[CF-Devel] skill musings.

[Mark Wedel]

  It seems that breaking skills off the exp categories is a go - didn't see any 
dissents on that.

Skills from quests - I had mentioned in irc (but not in the mail) that perhaps 
skills learned there are automatic - it would be frustrating to do the quest 
only to not learn the skill.  The other idea was to perhaps change skill 
learning away from the skill scroll and instead an item (or npc script for that 
matter).  OTOH, I know there are some quests to get whatever spellbook, and no 
guarentee you'll learn the spell.  I just think it may be a bit 
frustrating/tiring to have to repeat a quest numerous times to learn the skill.

  Also, right now learning skills is based simply on int/literacy.  That in 
itself may not make a lot of sense.

  Having players learn skills via quests would mean high level characters would 
learn all the skills.  I don't have a really big problem with that - no matter 
what, most high level characters are going to look pretty similar because of the 
items they get.  The main point from my side is to make it so for the first X 
levels will be pretty unique for each class.

Re armor/weapons:  I know various RPG's says xyz can't use such weapons.  From a 
realism standpoint, that isn't that good.  Me, as a person living on 2002 earth, 
can pick up a longsword and put on chain mail.  I may not be able to do much in 
it, but nothing preventing me from picking those up.

  One thought could be to add some idea of different weapon proficiences (as 
skills).

  Thus, you may have 'axe', 'sword', 'dagger', 'mace/hammer' skills.  You can 
always use a weapon, but if you don't have the skill, you have a pretty terrible 
penalty - terrible enough that you probably don't want to do so.  OTOH, if you 
found a really good artifact weapon, may still be worthwhile to use it.

  I'd hate to limit mages to only using daggers and wearing robes - how many 
quests does that now make it pointless for them to go on (since the reward is 
weapon or armor)?

  The only problem with weapon proficiencies is that the 'sword' is probably the 
best one.  But it creates an interesting situation if that player finds a really 
great axe - do I start using it or not?  I wouldn't get too fined grained on 
weapon proficiencies - not too many more than above, but I'm sure I missed some.

  As for armor, could add proficiences with a similiar idea - if you don't have 
the proficiency, the speed penalty for wearing it is worse, as is perhaps the sp 
regen penalty and casting penalty (just not comfortable in wearing it).  Such 
armor proficiency penalties (light/medium/heavy) would actually advance in 
level, but could be used to prevent that mage from deciding to wear plate armor.

  Other random ideas:

For skills that let you identify items, we could key iin on the item_power 
(whenever it gets fully debugged).  If the item_power is higher than your skill 
level, you can't identify it.  This is better than the random approach right 
now.  Also, the exp you get would depend on your level relative to the 
item_power of the item.  Eg, if your skill level is 5, and item_power is 5, you 
get much more exp for that item compared to if its item_power was 1 (eg, more 
interesting item = more exp).

Should really add a way to award exp to specific skills (via some method on 
map).  In this way, quests could award exp to specific categories.  Thus, you 
could make a 'literacy' quest which gets you exp, but isn't just a matter of 
reading a whole bunch of books.

Hp/mana/grace:  mana and grace are already derived from your level in the 
appropriate skill category - I would think that should be the same.

  I think keeping overall level for hp (and other things like how much 
item_power you can wear) is fine.  Way back when, it was tried with hp being 
from physical exp.  End result is everyone then has to get a fair amount of 
physical exp in order to survive.  If anything, I think we want to try and 
encourage skill specialization, eg, you can focus on wizardry all you want, but 
you'll still have decent HP and being able to use decent (magical) equipment.

If skills have their own exp, I'm not sure I still want the idea of exp 
categories - that complicates the code.  OTOH, it could be interesting to have 
some idea where skills evolve.  Maybe at level 10 of wizardry, you can now sense 
magic in items, just because you are now so in tune with magical forces.  Maybe 
after going on some quest, you get some 'expert armor' skill, which lets you 
wear armor with less penalty, etc.