New Implementation

[Hawk]

Heads up everyone! I have been working non-stop, as has Kaj, and we have managed to finish Skills! Skills are now fully implemented, so I suggest everyone read the skill thread and choose your skills unless you want a severely nerfed character. Class abilities have also been updated to reflect changes. Make changes ASAP! Changes to skills will be made as time goes on and balance issues are discovered. If you think you seem something unbalanced, point it out. That is all.

[Ancient]

*Pointing something out*

Actually I was wondering what benefits one gets from taking these different skills, at the moment it seems that taking them essentially means that you have more expert knowledge in that field but it dosn't really specify what in-game bonus's you get with alot of the skills, examples if anything are a good idea. I'd be glad to type something up if someone would inform me.

Also; If I may suggest that skills have a cap limit equil to 1+1/2 your character level rounded down or up instead of double it... As so people don't have completely undominable unarmed skills by the time they're level 3... Is essentially what I'm getting at with this point.

Anyways, yeah let me know if you guys want a hand with anything, I may live a ways away but the internet does marvelous things.

*Saunters off*

PS: My reasoning for suggesting the varied level cap is also so people are more aptly encouraged to level up a wider variety of skills at once. AND so the cap of ten makes more sense as something you can't really run into until you're a higher level.

[Hawk]

What do you mean? Like, for knowledge skills, the in game bonuses are kind of straight-forward... you know stuff other people don't know. Just like how in DnD you know stuff other people don't know when you have ranks in a knowledge skill.

As for the general skills, it's the same deal. Class skills don't have /any/ problem specifying bonuses, and I thought the general skills were pretty straight-forward too. Sometimes we can't reflect every given bonus with a flat out number - as a lot of the site is interaction with other players, in the same fashion that bluff checks aren't always 100% direct against other players in DnD, it's the same kind of deal here. If there's something more specific you meant though, please clarify. I'll take a look at all the general skills, as Kaj designed them, and I haven't touched them, design wise.

The reason skill rank cap is at x2 level right now, is because originally it was at your level times 1 (and your suggesting something even lower), and since a lot of second tier have requirements of five ranks in a skill, it'd take till level six to get a second-tier skill - we originally designed max level to be somewhere around 20, or 30, which is why all the class abilities were capped at around there. If we did what you're suggesting, that'd make max level around 60, and that's not what we're going for.

Even looking at things the way they are, I don't think anything works out so someone is unbalanced at an early level. I myself am going for Rapid shot, and that's still going to take me a while to get - and that's if I /only/ put points into that skill tree.

If it ends up being unbalanced, we'll make it 1.5 times your character level.

[Ancient]

Well, to be more specific I mean a chart or something to do comparisons to to measure what ones skills actually look like... And I was thinking about another thing, but I'll get to that in a second.

Anyways, like, in DnD you get a typical set of DC's that would show you what is the basic things you'd know, (Easy things to know, kinda typical, completely obscure, known only by a few, etc.) and while I know this isn't DnD I still think some sort of examples should be laid forth on what kind of knowledge someone would have about say biotech when they have 7 ranks into it... Seeing as 10 seems to be the max would that be also that you'd have completely unsurpasable knowledge on the subject to an extent that if you were thrown in with a bunch of typical developers of bio-technological research you could just take over the project, fire them all and be able to compromise for the loss of their imput with ease?

In addition, when did this happen regarding the level thing? 20 or 30? There are people in this world that are described as being around level 80, how are typical players supposed to compare to these guys? Further more, where is the explaination regarding those people being able to acheive things completely beyond what everyone else is capable of? I was under the impression that people's skills stopped comming in at around level 20 or 30 because you had essentially mastered the class, and beyond that it was about developing your own techniques, or in the words of 3rd edition DnD, where things went to epic proportions...

Most importantly; Why was I completely left in the dark regarding these discussions?

[Hawk]

Just like in DnD (even though we are trying to distance ourselves from that general idea and subset of rules), the most powerful fighters a normal person will encounter are usually around level 5-10. Someone who has spent their entire life studying biotech, yes, knows everything there is to forseeably know about it with ten ranks. Relative knowledge on skill ranks is to be based on common sense, which everyone on this site is assumed to have. Also, just as with aiding in skills, a group of bio-tech engineers helping will continue to buffer progress.

