What the skills do seems irrelevant to the subject of individual skill systems, but alright. Note that there is more info than this on the skills (as seen in the quotes), but I tried to briefly summarize most skills to keep the post from being too large. As for being a lot to manage, the system (being part of my overall file) is also based on the idea that skills in general would increase more slowly, with more effect per individual level. Training at every skill level would only be for people who want to power it to the top as fast as possible. For most players it would happen less often than, say, sleeping to level up in past games (which I'd like to phase out), only involving training sessions instead. Though it wouldn't always make sense, there's also the possibility of trainers dealing with primary skills, instead of each subskill having its own training bar.
I am much more comfortable with this new skill-system, but could you explain a couple of things which i don't quite see how they work:
Enchantment, Necromancy, Manifestation, Deception, Connections, Poison, Secrecy, Cartography, Lore, Guidance, Creativity.
For these skills, i understand what it compromises of, but not it's role in the game. Could you explain?
Enchantment: Empower mostly deals with creating magical items, as well as brief "on the fly" enchantments, like giving your sword fire damage for a few swings (I made a big enchantment post a while back in the suggestion thread). Flay and Seal provide more conventional spell effects like other schools, primarily spells that interact with magic items, such as burning/transferring charges, or disabling/warding against effects.
Necromancy: Revivification obviously deals with the revival aspect of necromancy; animating dead tissue, summoning ghosts, speaking to the dead. Instruction covers the AI system for revived servants, mainly "if then" conditions, to customize their behavior, since undead servants would be more enduring, longtime things than normally brief daedra summons. Similar to the http://worldwideintertubes.files.wordpress.com/2008/07/gambit_screen.jpg system of Final Fantasy 12. Higher skill = more commands, and you can save command sets in a spellbook to be instantly applied to undead without having to set them again. Design is used to create better corpses, instead of just whatever's laying around. It involves things like preservation, joint reinforcement, mummification, and so on to alter or improve the inherent stats of parts. I had in mind a separate screen with, say, a stone slab on the left and a list of available parts on the right, and the player could drag them over to stitch together a creature as they wish.
Manifestation: Gives separate skills to spellcasting types. Shape deals with target, area effect, friendly fire, aura, etc. Intensity is duration, magnitude, constant effect, and so on. Cast deals with "alternative" forms of spellcasting, such as when armored, doing so silently, ritual/scrying based. Manifestation applies to all spells from any school. A master of Destruction can create powerful fire effects, while the master of Manifestation can make that fireball curve around a corner, explode, only hurt enemies, and burn as long as they want.
Deception: Disguise is fairly self-explanatory. Disguises can change appearance of face, gender, race, voice, and so on, to make the player look like someone else. Basically, this is done to temporarily claim the faction reputations of another person; talk to people who hate you or enter town as a vampire, avoid being approached from a distance by guards if you're wanted. Player can also choose from a list of known names/faces to imitate specific people, to take advantage of AI in NPC's such as the owner of a manor leaving the key with his chief guard at the end of the day. Potentially powerful, but the more features are changed the harder it is to pull off, and being caught can have nasty repercussions. Bluff is used for lying; talking your way out of arrest, telling people you've met quest conditions when you haven't, getting away with abusing general yes/no questions. Also used to create and spread rumors, which can potentially change the AI sequences of NPC's. A guard might create a rumor that a valuable item is being moved into the castle a certain night to set a trap for local thieves, while a stingy merchant could spread the rumor that an abandoned mine has treasure in it, hoping for adventurers to clear out the monsters for them without being paid and leave the mine free to be reopened. Distract is kind of hard to summarize, so I'll just quote it from my file.
Distractions are an unpredictable and specific art, often tricky even for those who are masters of it. Though many small potential in-game actions can be dictated by it, the skill does have some main uses. Foremost is the ability to plant evidence at a crime scene. Though this is rarely effective in framing someone outright, it can distract and delay guards with another suspect, giving the player more time to plan their own escape. This requires some sort of personal affect from the person being framed, such as hair or clothing, and must be done carefully lest the player leave more evidence incriminating themselves than the distraction. Players working in tandem with other rogues can use Distract to open dialogue options meant to keep the NPC's attention on the person they're talking to more securely than normal conversation, allowing someone else to do something behind them. Some may use it to throw their voice, mimicking calls for help or other sounds that can make someone come running. Most difficult is sabotage, which can potentially effect a wide range of objects. Traps, signposts, wagon wheels, and so on can be subtly rigged to break in a certain amount of time, drawing attention at a key moment. The higher the player's skill the more accurately the event can be triggered to within the desired time frame.
