Skills Vs. Careers: What does What?

[Vorico]

I was under the impression that hits did a minimum of 1 damage and everyone had 12 hp, after the latest change.

When I checked, armor and endurance did essentially nothing.

[Aptaliesin]

They definitely work. they make the other guy get nothing but slightly when you have alot of it.

[Aptaliesin]

Originally Posted by Pyjamas

Haha, I don't mind over the top, I just think it doesn't suit the concept of a savage. I'm a savage, stealthily sneaking through the woods, with my magic armor...

If you want to talk ove the top, look at brawler... Unarmed, endurance and precision. Power-gamers eat your heart out!

That one i did look at. at 24 ranks you'll only get (12) in both endurance and precision.

combined with another careers you can soften the negatives of having no dodge/parry/armor/shield but theres still glaring holes in many of these.

[Spot]

I'm glad people are talking about the various careers and how things balance out.

I'm the one most to blame if there are problems with the careers. There were a number of existing careers in the game when I got to it, but what I tried to do is breakdown point values for fractional skill gains. This is difficult and I can go into why, but suffice to say I eventually set values for fractional skills and also different values for things like languages which cost less than craft or combat skills.

Then we balanced weapons for the old combat system with each style of weapon having its own place in terms of what sort of bonuses, penalties, stats, limitations it applied.

Still, we didn't have careers for many of the weapon categories, so that led to the recent influx of new careers. I tried to make sure there were at least 3 careers (often 4 careers) for every weapon category. Some are more 'pure' fighting classes, some are hybrid fighting classes. Truthfully it was a challenge to work to make sure there was real variety between them. We only have so many skills and I didn't want them to simply be a copy of another career but with a different weapon. Some give more flexibility, such as those that have have a secondary weapon element, and some complement crafter or social careers, and some make a good bit more @income daily, while some are limited but strong at what they do.

Since the combat system has changed greatly, the prior point based system for balancing weapons is completely out of whack. For example, whips had most of their points go into giving extra action points but had damage penalties. That let you stack attacks with whips almost endlessly so high skill users could almost always max out, but had to rely on crits for damage which makes sense for a bit of leather. Since the new system doesn't have action points, whips are crippled. Thus we need to rebalance weapons. I haven't done that because a) I haven't really done a full assessment of the current combat system, and b) it still seems to be a work in progress. Thus its hard to create a new point system for weapons as I can't balance one bonus versus another.

Similarly with careers, I'm still not sure if having 5 skills with fractional gains are better or worse or similar to having 3 skills all at 1:1 gains. If the balancing works they should be similar though at certain levels one or the other might have advantages. My gut tells me the the right mix of fractional careers plus skills will have advantages over a 3 skill career, but since that depends on the combat system as well, and that's changed since I point balanced careers I can't be certain.

Regardless, what we have now (I hope) is a pretty wildly broad set of careers that each have their own personality. The name of the career impacted the skills I gave it and you can decide how much you want that to carry over to the chars designed around them. So if you took Footman, you could have a history serving in an army or you could just like the combo of skills.

Its a hook for a character background as are the others like poacher or slaver or acrobat. Perhaps a bit more than simply a hook, as the types of tokens you produce for your House are tied to your career and are potentially one of the big values of your careers that is often overlooked. So a Slaver will generate (I believe) Martial:Slaver tokens (it may be Social:Slaver). And if your guild wanted to initiate or get involved in a plot that involved slavery, those tokens would actually contribute at a premium over a generic Martial token, just as Sailors would for a plot that involved seacraft. The application of tailored tokens by guilds is something people are just starting to appreciate and its one area some of those hybrid careers really can add value for your group even if it doesn't directly affect the char.

Regarding savage, I possibly should have had the armor be a bit lower of a fraction and put points elsewhere. In my head I was picturing an axe wielding saxon-ish phelan with chainmail or leathers and highly superstitious and full of tales of the spirits. I personally think their access to the magic skill as a brute makes them wicked cool. They are one of the few fighter types that has access to a lore. But that's me. As I said, if there are issues with them, I'm the one to blame

Keep talking about the careers and experiences with them. Most don't have senior practitioners as yet, but I'm very gratified to know people are really looking at them and having fun with characters made from them.

