| Alright, folks, here are the new skills. Some of the names may change, but the combinations are solid.
When two (or more) skills are combined, the new skill will use the highest ranks from then the set of combined skills. The remaining ranks will be converted into a 'bonus pool' for that skill's skillset. When you drain experience in a skill from that skillset, you'll also drain 'bonus' experience from the bonus pool (until the pool is empty). This essentially gives you bonus learning in a skillset where you lost ranks. It compounds with an RPA, too, so if you have bonus experience in your pool and a level 4 RPA going, you'll be sitting quite pretty.
Not all skills will be absorbed into the bonus pool at the same rate - there's some balancing voodoo that is still being worked out.
We will address the final solution for TDPs in a later post.
Finally, grandfathering will work as follows: All skills will be brought up to at-circle levels (after the new requirements have been chosen, obviously). This includes guild-only skills, etc. Some new skills (specifically, Defending and Missile/Melee Mastery) will have their ranks increased from the bonus pull from their skillset to be equal to the highest skill of the appropriate skillset. This means that if you have enough bonus bits, Defending will be equal to your highest armor (not including parry or evasion, to be clear), Melee Mastery equal to your highest melee skill, and Missile Mastery equal to your highest ranged skill. We will not be raising combined skills above their current levels, despite that being on the table before (except in circle requirement situations).
Without further adeiu, here is the list of skills:
| Old Skills |
New Skill |
Description
|
| Leather, Bone, and Cloth |
Light Armor
|
| Light Chain, Heavy Chain |
Chain Armor
|
| Light Plate |
Brigandine
|
| Heavy Plate |
Plate Armor
|
| New Skill! |
Defending |
Used for defensive abilities and as an overall bonus to armor. Augments all defensive checks if the ranks are higher, and used for any general-use defensive abilities.
|
|
|
| Light Edged, Medium Edged |
Small Edged
|
| Light Blunt, Medium Blunt |
Small Blunt
|
| Slings, Staff Slings |
Slings
|
| Short Bow, Long Bow, Composite Bow |
Bows
|
| Light Crossbow, Heavy Crossbow |
Crossbows
|
| Short Staff, Quarter Staff |
Staves
|
| Pikes, Halberds |
Polearms
|
| New Skill! |
Melee Mastery |
Similar to Defending except in the scope of melee weapons. Trains when you gain experience with a melee weapon, and is used for general-use weapon feats.
|
| New Skill! |
Missile Mastery |
Same thing as Melee Mastery except with relation to missile weapons.
|
|
|
| Power Perception, Harness |
Attunement
|
| New Skill! |
Augmentation |
These skills are discussed more fully in the Magic 3.0 folders
|
| New Skill! |
Debilitation
|
| New Skill! |
Utility
|
| New Skill! |
Warding
|
| New Skill! |
Sorcery
|
|
|
| Climbing, Swimming |
Athletics
|
| Stalking, Hiding |
Stealth
|
| Lockpicks, Disarm |
Locksmithing
|
| Foraging, Animal Lore |
Outdoorsmanship
|
| Stealing |
Thievery |
Renaming this broadens its application.
|
|
|
| Scholarship, Teaching |
Scholarship
|
| New Skill! |
Tactics |
Tactics is used for non-damaging and tactical moves in combat.
|
| Vocals, Percussion, Winds, Strings |
Performing |
While having the instruments split up was nice, I think we can all agree that there are only very narrow applications for the particular instrument skills. While the new 'Performing' skill indicates that any performer is as good at one as he is the other, it also lets us have a good skill to check for other types of performance that were otherwise unclear.
|
| New Skill! |
Engineering |
These are all from the Mech Split, which hopefully everybody's familiar with already. If you don't know, ask in the Lore folders.
|
| New Skill! |
Outfitting
|
| New Skill! |
Enchanting
|
| New Skill! |
Blacksmithing
|
| New Skill! |
Alchemy
|
Additionally, Escaping and Multi Opponent are going away. These skills will move their ranks into Tactics and Defending, respectively. However, their skill checks will be dispersed more generally, as the application of these skills has been anything but uniform (escaping to throw a grappling hook?). These will be tackled on a case-by-case basis.
Finally, every guild that does not currently have a guild-only skill will be receiving one. Additionally, all guild-only skills will learn at a primary rate. Finally, you will not be able to teach a guild-only skill to somebody of another guild, which has the unfortunate implication that you will lose all ranks in guild-only skills that aren't yours.
Here are the guild-only skills:
| Guild |
Skill |
Description
|
| War Mage |
Elementalism |
Facility with the elements - Affects familiar summoning, aether pathways, ect. The name is still up in the air but the concept is solid.
|
| Cleric |
Theurgy |
Knowledge, familiarity, and connection with the divine. Grejuva can speak more about this at his leisure.
|
| Paladin |
Endurance |
Basically, tanking ability. This makes poison less damaging, stuns less effective, etc. Basically, it keeps the paladin from dying in ways that are a bit more interesting than damage reduction. This skill will be very interesting to evolve.
|
| Bards |
Bardic Lore |
Not technically a new skill altogether (Music Theory will roll into this), but this is essentially a supernatural connection with the historical, affecting Mojo-related abilities and Perc History, amongst other things. Raesh can go more into depth about what this means.
|
| Barbarians |
Expertise |
This skill represents the ultimate combat mastery that barbs have. It will allow them to perform awesome maneuvers that are impossible to the untrained. Kodius can go into more detail about the effect that this skill will have on you guys at his leisure.
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Please let me know if you have any questions. Discussions about guild-only skills should happen in the appropriate guild folders.
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