Changelog – 2012-04-28
Started to create a preliminary class-system. With this system all the 8 specialities are based on one of the four classes. Class stands for the level of education and how high in society one is raised, or at least which skills that are considered valuable. When picking a speciality, before starting to play, the player have learnt those skills due to that the speciality shares that class perception of good skills. So when having a speciality you don’t need to be part of that class socially.
The classes are; Academic, Adventurer, Noble and Peasant. One could also see them as; Wise, Practical, Social and Simple. This only in mindset and what one considers is important to learn, well enough to have learnt it on a intuitive level (Favoured Skills are skills one have a natural nack for).
The skills divided into these four will be four each. When choosing a speciality an additional four will be added to the pool of choice for Favoured Skills. Also note that all specialities Speciality Skills can be taken as a favoured instead of a speciality skill. Speciality skills are skills that one have an unnatural or very high understanding and proficiency in. For most specialities, this includes ceremonies, rituals, materials, operations or whatever. And all doesn’t go through all procedures or take all measures to gain all the abilities and power in the specialities.
The skills are yet to be set.
Tekkan and Druid is up for a change. Tekkan due to a removal of Combat Arts and Druid due to the removal of Animal Healing. My preliminary thoughts are this;
Druid’s speciality skills will be Aim and Animal Training. This will make them Semi-archers with pets. With Animal training they will get similarly boosted abilities to use pets but mostly animals of all kinds. With Aim they will get some exclusive bow-techniques.
Tekkan’s new speciality skills will be one Weapon Skill and Meditate. Meditate will still be focused on unarmed while the return of the Weapon Skill will be some very mystical techniques with that kind of weapon. The abilities will be designed to be possible with any weapon but only possible to use with this weapon. I have more thoughts but they are in the development stage and I haven’t approved them yet to myself and therefore you will have to wait for more.
The old ability Fake Death will return, but not. It will be one or two abilities which actually is that when you hit 0 in either CC or SC or fall unconscious or becomes poisoned, you will restore a number of CC or SC or stay concious or resist the poison. Still haven’t decided how many different abilities I will create based on this.
New is also that Skills now also will have a WIT-requirement. This will mostly affect WIT-based skills but also skills such as Meditate, Multitrance and other skills that actually requires a level of maturity and wisdom to master. And as before, all proficiencies (knowledges etc.) have a WIT-requirement.
New is also the Imitative Factor. It’s a factor which outside of battle determines how much bonus you get on your REF-roll in some situations. Inside of battle it only determines on the first round how much you should multiply your results on the imitative with.
Other than that I will continue working on making a better list of quirks and deficiencies which can be applied better.
Well the change with introducing class system i dont really have much to say about except I think it might be good, and create a possibility to play something more “simple” but still have favored skills.
The removal of combat arts MIGHT be a good move and it looks like a good move so far, but I have some concerns regarding how you will gain SC recovery, what I mean is, how will you increase SC rec, with raising the proficieny level or when you gain BEL?
I dont think it would matter much for most types of characters since you can manage pretty well without the extra SC rec. you got from Combat arts, but for characters like my next that use alot of acrobatics and fight with finesse and techniques I see a huge problem unless you can gain the SC rec. without a higher BEL since BEL wont be someting you raise that quick. Or you could just put the extra SC rec. on athletics instead, at least I think it would make some sense.
For the druid, I dont know, it feels more like the typical mmo hunter approach, good with bows and a pet. But who knows it might be good I dont really have much against it, it just felt abit too sterotypical.
As for the tekkan I like that, it gives tekkan a bit more weapon master feeling, and it gives the tekkan two clear approaches, either you are more of an unarmed expert or you have a “favored” weapon. Well I like it.
Fake death! yay.. well no really, I dont know I think generally abilities have way to high negatives, so I shudder to think what could be on fake death, but sure, its sounds like a cool ability and I might even play with it on some character, sometime. And it sounds more like two different abilities, one when you get knocked down or if you are in a critical shape, while the other sounded more like when you get poisoned it kicks in.
This new thing with skills got me a bit confused and I dont really know if I like that approach, so now if you make these changes you would need a WIT req + the usual requirements to increase some skills? I can see how you reason behind it but I think it makes WIT even more important, but it all depends what kind of skills we are talking about here.