- Spot

[Kiranis]

I KNOW this is a great game but there are alot of flaws i hope no one takes it personally but i will post what i think could be done to fix/change it.

When selecting Race (this is for the "Gamers who care more about stats") display the bonuses and penalty to stats

unless you read the manual/players guide You won't know what skills you are getting and I know lots of people who hate reading instructions

What to change when you select a class on the right hand side or below where you choose it it should display skills and stat bonuses for race and classes

I notice some skills that are similar do not stack this may be realistic but it's a horrible trick for people who don't understand tailor and seamstress are seperate.

To Fix: Generalize the skills (so Axes swords unarmed polearm whip become weapon use) maybe increase LP required to train a skill
(Seriously barbarians are limited to axes) Or give the classes a large skill list and let the players pick things like Weapon bonus (so if i wanted a merc who is good with spears and pole arms i just select it at the start)


That's all i can think of for now feel free to tell me i am wrong!

[StoryGuide Nyx]

Suggestions for how things can be improved are always welcome. I'll address the portions of your post that I can, but keep in mind I don't have extensive knowledge on how careers/skills stack or don't.

some skills that are similar do not stack

Which ones are these?

it's a horrible trick for people who don't understand tailor and seamstress are seperate

I think we assume people will know tailor and seamstress are separate since they are listed as separate careers when choosing from careers. They don't 'stack' because both careers make different items. You can certainly have both careers and max them out though which would enable you to make both all of the male garments and all of the female garments. There's also a needleworker career which handles accessories and odds and ends, like pillows or blankets. No matter what careers you choose, none of them will ever stack because they all offer different skills/items.

Generalize the skills (so Axes swords unarmed polearm whip become weapon use)

These already are weapon use, outside of unarmed which uses no weapon, but counts fists as weapons.

maybe increase LP required to train a skill

Each level of skill you learn already costs an increased amount of LP. I'm not positive of how much it goes up incrementally, but I know that it does.

(Seriously barbarians are limited to axes)

Barbarians aren't limited to axes. The career comes automatically with knowledge of how to handle axes, but you aren't limited to learning only that. You can avoid further learning axes altogether if you want and focus on the sword skill instead. You won't get the career bonus for swords unless you pick a profession with sword knowledge in it, but you certainly can still learn the skill and be decent with handling them.

Or give the classes a large skill list and let the players pick things like Weapon bonus (so if i wanted a merc who is good with spears and pole arms i just select it at the start)

I like this idea, but I don't know that it would stop here. It's likely that players would want to customize everything about their career, not just what weapon they could use. Like if I want barbarian who's good with polearms, knows how to coat them with poison, is able to be stealthy, and has an affinity for pickpocketing .. I think it might throw careers off balance. Some people would be far too powerful and others would be extremely weak. I'm not sure if that's why it hasn't been done, or if it maybe still can be. I'd encourage you to @idea it so the staffers who handle careers can talk out the pros and cons

[Kiranis]

Hope you enjoyed butcher what i said

(Seriously barbarians are limited to axes)

"Barbarians are limited to axes it is their only weapon skill"

t's a horrible trick for people who don't understand tailor and seamstress are seperate

They both use the same skill yes but for different things if i as a player make a character who does both these things not knowing tailor does men's clothes and seamstress does women it's cheep

Generalize the skills (so Axes swords unarmed polearm whip become weapon use)
I said generalize the skills leaving them the way they are is not generalizing them

maybe increase LP required to train a skill

This was to balance the generalize skill idea if you decide to

some skills that are similar do not stack

Seamstress and Tailor for one Stealth and Shadowing for another
if i am following someone stealth it's basically the same as doing it shadowed same with sneak attack.

Or give the classes a large skill list and let the players pick things like Weapon bonus (so if i wanted a merc who is good with spears and pole arms i just select it at the start)

^^ my bad i left out a sentience or three "of coruse classes are still limited to a certain point like barbarians could choose any weapon armor ect. but chould not choose poison magic trading ect. unless their second class could once ingame these restrictions stay up and make it so some classes can't mix

Seamstress and tailor should be combined into one thing .

