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. Other skills, such as Mechanical Lore and Primary Magic, 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 do not cover.

General Principles

• Combined skills will be set to the highest of the included skills. The remaining skill(s) will be dissolved into the bonus pool for the relevant skillset. Stealth is an exception to this. (See below.)
• Bonus pools will boost learning for the entire skillset at approximately double rate (that is, if 200 bits are taken from field experience, 400 bits are absorbed into the skill), until the pool is empty.

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. Instead these ranks will go into the lore bonus pool.

For Bards, Performing will be capped at 130% of their highest non-vocal instrument.

Rationale: Most characters currently have "excessive" ranks in vocals due to continuous humming, which can be done during most activities with no roundtime. If players are allowed to keep these ranks, performing-based activities will have to have higher skill requirements to compensate.

"The reasoning behind bards getting vocals included in performance in this way is that some bards have trained Vocals using methods outside of HUM. Virtually zero other characters have trained vocals by singing rather than humming. Additionally, the reason for NOT including vocals is so that Performing isn't a horribly bloated skill for everybody that trained using HUM. If we included it for everybody, Performing would be the top lore for nearly everybody, and it would be at an insane number of ranks per circle compared to any other skill in that skillset. Bards are an exception to this because their performing must be high (since it's a circle requirement) and they have to train so many instruments." -- GM Socharis

List of 3.0 Skills

Below is a complete list of skills.

• Unless otherwise noted, combined skills use the normal merger formula. (See above.)
• If nothing is listed in the "Old Skills" column, it means that the new skill and old skill will have the same name.
• You will be grandfathered to your current circle no matter what. Whether grandfathered ranks are deducted from your bonus pools depends on the skill:

• For existing, combined, and split skills, grandfathered ranks will be deducted from the bonus pool for that skillset. (If you don't have enough bits in the bonus pool, you will still be grandfathered.)
• For new guild-only skills, you will be grandfathered to your current circle. (These ranks are not deducted from your bonus pools.)
• For other new skills, your ranks will be derived from other skills. (These ranks are not deducted from your bonus pools.)

Armor Skillset

Skill	Old Skills	Formula
Brigandine	Light Plate
Chain Armor	Light Chain, Heavy Chain
Defending	new skill	derived: average of the top two of Shield, Parry, Evasion, and Multi Opponent
Endurance	new Paladin-only skill	grandfathered to current circle
Light Armor	Leather Armor, Cloth Armor, Bone Armor
Plate Armor	Heavy Plate
Shield Usage

Weapon Skillset

Skill	Old Skills	Formula
Bows	Short Bow, Long Bow, Composite Bow
Brawling
Crossbows	Light Crossbow, Heavy Crossbow
Expertise	new Barbarian-only skill	grandfathered to current circle
Heavy Thrown
Large Blunt	Heavy Blunt
Large Edged	Heavy Edged
Light Thrown
Melee Mastery	new skill	derived: average of top two melee weapons
Missile Mastery	new skill	derived: average of top two ranged weapons
Offhand Weapon
Parry Ability
Polearms	Pikes, Halberds
Slings	Slings, Staff Sling
Small Blunt	Light Blunt, Medium Blunt
Small Edged	Light Edged, Medium Edged
Staves	Short Staff, Quarter Staff
Twohanded Blunt
Twohanded Edged

Magic Skillset

Skill	Old Skills	Formula
Arcana
Astrology	moved from Lore to Magic
Attunement	Harness Ability, Power Perceive
Augmentation	new skill	derived: 90%, 80%, 75%, or 70% of Primary Magic (depends on guild)
Debilitation	new skill	derived: 90%, 80%, 75%, or 70% of Primary Magic (depends on guild)
Inner Fire	new skill	grandfathered to current circle
Primary Magic
Sorcery	new skill	N/A (must be trained from 0)
Summoning	new Warrior Mage-only skill	grandfathered to current circle
Targeted Magic
Theurgy	new Cleric-only skill	grandfathered to current circle
Utility	new skill	derived: 90%, 80%, 75%, or 70% of Primary Magic (depends on guild)
Warding	new skill	derived: 90%, 80%, 75%, or 70% of Primary Magic (depends on guild)

Survival Skillset

Skill	Old Skills	Formula
Athletics	Climbing, Swimming
Backstab
Evasion
First Aid
Locksmithing	Lockpicking, Disarm Traps
Outdoorsmanship	Foraging, Animal Lore
Perception
Scouting
Skinning
Stealth	Hiding, Stalking	cannot exceed 130% of Hiding
Thanatology
Thievery	Stealing

Lore Skillset

Skill	Old Skills	Formula
Alchemy	Mechanical Lore*	allocated by player
Appraisal
Bardic Lore	new Bard-only skill	grandfathered to current circle
Empathy
Enchanting	Mechanical Lore*	allocated by player
Engineering	Mechanical Lore*	allocated by player
Forging	Mechanical Lore*	allocated by player
Outfitting	Mechanical Lore*	allocated by player
Performing	Bards: Percussions, Strings, Vocals, Winds everyone else: Percussions, Strings, Winds	cannot exceed 130% of top non-vocal instrument (Bards)
Scholarship	Scholarship, Teaching
Tactics	new skill	derived: weighted average of two parts Scholarship, one part Brawling, one part Multi Opponent
Trading

*The player will be forced to allocate his existing Mechanical Lore ranks to one or more crafting skills. Any circle-based grandfathering of Mechanical Lore will occur before the mech split.

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Skills That Are Going Away

Three skills won't exist in Skills 3.0.

Skill	Use
Multi Opponent	factored into Defending and Tactics
Escaping	dissolved into Survival bonus pool
Vocals	dissolved into Lore bonus pool for everyone but Bards

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
• Melee Mastery
• Missile Mastery
• Offhand Weapon
• Parry Ability
• 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.
• The circle cap is being increased from 150 to 200. These last 50 circles are primarily for bragging rights, as you will not gain TDPs or new ability slots. In general, the rank requirements are double those of the 100-150 range. For details, see Increasing the Level Cap. (This is not an April Fools' Day joke!)

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

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 beginning by encouraging people to train skills solely for TDPs, which has resulted in TDP/stat 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 reboot, with all stats reset to racial base. (If your character was rolled before January 2008 and did not get "perfect" starting stats, he will now have perfect starting stats.)
• TDPs spent memorizing spell scrolls will be refunded.
• The last proposed plan is for your 12 "main skills" (your top three primary skills, the top three skills in each of your secondary skillsets, and your top three tertiary skills) to generate TDPs at an enhanced rate (125 ranks / TDP). All other skills will generate TDPs at a reduced rate (400 ranks / TDP).
• 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 "lent" difference in TDPs.

• These would be paid off over time by a 50% TDP gaining penalty until the "loan" is repaid.

• Commoners will keep their earned TDPs but will gain additional TDPs as if all skills were subject to the slower rate. (This may be reconsidered.)

Related Forum Posts

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External Links

3.0 Conversion Spreadsheet: Calculates your current and future ranks, TDPs, and circle based on the latest information about Skills 3.0. Lore Bonus Pool Spreadsheet: Estimates how many ranks you can gain in one or more skills until your bonus pool is depleted. (This spreadsheet requires information from the 3.0 Conversion Spreadsheet.)