Skills 3.0

This article is solely to hold the facts and stated positions of the GMs on the Experience and TDP changes. This is not an article for opinions, debate, or suggestions, and any attempts to add such will be delt with more harshly than usual. -The Elanthipedia Moderators

Skills/Ranks

Rationale

The GMs feel that too many skills are difficult to develop by themselves due to their specificity, and wish to combine them. For some other skills, notably Mechanical Lore and Primary Magic, they believe the skills do too much, and are unfair when compared to other skills.

For example, it is difficult and time consuming to try to place both climbing and swimming opportunities at all levels in all zones, and having to only do one or the other would free up development time. In addition, the proposed Athletics skill might also be applied to things such as jumping, riding, or other athletic activities that the uncombined skills would not allow.

General Principles

• See Post:Updated Skill List - 12/11/2010 - 15:45:26 for list of combining skills. If it is not mentioned, it is not combining.
• Combined skills will be set to the highest of the two skills and the other skill will be placed into the bonus pool for the relevant skillset. Stealth and Performing are the exception to this. (See below.)
• Bonus pools will boost learning for the entire skillset at approximately double rate (that is, 200 bits are taken from field experience, but 400 are placed into the skill), until the pool is empty.
• Guild requirements will be reevaluated once the system has been finalized.

New Skills

• Entirely new skills will be derived from existing skills with varying formulas. These skills will not subtract from the bonus pools.

Circle Requirements

Circle requirements have been redone for every guild. Here are some basic principles (quoted from New Skill Reqs - Basic Info For Everyone):

• You will be grandfathered to your current circle no matter what. The only changes you'll see are in relation to how hard it will be to circle to the next circle, NOT how hard it will be to have the right skills at your current circle. Everybody will have the same difficulty there. It will be zero.
• There are three kinds of requirements that you'll have. Nth requirements, Hard requirements, and Soft requirements.

• An Nth requirement is something along the lines of 1st Weapon, 3rd Magic, etc. It's the Nth highest skill in that skillset that is not excluded.
• A Hard requirement is a specific skill required to be trained per-circle. These skills are NOT allowed to be included in Nth requirements. For instance, if you have a Hard Scholarship req, Scholarship cannot count for one of your Nth lores.
• A Soft requirement is a specific skill required to be trained per-circle. These skills ARE allowed to be included in Nth requirements. For instance, if you have a soft TM requirement, that can count for your 2nd Magic skill, etc.

• With the condensation of several skillsets (primarily Weapons and Survival), many Nth requirements require fewer overall skills. However, the remaining skills have largely had their ranks increased.
• There are some skills that are never allowed as Nth Requirements. This is because the skills are not really in the same spirit as the Nth requirements. These skills are:

• Defending
• Parry
• Offhand
• Melee Mastery
• Missile Mastery
• Primary Magic

• Total X requirements are going away. They're a little bit too fluid for any kind of structured advancement. For instance, you could hit 149th without ever trading Appraisal, and then use your first 30 baby ranks of Appraisal to fill your requirement for 150th. It's really hard to construct a fiction around that where the guildleaders think "Hey, based on what he did, he's totally ready for 150th".
• Many guilds had requirements that lasted for one or two circle ranges. For instance, WMs required 1 rank of shield for the first 10 circles, and then did not require more. These requirements have been deemed nonsense and removed or made more aggressive.
• Existing skills and their combined relatives that are increased to meet guild minimums will subtract from the relevant bonus pools, but will reach necessary levels even if the bonus pool is insufficient.

For your guild's circle requirements, see Post:New Circle Reqs Have Been Posted - 03/16/2012 - 03:03.

Exceptions to the General Mechanism for Merging Skills

"You may notice that the skills we are reconsidering for merging transcend the notion of "they're too easy" and are instead skills that specifically can be trained to high mindstates and high ranks either with no cost or a time cost measured in seconds with your fingers." --GM Armifer

• Stealth (hiding + stalking) will be capped at 130% of your ranks in hiding.

Rationale: This was changed in response to widespread bug abuse that allowed players to lock stalking within seconds by spamming ADVANCE/FACE NEXT while hiding. A secondary concern was that HUNT allows players to train stalking without hiding or doing anything stealthy. As a result of these two issues, there are characters whose stalking grossly exceeds their hiding; they would suddenly find themselves much more effective at stealth even though they didn't "work" for it.

• Performing: Vocals will not count toward performing unless you're a Bard. For everyone else, Vocals will go into the lore bonus pool.

Rationale: Most characters currently have "excessive" ranks in vocals due to continuous humming. (This is done primarily for TDPs, since humming can be done during most activities.) If players are allowed to keep these ranks, performing-based activities will have to have higher skill requirements to compensate.

TDPs

Please read the entire section.

Rationale

The GMs believe that the original system is a problem for several reasons. First, they believe that the system was flawed from the begining by encouraging people to train skills solely for TDPs, which has resulted in TDP inflation. Second, they believe that the skill combine will cause problems with TDPs if the system is left as it is.

The Process

• The TDP change will involve a complete TDP refund, with all stats reset to racial base.
• All TDPs due to not getting a perfect roll on character creation, not having the "bonus" TDPs from the first few levels, or memorizing spell scrolls will be refunded.
• The last proposed plan is to give TDPs at an enhanced rate for the top 3 skills from the primary skillset, top 3 skills in each of the secondary skillsets and top 3 tertiary skills (12 total), and also to give TDPs at a slower rate for all other skills.
• If the old method and the new method result in the new totals being less than the old ones, the character will keep the old totals, and be "loaned" TDPs.
• These would be paid off over time with half of all new TDPs until the "loan" is paid off.
• Commoners will keep their earned TDPs, but will gain additional TDPs as if all skills were subject to the slower rate (this may be being reconsidered).

Related Forum Posts

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External Links

TDP Conversion Spreadsheet: Calculates your current and future TDPs based on currently released information about Experience 3.0 (some bugs).