[Dollface]

Originally Posted by Kiranis

Hope you enjoyed butcher what i said
it's a horrible trick for people who don't understand tailor and seamstress are seperate

They both use the same skill yes but for different things if i as a player make a character who does both these things not knowing tailor does men's clothes and seamstress does women it's cheep


Seamstress and Tailor for one Stealth and Shadowing for another
if i am following someone stealth it's basically the same as doing it shadowed same with sneak attack.

Seamstress and tailor should be combined into one thing .

Seamstess/Tailor/Needleworker careers were recently seperated into 3 different groups, actually to help generate more RP.
Instead of one person having and overwhelmingly large list of -everything- clothier now we have to cooperate with other clothiers to get the essentials we need to complete a whole outfit.

For example- Lets say Jane cant make slippers, but she knows Jenny can make super awesome slippers! So instead of doing it all on your own, and not interacting with anyone Jane now has to go to Jenny, ask her if she could help her by making the specific slippers she wants, and possibly start a new friendship or business arrangement between the two characters. Whereas before... It got boring. There was a tediously huge list you had to decipher to figure out what all you could make, and you weren't interacting with other clothiers except for lessons. Not very progressive in so far as creating actual -social- RP which is what this game is all about.
Not to mention that while this -is- a fantasy RPG we try to make things as realistic as possible. And in reality; Tailors make mens clothes, and seamstresses make womens clothes. Ya dig?

Originally Posted by Kiranis

Hope you enjoyed butcher what i said

(Seriously barbarians are limited to axes)

"Barbarians are limited to axes it is their only weapon skill"

Seriously, they aren't. While you may be limited in the beginning, you're a beginner. Expect some limitation.

However, say you play a while. You make friends with George. Turns out George has the highest skill level you have ever heard of at polearm. And if you arent friends with George you now have a reason to be once you figure that out. he gives you lessons in polearm after you two create RP to become friends, and eventually you're just as awesome as he, or at least close to it.
You can learn individual skills that your characters aren't spawned with from other PCs or other NPCs. Skills do not interfere with careers.

How would it be fair to start the game and be all-awesome when there have been people here for years that have take the time and effort to build their chars and still aren't quite where they want to be yet? No. It isn't.

If you eventually -learn- through your character that Jimmy knows magic, there is no reason you cant eventually learn that -skill- as well. But as far as magic goes at current, it isn't an implemented system yet either.


I hope this helps you in some small way to understand this game isn't all about careers and who is better at what. It's about the story you can create getting to the top if thats where you want your char to be.

Welcome!

[Kegan]

What weapons a Barbarian uses depends on what game you play from my understanding. I seem to recall reading several books where barbarians uses big swords, same for games. I wouldn't think they're just limited to axes. In some game-systems probably, in others.

Btw - when I read Barbarian, I'm thinking of a big hulking primitive guy coming from the wild lands and in pretty close contact with nature.

As for seamstress vs tailor career. It makes completely sense IG that there are two careers. The crafter specializes either in female clothing or male clothing. It is the careers that matters, not the individual skills.

Just because you know sword, it doesn't make you a soldier.
Just because you know how to sew a seam, it doesn't make you a seamstress. I hope I make myself clear enough.

I think the tailoring skill (not career), is more to reflect how good you are using a needle and thread. The career is the one which reflects how well you can cut up fabrics, put them together, create garments, sew the seams nicely and in general make them fit the person you're making clothes for.

I can learn to make the nicest stitches in the world (tailoring skill), but that doesn't mean I can figure out how to use a pattern and create a nice shirt (tailor career).


I would grant though that the *skill* tailoring is perhaps misleading, especially for someone who doesn't know the game-system. Splitting it on two skills, eg. tailoring and seamstressing/sewing would reflect that. But then you wouldn't get the benefit of someone very experienced in sewing being able to make high quality garments because they have a broad range of experiences (careers). Unless you let them stack.

It's my understanding that seamstress and tailor were recently split into two careers to make it more fair to people and to give one career a break. It's a lot of clothing to make, a lot of things to keep track of and by splitting it out in two careers, you give more people a chance to specialize and be part of crafting. If it's just one career, then the risk of just one person/guild sitting on the exclusive making of clothing is higher. Splitting up allows for more people to get involved, to specialize in one career etc. And creates some more interesting dynamics if you ask me.

