[Forge-main] Re: Skills List [LONG] (Ricardo Gladwell)

[Enrique Perez]

Hi, Ricardo wrote:

> Still not happy with that: having 5 ranks in three skills gives you 5
> ranks in every other skill within a skill group. Perhaps the ratio
> should be 1:5 instead. Can anyone else work out a better system for
> this?

There's a problem with a seperate generic skill that you could actually have a 
higher generic
skill than a specific skill. For example, say you have bow skill 5, dart skill 
5, thrown dagger
skill 3, thrown axe skill 1, your generic distance weapon skill would be ( 5 + 
5 + 4 + 1 ) / 5 =
3, which means you'd actually be better off throwing an axe with your generic 
skill ( 3 ) rather
than your specific thrown axe skill ( 1 ). Therefore I suggest that skill 
groups not be used.
Instead we can simply rely on the fact that someone who is good with thrown 
weapons would probably
also have a high base attribute, probably agility in this case, and because of 
that would be good
with any thrown weapon anyways even without explicitly using a skill group.

Should you want skill groups anyways, you would have to seperate the skill 
totals into a skill
group and a specific skill in order to avoid the problem of the generic skill 
being higher than
the specific skill. So if someone wanted a high bow skill of 6 for example, 
they would have to get
distance weapon 3 and bow skill 3 for a bow total skill of 6. Should they want 
to put a point into
thrown axe skill they would have a thrown axe total skill of 4, higher than 
their generic distance
weapon skill of 3.

In my opinion skill groups, while more realistic than individual skills, aren't 
worth it because
they add complexity to the game and there are already implicit skill groups 
because total skills
are added to abilities anyways. However, should skill groups be used they have 
to be additive in
nature so that someone who trains a specific skill always has a higher specific 
skill than their
generic skill.

Enrique


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