The level thing happened since we did class abilities, there is no epic stuff right now, thusly, skills are not designed for epic leveling. Since leveling isn't supposed to be blindingly fast on this site (*cough*), we aren't worrying about that right now, and the skills reflect that. Excuse us for having slower XP growh and a lower levelling cap.

When Epic happens, we will design epic skills. Stat bonuses still occur, and we will likely just add appends to available levels to make things easier to do, increase bonuses, etc, rather than rebuild skills and abilities from the ground up. There's no reason anything in existence can't be extrapolated based on that principle.

We mentioned several times that we were doing skills. Regardless of whether you helped, they likely would have ended up the same way. As for the level 'cap', that's been around forever. As for the level eighty thing - that was an original idea for 'legendary' NPCs, which, at level 80 were, of course, legendary. Thus, really high levels.

[Ancient]

Yes, getting a more original feel is a good thing, though I hardly think that the examples that have been placed forth in the various handbooks of DnD would really make us have a similar feel. It's moreso just something for those of us who looked at the skills, scratched their heads and thought "Shouldn't there be something to give us an idea of what our skill level is actually at durring which ranks?". It's easy to see, rank one is specialized skill and rank ten is best of the best, but some information on what the mediums are with some of the skills that don't really explain would be helpful. Nothing complicated, as an example at the top of the Knowledge section you could put up some general examples of what each other rank represents or something.

As for the level cap, I beleive I understand based on the whole post that you just made, since Kaj never really explained it to me in full detail. Just that legendary NPC's existed, and therefore meaning that players could also with time become legendary. Essentially the 'cap' represents that players don't gain anything beyond the levels at this time because we don't have epic... Or at least that's what I've determined... It dosn't make alot of sense for a character to stop being able to learn because he hits an invisible wall in his development of his class does it?

Hmm, anyways, back to alternating between work and play... Perhaps I'll have something presentable to put forth before I go back to work.

Oh yes, and regarding levels, though I don't beleive it would be fair of me to do anything to Reveris and Xander I would personally drain off a couple levels from ancient if it really was deemed unfair... Though when I spoke to Kaj he said that the initial experience I awarded (The bulk of the experience awarded period) was fair and just, and after an additional 8 or so pages of roleplaying after that point with at least two highly lethal encounters therein I only awarded 125, as to try to balance off the somewhat high amount of exp that I had dolled out in the first place.

[Hawk]

Just as a note on the 'cap' - that's just a catchall I'm using for steadfast abilities. I think it works that way in .hack too - that once a player hits a certain level, they don't gain any new abilities or skills, but just gain more power and stats and stuff. does that make sense? I think that's the way it's supposed to work. Thirty levels is still a lot, after all.

Legendary NPCs have yet to be implemented, though they would be cool.

I see what you mean about the skill ranks thing. If you wouldn't mind, since you're a strong advocate and also because you said earlier you felt bothered in not being consulted, could you maybe do a writeup on skill estimates? If not, I'll take care of it, but just thought I would ask first.

[Ancient]

Give me a rough idea on what they are and I'll come up with some more detailed charts and throw them into the suggestions board... Since I'm no good with table codes and whatnot...

And Legendary NPC's have technically been implimented, I still have all mines information right at my desk side... Stored somewhere within... That mountain... Of information... But none-the-less posting up their stats would kinda foil their mystique would it not? Even though the two that currently exist don't have alot of mystique to them. >. >""

[Kaj]

I drew a dragon once. It's implemented, thusly, because it's on paper near my computer.

They're beta until their stats are up, really, and I figure that it would be kind ghey of us anyways. Like, you can pull out the Geshiness all you like and varying degrees of kassonian deviltry, but I'm not gonna cross over charries. I figure that would be kinda lame.

[Ancient]

You know, I'd appreciate not being spoken to in that way Kaj, seeing as you were the one who innitially jumped at said idea to begin with, and beyond that I thought it wouldn't be that slick to play said characters anyways. And if I remember correctly it took you several days to convince me to finally like it... And weeks more to draw up the stats...