I do not know why you want to make a shared skill for all weapons. If you look realistically at it, you might be an expert in using a sword, but that doesn't mean you know anything about how to use an axe or a spear. Again, it's common sense that you learn one weapon type and have to invest in learning another weapon type.

It's my understanding that the weapon system is as it is in order to make it as balanced as it can be, while allowing people to play their preferred type of character.

As a note, you can still play a Barbarian but have e.g. soldier career as your main skill-set. Your career doesn't dictate what type of character you play, but rather is meant to supplement the type of RP you want to play. This game is luckily not fixed on character classes and careers like eg. Diablo. There's room to be creative and work outside of the box.

So, I figure, you choose your careers based on what skills you want, and then you create a back-story and character that fits what skills you have, even if it doesn't necessarily make you a character that is that career. Eg. Kegan is a Constable, but his caeers are Soldier and now learning Scout.

[Aptaliesin]

Originally Posted by Kegan

It's my understanding that the weapon system is as it is in order to make it as balanced as it can be, while allowing people to play their preferred type of character.

As a note, you can still play a Barbarian but have e.g. soldier career as your main skill-set. Your career doesn't dictate what type of character you play, but rather is meant to supplement the type of RP you want to play. This game is luckily not fixed on character classes and careers like eg. Diablo. There's room to be creative and work outside of the box.

^ This.

This game, sometimes to my frustration, has never been about min/maxing numbers for elite skills like reaching for your hit cap in world of Warcraft.

There are things you can do to maximize a certain aspect, but no one will have the perfect character, unbeatable to everyone. Some people seem that way but its usually because they have 48 careers arranged in some way to maximize certain aspects.

I like playing with the math. There are things that do need to change about the career system mathematically (my speciality) but what we have is "good enough"

It mixes RP elements of skills and careers as well as it can with balancing the math of skills and careers. Its like mixing oil and water, but until someone can present the math in a way the people behind designing it can understand, it'll be this way for a long time to come.

That said, i do have a long standing complaint about our career system, and here it is:
If you want a strong combat character, never, never never take careers with more than 4 skills in it. You'll be a jack of all trades and a master of nothing at all. I'm in the process of unlearning 5+skill careers i learned before without paying attention to the math.

However if you want alot of skills but not be really good at any of them except a weapon, take whatever strikes your mood...

but seriously... Plan your skills ahead of time, the ones you want, and aim for those careers that give it to you the most.

At a glance for careers:

Made up career #1 (typical results. Certain restrictions apply like with medic)
Sword +1 every level
dodge +1 every level
parry +1 every level
endurance +1 every level

Made up career #2 (typical results)
Sword +1 every level
dodge +1 every other level
parry +1 every other level
Endurance +1 every other level
Precision +1 every other level

Career 1 = 4 skill ups every level of the career
Career 2 = if you were to chart the growth, averages 3 skill ups every level.

After 24 career levels they will look like this:

Career #1:
Sword 24
Dodge 24
Parry 24
Endurance 24
total: 96

Career #2:
Sword 24
Dodge 12
Parry 12
Endurance 12
Precision 12
Total: 72

You not only get less skill levels in total, but you also get LESSER skill levels from what you do obtain from careers. Sure, option 2 gets you precision the other guy doesn't, but it wont help you because hes twice as good as you at THREE other skills. Its completely not worth it.

I only discovered this by looking at how awesome assassin -should- be, but how pointless it -actually- is. its a 5 skill career. But the deadliest from stealth class there should be, is grossly underpowered because of it, it needs to be fixed badly, but its hard to show people the problem above in a meaningful way. (homework at home, Compare assassin to sniper. Sniper with some do it yourself poison skill on the side is infinitely better, and i wish i had spent the last 2 years doing it, but thats 2 years i'll not get back.)

My suggestion?
on careers with more than 4 skills, one skill gets rotated out to be skipped, so it remains balanced with #of skill ranks gained. so each skill has a 3 out of 4 gain in 4 levels. then both would see 96 skill ranks instead of such a huge difference for the same skill point cost, and make those other careers more viable for game play.