The IMITATIVE(typo in your text) factor sounds good and I think it will be easier to determine when people get to act and so on, and I also think it might be a cool thing for characters that are battle experienced but not having that super high REF.
Of course I read these are all preliminary changes but I suppose you wanted opinions otherwise you wouldnt have bothered with a post.
Good work
Abilities and resting actively plus items of lesser kinds.
Athletics is a sensible choice for recovery. But if you remember in the beginning there was no added SC-rec even though Combat Arts existed. Ankan then pointed out that if Tekkan were to gain more SC they needed the Recovery as well. And with the use of / X and O or Used, Fatigue and Exertion I think it will work pretty neatly. Ok, a character using lot of SC like the character you plan to create, will get more X than the rest and in-game be the only one who really sufferers from Fatigue. But I don’t think it will impede the character. I only think that compared to all the rest she will be the only one using SC to the fullest.
I might do a proficiency or ability that enables SC-recovery from Athletics. But that will most likely be later if I think it’s needed. And if I don’t and decide to create it anyway, it will cost much.
Yes, after I created this I saw the same. But I’m not sure if that is a bad thing or not. I’m both able and thinking about switching back. Wouldn’t create much fuss for me anyway.
Abilities have to high negatives? How can AP-reductions of the scale from 1-5 with the same boost be high? I fail to see that.
It’s two or three abilities yes.
WIT is not counted in when rising the skill. Only when acquiring it. We are speaking about skills like Focus, Meditate, Multitrance, Sense Magic, Track and other skills that seems to need both much lore and understanding and the mind to use them, as well as skills I want to make cheaper but put higher pressure on other areas. The only exceptions to this rule will probably be Speciality skills.
I post my changes so I can get early opinions and to give you all a feel of what’s happening.
When it comes to the druid change I think it can only be a good thing, at worst you’ll ignore the skill while making your character but it leaves room to make ‘more’ out of the speciality. And as I’ve grown fond of saying, stereotypes/clichés aren’t necessarily a bad thing.
The tekkan weapon speciality skill sounds interesting, a lot more interesting than combat arts. Curious about the details, but I suppose it’s still “on the drawing board”… How about a preview? 😛
Perhaps you could split the SC recovery bonus into more than one ‘thing’? Something like, having half of the usual potential recovery come from athletics and the other half from BEL? Or perhaps just increase the maximum potential SC recovery by adding both, although that might trivialize SC in some rare cases.
Another thought to make it possible to get the recovery bonus before being a living legend is to simply keep those particular perks at a low level of BEL.
Personally I think it might be fine that SC recovery bonuses is relatively hard to get, but I also think that someone who uses one or two high SC-cost moves might end up with more Xs than apropriate.
I’m not exactly sure how it works though, if a character has four unspent SC left and uses a move that costs eight, what happends? He gets four Xs and the last row of SC is clean? If that is so, then I can easily imagine an acrobat getting heavily fatigued in less than a minute. Worth thinking about, and it doesn’t feel realistic or particularly appealing to me. Provided the thesis is correct…
Fake death is a cool ability, don’t really have much else to say on it.
The added WIT requirement to learn ‘semi academic’ skills makes sense to me, I just hope that this will not be a overly high requirement.
I don’t have much to say about the “imiative factor” other than that it sounds like a good thing, basicly what PB said about battle experience giving and edge without formal combat.
And in some cases they are. Especially if they are too stereotypical. But we’ll see. I’ll leave it at this for the time being.
No preview yet. Suffice it to say, all specialities with the exception of Warriors will have some more concrete in-game reason to why they have the abilities they have. It’s not just because of hard training.
I am well aware how I can increase the Recovery. I’m not that sure that I think it’s a good idea or even necessary just because one whines about how he will be drained, as one should be from jumping around. We’ll see later if it is as bad as he thinks, I doubt it though.
I’ve already placed all the Bonuses of the BEL, so I don’t think you need to worry there. Most things are choices. The only in-game snag is that you need to train to gain them, and thus most likely also pay.
Noted
The thesis is correct, though I’m thinking of changing it a little. But I will not make any such changes until I’ve tried this in battle and experienced the problem that y’all seems to see.
Well, I thought you probably had thought of these, however there is but one way to be sure isn’t there?
It will be interesting to see how it turns out, what I see is a potential problem; I’m not absolutely convinced that it is one, but it does seem likely.