Skills 3.0
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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
- Combined skills will be set to the highest of the two skills and the other skill will be dissolved into the bonus pool for the relevant skillset. Stealth is 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.
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
- 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. Instead these ranks 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.
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 highest armor 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: formula to be determined* |
| Missile Mastery | new skill | derived: formula to be determined* |
| 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 |
*At one time, mastery ranks were going to be determined by your highest melee and ranged weapons. However, on March 16, 2012, GM Socharis said that the GMs are "still working on the final mastery derivations."
Magic Skillset
| Skill | Old Skills | Formula |
|---|---|---|
| Arcana | ||
| Astrology | moved from Lore to Magic | |
| Attunement | Harness Ability, Power Perceive | |
| Augmentation | new skill | derived: formula to be determined* |
| Debilitation | new skill | derived: formula to be determined* |
| 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: formula to be determined* |
| Warding | new skill | derived: formula to be determined* |
*The magic formulas that were posted on March 7, 2012, incorporated all of the current magic skills, including Arcana and Targeted Magic. In response to complaints, the GMs scrapped those formulas and posted, "We're back to figuring out ways to do it with PM alone (no TM/Arcana/etc tie ins), but still tinkering with numbers."
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 | Percussions, Strings, Winds | |
| 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.
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 |
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.
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).
References
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.