[SHAzrael]

Originally Posted by Kiranis

Hope you enjoyed butcher what i said

Nyx is always trying to be helpful. If she didn't address your specific questions it would be because she misunderstood what you were asking.

Originally Posted by Kiranis

"Barbarians are limited to axes it is their only weapon skill"

This is a topic that's come up a few times before. Players want to play a specific career, but want a different weapon.

There are two options for the PC:
1) Learn the career, and learn a different skill. As this thread explains earlier, having a skill via a career or a skill via the normal skill (usually) both result in the same dice roll. Having both the skill and career results in two rolls and the system uses the higher roll. So this means a Barbarian can still learn swords, but if they learn axes they get a bonus. Barbarians - in this game setting - are typically better at using axes because of their cultural upbringing.
2) Learn a different career, and still roleplay that you're a barbarian. The Barbarian career implies the skills that a barbarian "usually" has, but you're a PC. You can be different. You can take a footman or soldier or other career, and roleplay that your PC was a footman, soldier. Or even just roleplay that he was a pie-maker but happens to be good at those skills.

And yes, the career is limited. I understand that it's frustrating for someone who wants the barbarian career but wants to use, say, spears.
At some point in the future, we might add the ability to choose between a selection of weapons. Or might add a second barbarian-ish career that uses spears, or similar.
But in general, we want to keep careers constrained. Slavers use whips. Footmen use spears, etc. - to help define the gameworld, and to help make sure that different careers are, well, different. We want a slaver to have a different skill set to a footman. And a barbarian to fight differently to a duelist. So staff make "flavor" choices. It might not be the exact flavor you prefer, but we do our best to make it a flavor that the playerbase as a whole will enjoy.

Originally Posted by Kiranis

it's a horrible trick for people who don't understand tailor and seamstress are seperate

They both use the same skill yes but for different things if i as a player make a character who does both these things not knowing tailor does men's clothes and seamstress does women it's cheep

Yeah, it'd be a shock if you assumed you could take one of the careers and do everything.
It's hard for us to give all this information to new players, without providing them with a wall of instructions to read. If you use the @help files, it does tell you the differences.

From the help files:

Your items in your item and option list will depend upon your level in tailoring, needleworking, and seamstressing. Tailoring allows you to do items that are for men, seamstressing handles items that are for ladies, and needleworking covers accessories and odds and ends items (shoes, parasols, belts, pouches, blankets, hats, etc). The further you succeed in these careers level wise, the more you will be able to craft and the more garments you will be able to design.

If you have any ideas for making this clearer, please @idea them. We read each and every @idea.

Originally Posted by Kiranis

Generalize the skills (so Axes swords unarmed polearm whip become weapon use)
I said generalize the skills leaving them the way they are is not generalizing them

We're not going to generalize the weapons into one weapon skill. There are already generalized skills like precision that apply to all (most? Keeping a loophole here in case of future, unusual, weapons.) weapons.

If you want a discussion about generalizing weapons, that's cool, but let's move it off the thread about Skills vs Careers.

Originally Posted by Kiranis

some skills that are similar do not stack

Seamstress and Tailor for one Stealth and Shadowing for another
if i am following someone stealth it's basically the same as doing it shadowed same with sneak attack.

Um. Except neither stealth nor shadowing is coded yet. So I'm not sure what you mean about how they "do not stack" when they don't yet do anything.
Hopefully we'll get them coded in the near future. When we do, they will both do two different things, and we don't have any plans to make them stack.

Originally Posted by Kiranis

Or give the classes a large skill list and let the players pick things like Weapon bonus (so if i wanted a merc who is good with spears and pole arms i just select it at the start)

I don't (yet) have any good user interface to allow this. It's not how the careers were designed to work, so will be a lot of work to make this happen.
At the moment staff have other priorities (like making skills such as stealth actually do something) - but might get back to this idea in the future.

In general, though, this thread isn't the right place for this discussion. As before, you can @idea it, or start a new thread to discuss.

Originally Posted by Aptaliesin

This game, sometimes to my frustration, has never been about min/maxing numbers for elite skills like reaching for your hit cap in world of Warcraft.

It's because I love teasing you, and your mathematical preferences

Originally Posted by Aptaliesin

That said, i do have a long standing complaint about our career system

Heard, understood, but this isn't the place for that discussion. Feel free to make another thread, or to discuss in pages.

