Skills and How They Will Effect You

[Saix 0]

Hey there forum, your friendly neighborhood Saix here! Now, some of you who have been around a bit know that before I became a member of the GM team, I was one of the 'frontliners' in the battle to get skills, so to speak. I proposed a semi-complicated system on the matter, which garnered a lot of attention. What most of you don't know is that I was added to the GM team specifically to finalize this idea and push it into the game.

So why has it not been done yet?

That's a great question Forum. The system I wrote is now largely finished, and provides several customization options for players looking to expand their character's ability to play the game. Part of this system has already been released, some of you have seen that you can now rank up skills using Skill points earned through completing topics. However, there is one small snag that I have been delaying it's full release to circumvent.

The Sword Skills

Simply put, we have no set policy on how the sword skills are handled, but different players have taken a different approach to how they work. Such as adding extra damage, or lowering combat dice. When I created the combat system, I did not account for sword skills increasing the damage a player can deal. Suddenly all the play testing and number crunching that went into balancing the Skill System was blown out of the water because more powerful sword skills would completely tear through the values we had created for armor.

We were left with a skill system that would not fully work.

When creating the skill system and using weapon and armor skills to increase attack capabilities and add a semblance of defense into the game, we were very careful to make sure things stayed balanced. That maxing out attack and defense stayed on a relatively even playing field. However, further raising attack via sword skills tips that balance in the favor of damage, nullifying the defensive concept we had created. We had already accounted for different equipment abilities (The Skill system will also add new mechanics to equipment by allowing for + Skill enhancements), and how they would effect the system, but had not foreseen this Sword Skill development.

Now, I could easily deal with this issue by saying Sword Skills do nothing, but I don't want to do something like that without some feedback.

So, forum, tell me how you think we should implement Sword Skills and what they should do. Give me some ideas that I can use to try to finish up the Sword Skills, so that we can get some fun new things like Battle Healing and Armor rating to play with.

[Seldentar 0]

Instead of Sword Skills dealing more damage, I like the idea of them making it easier to hit. In Sword Art Online, it is said that when you go through the right motion, it almost guarantees you will successfully hit. I don't think that anyone should be able to say they landed an 8 hit combo and one shot something with full HP that is at their appropriate level. You also need to take into account that after performing a sword skill, there is a short delay that occurs leaving you vulnerable. So if you use a low level sword skill that gives you a +1 Battle Dice increase, until your next turn your enemies should have a +1 battle dice against you.. If you get +2, then you give them a +2 Afterwards, etc and so on.

Just my .02

[9Lives 0]

I agree. form a players perspective, I think of the term skills as a measure of how good you are at something. so what exactly do that mean? my experience as a DM, GM, ST and the likes would reference multiple table topics and say that skill is the easy at which you accomplish what your trying to do. in this case it would be an increase in your odds of success, because even the most mundane tasks have the tendency to get tripped up occasionally. call it dharma.

In d&d you can attempt anything without skill. investing in a skill increases your chance to succeed by adding to your roll. i don't see any reason this could not be the same for this board. If dice roll effects were taken away form equipment and dependent on skills then the two aspects of character building will work together to build a whole character.

Combat skills could be used as such:

Leather Armor : +1 to battle die to attempt to dodge incoming attack (take no damage, Attack action)

Light Metal: +1 to battle die to attempt to Parry attack (take half damage, inflict half damage back as attack action)

Heavy Metal: +1 to battle die to attempt to soak incoming damage (take no damage, attack action)

Weapon skill: +1 to battle die to hit on attack (Attack action)

Battle Healing: +1 to battle die to attempt healing (Attack action)

Hate skills: +1 to battle die to attempt to draw creature aggro (Free Action*)

Hide: +1 to battle die to attempt to not be detected (Free Action*)

taking dice roll effects out of items also helps moderate the often excessive and controversial items that are in the game. items would still have plenty of ability choices.

Weapons:

+ Damage 1,2,3

Bleeding 1,2,3

life steal 1,2

+elemental 1,2,3 (which is just a different damage)

Armor:

damage reduction 1,2,3

+ armor skill activation 1,2,3 **

+ max health

Trinket/accessory:

+ non combat skills

+ crafting

+ max health

these are just some ideas of what they could do. if the armor abilities dodge, soak, and +parry were all attack actions then it would be balanced because they get the bonus of negating damage but loose attacking back. it would be use of good tactics to evade/soak attacks when possible and wait for their opponent to miss before attacking back. adds more than one way to fight to the game instead of just swinging each turn and leaving the dice to determine who wins. it lets the players customize their game play.

* free action skills can be done without stopping the player form using a skill. in the case of Hate skills, it will be important for the person directing aggro to be able to soak, or evade or whatever they need to do while holding aggro. with Hide, the player can still take an action but doing so would take them out of being hidden.

** adding to armor skill activation may seem overpowered since it effects the dice rolls indirectly but it only effects dice rolls on actions that take the place of attacking so in fact it doesn't make it any more powerful than other options, just adds a different style of play.

if anyone likes this idea i could elaborate more on how to use it will all the in game skills.

[Seldentar 0]

I don't think adding to item skill activation is overpowered, since our current items that increase our battle dice can do that as well. In this situation however, we would have to re evaluate a large number of items and submit them for reapproval.

[9Lives 0]

well the suggestion would take away items influencing dice rolls. it would mean only skills influenced the dice. the reason for this being that we dont want numbers to get to large.

my background for game mechanics always goes back to table top. in any table top game, skills effect dice roll success, where as damage and protection is handled by equipment (and magic which we don't have)

im not saying we have to do it that way, but its just the only way i personally can think to do a balanced system. but that's why were putting it out in an open forum for players to weigh in some ideas.