making the work of rebalancing the mechanic for the new concept significantly less daunting). This is not the only, or even best, way to address suggestions but it is the way I myself first use (and have found successful). Remember though: the first key to having a suggestion accepted is to show how the game itself (not just that you yourself would like it) would be improved by it's inclusion. Staff love new ideas, we just have to sort the "this would be cool" ideas from the ones that would be cool but would also benifit the game as a whole, considering that first helps us to spot those diamonds in the rough!

[Dong He of Jian Ye]

Thanks for the feedback Xeniphon. I figured it was too late for this version, but hey! I'll try to think on it some more to see what I can get.

[Xeniphon]

Its never too early to start planning for future versions, at least as far as I am concerned. I can't speak for anyone else but I like to set up the foundations of what might eventually come ahead of time so that transition is smoother and easier to impliment. I generally find that letting an idea rattle around for a bit after getting some feedback on it tends to help impro9ve it quite a bit, but perhaps I'm just strange like that....

[Kakirot83]

Just cuz I feel like being nit picky, but does Breeder still use Lead? I would never know since the other crafting skills say which stat they use, but Breeder does not. (Artisan uses Cha, Craftsman uses War, Scribe uses Pol.)

[One Sun Mirror]

Does the Navy skill allow an officer to produce ships? Given the production of armaments in Chapter 7 (KTs), it appears to be the case.

Arrowship
Cost: 1200 x (1-(INT/400) - Building Bonus - Skill Bonus) gold
Capacity: 1
Requires: Invent or Navy (10% bonus with both), Smithy

Skirmisher
Cost: 1500 x (1-(INT/400) - Building Bonus - Skill Bonus) gold
Capacity: 1
Requires: Invent or Navy (10% bonus with both), Smithy

Warship
Cost: 2000 x (1-(INT/400) - Building Bonus - Skill Bonus) gold
Capacity: 1
Requires: Invent or Navy (10% bonus with both), Smithy

Transport
Cost: 1000 x (1-(INT/400) - Building Bonus - Skill Bonus) gold
Capacity: 1
Requires: Invent or Navy (10% bonus with both), Smithy

However, this is not reflected in the entry for the Navy skill as it appears in this Skills section of the rules, the entry only referring to the avoidance of a combat malus on water and the opportunity to use the Ram command.

Navy (1sp)
May use the Ram command in battle. More effective fighting on water (Commanders without Navy take -20 to Melee/Defense/Ranged stats).
(e) -- +5 additional attack and defense while on water.

Is it intentional that the Navy skill allows for the building of ships? If so, it should perhaps be recorded in its Skill entry. If not, the ship production section of chapter 7 needs to better reflect the true nature of Navy's bonus to shipbuilding.

I ask because, as has been discussed earlier in this very thread, Navy is already a very powerful skill to be picked up for 1sp just when the bonuses in the text on the skill are brought into account. With the addition of being able to build these ships on top of that, it seems to be entering 2sp territory, given the nature of many other 1sp and 2sp skills. I understand that the Navy skill and the use of these ships would go hand-in-hand, and that battles will likely still be predominantly fought on land, but archery skills don't allow for the production of arbalests, the Military Engineer and Siegecraft skills for example don't allow for the building of siege weapons. Why then allow for officers with Navy to build their own ships at a cost of 1sp? If you think naval warfare will be more common than previously and therefore ships need to be able to be more readily produced, that's fine. The Navy skill is therefore a more useful skill in general and therefore giving it the ability to produce the very thing that even further cements naval dominance than simply removing combat maluses in my mind ranks it as far and away the best valued 1sp skill on the list.

I am happy for anyone to weigh in and explain how this balances (I guess it's hard to say for sure until the new system undergoes a full play scenario). I must say though that by and large the rules to the game seem to be pretty finely balanced and commend any and all involved in their creation. I only bring this up in the hopes of improvement (either to the game itself or my own understanding of it). Whatever comes of it, I won't be too unhappy either way.

[ShadInquis]

I would say that:
1. Only invent be the skill to make catapults, siege towers and ships, but all of them should be expensive
2. Having Navy should drop the cost of ships
3. Having siegecraft/military engineer should drop the cost of siege equipment

So Invent becomes the main skill, but specialised producers of equipment will be much better.