Summary: Careers can give a nice bonus to a set of skills, and is a cheap way of getting good at that set of skills quickly for a new PC, but they don't limit you. If you want to round out your character (such as by having a barbarian career character that fights with swords) then you'll need to pick up either a second career, or stand-alone skills. The single-career barbarian might never be as good with a sword as a soldier-career swordfighter. But that's intended to make different careers behave differently in the game.

[Aptaliesin]

Heard, understood, but this isn't the place for that discussion. Feel free to make another thread, or to discuss in pages.

too lazy to make a new thread, so i'll leave it in the thread that discusses careers. x.x If no one wants to talk about it, that's laziness to equal my own.

*crawls off to bed*

[Kiranis]

Thanks Azriel as for the do no stack thing

Again this goes into the combining skills thing so i won't discuss it

but generally i believe that some of the skills should be re combined as this game is still in beta i believe it will get bogged down in skills.

Any way thanks you answered all of my questions

[Spot]

Sorry for taking time to reply.

Having designed and created the point system to balance the careers I can say there are various strategies one could take if choosing careers by strategy.

One challenge is that some things change as we go along, whether how skills stack, how tokens work, how income stacks, what happens with combined skills over 24, etc. This can impact whether the point balancing system still works, but overall I think it is good enough. I'm gratified to both see some things being correctly assessed, and if I'm being honest, glad to see other things are still either completely left unstated or incorrectly assessed, as there should be mystery and the game isn't about min/maxing.

Another challenge is that many skills simply haven't been full instantiated, or coded at all. Some skills are intended to go into adventure areas. These were just around the corner four or five years ago, they are alas further off today. We just don't have that much in the way of coding resources at the moment. We have tried to make lores and some of the lesser used skills apply in quests, plots and mass combats, but it does mean that careers that have a large portion of their points dedicated to non-coded careers are less 'powerful' if by power you mean having support within the system. That said, it is a RP focused game, so while I wish it were otherwise, it isn't as bad as it might be.

Regarding the sheer volume of martial careers, it is certainly possible to have careers let you choose what weapon they include. This is the current system however, and in this system players trade off the control over what they train (they have to buy a pre-made package) and in return get a pretty major discount for the the skills included, plus careers boost @income, plus careers boost tokens generated. The latter two are less visible to the player as they affect the guild, but properly managed those are major assets that should allow a guild to provide more for all its chars in terms of entertainment and starting and participating in adventures or other plots.

It has been hard for me to try and make martial careers that differ from one another in more than just weapon choice. We have only a certain # of skills after all and only so many ways to combine them. It has been interesting to see what careers people have latched onto. I love that we're seeing a good # of Savages. That tells me the idea of having a lore is attractive to pcs for the color it gives, even for a combat char, and since I like to encourage RP that is great.

And speaking of careers, it has been pointed out to me that we need another Polearm based martial career to balance out, so we are going to have a contest to pick a new Polearm career and earn some StP. Look out for the post.

[Spot]

Originally Posted by Aptaliesin

Career 1 = 4 skill ups every level of the career

Because careers have a point balance system, no career should give 4 skills at +1 each. That would be too many points and as you note imbalanced. (If there are and I've flubbed something, please let me know. That is very possible. I flub things all the time. It's a curse.) I'll add one caveat, there is a 'faux skill' called Sabering. You get it equal to Fencing. It allows you to chop the neck of a champagne bottle, and doesn't cost any points. I'm not even sure it even still works. Regardless, it is really just the Fencing skill, but since it has its own listing it might confuse people.

So the most you should see is three +1 skills in a career as that would max out the career. If the career has perks such as being a crafter, adding additional @income, or others you would have an even lower cap as each of these costs points.

Also so players can plan, we have talked in the past about premier careers. These careers could have various pre-requisites from rank to guild-type, but would certainly also include having specific existing careers at 24. These aren't in the works currently, but if you want to be considered a master or veteran at what you do that is rank 24 in a career and may someday unlock other opportunities that being a jack of all trades doesn't. On the other hand being a jack of all trades will let you advance your skills faster due to lower LP costs. Ah the tradeoffs.