Connections: Fence involves, naturally, using fences or being one. Skill improves general prices, chance of being turned in (if you've got hot merchandise and aren't a well known thief, the fence may consider it safer and more profitable to report you than deal with you), and chance of items being accepted, as they may normally refuse to buy, say, a noble's amulet that the guards are in an uproar over being stolen, in order to protect themself. For acting as a fence it improves profit margin and ability to see how "hot" the items a thief is selling are. Escape is used for various "getting away from punishment" actions, such as editing criminal records in local law offices and finding weaknesses or hidden lockpicks in jail cells, or hiding picks of your own to aid allied thieves. Passively, it improves odds of allied NPC thieves helping you by obstructing/altering the spread of info, making news of crime take longer to reach other areas, or coming to warn you if you're being looked for. Blackmail is another hard to summarize one, so here's the quote again.
Working almost like a reverse bribe, blackmail allows the player to use the withholding of certain items to get things they want. Due to the management, information gathering, and high risk of arrest involved, blackmail is especially difficult to perform without allies. The first step is usually in finding out what is most particular to an NPC, frequently through conversation, and paying attention to reactions to specific terms. Though few NPC's can be blackmailed through an item, rarities are especially precious to collectors and museums. Generally, the player is trying to get a secret. Skill in Blackmail is increased by, and adds options for, personal questions that can glean this information. Skill, disposition, reputation, personality, and related factors can all determine whether the player actually gets a secret from this. For example, an NPC illegally worshipping a daedra might have an altar hidden in their basemant. The player can either trick them into mentioning this in conversation, or discover it by sneaking into their house, in both cases gaining the secret as a keyword. Bringing it up activates a brief but important piece of unique dialogue in which the character attempts to barter this information. Failure results in the permanent loss of the keyword in blackmail, while success essentially gives the character a "free bribe" with that NPC, holding it over their head for influence. Blackmail holds more sway than typical bribery, but the more often it's used, the more likely the NPC is to give up clinging to it, causing it to lose its influence. Thief NPC's often attempt to gain this type of information in conversation with other NPC's, and allied thieves are a valuable source of possible leads. Examples include purposefully faulty sales records, altered documents in politics, embarrassing personal secrets, and so on. Blackmail can easily lead to arrest depending on the people and secrets involved, and destroys disposition with the given NPC almost irrevocably. The blackmail skill is also used in kidnapping and ransom. If the player forces an NPC to an area that counts as "theirs," such as a home, aligned faction area, or claimed land, the NPC is designated as kidnapped. Bringing up their name as a keyword with an NPC that has a very high disposition to them, particularly family, allows the character to demand ransom, usually money or items but sometimes blackmail-style favors. This is a potentially very profitable, but extremely risky action, and having cohorts to do actions like kidnap the target or deliver the ransom is often wise, as well as engaging the entire process through an alias. Ransoming is dangerous even at high levels, as a certain degree of reputation is needed to make effective demands, while being noticed makes arrest that much more likely. Increased skill improves the value of ransom that can be demanded, decreases the odds that either victim will immediately report you (the longer the hostage is held, the more dangerous), and decreases the amount of evidence left by allies in the process, reducing odds of the crime being tracked to you.
Poison: Toxin involves the creation and identification of derived toxins. While alchemy alters and combines effects to create potions, Toxin does things like take five units of nightshade and create one vial of Nightshade Poison. Toxins are usually more dangerous and unique than alchemical poisons, but hard to get in large amounts (due to rare ingredients or not being sold), and are inherently illegal. Delivery is used to modify toxins in more specific ways than are possible with alchemy, such as hiding taste and smell, making it harder to detect at crime scenes, or making it more resilient so it stays applied to a weapon longer. Simulation modifies toxins to change their appearance, like making the death appear to be caused by disease, reducing the odds of it being investigated more aggressively as a murder, or making it resemble a substance only sold at a local apothecary, redirecting suspicion. Also used to modify weapon-applied toxins to make them bypass resistances.
Secrecy: Contact is used for forging seals and documents, and for hiding/finding hidden messages, which act like indirect dialogue options. For example, the player might forge the schedules for the local guard, creating a weakness in patrols, and leave a message in an area allies have been told to look in that tells them where and when to be. Decode is of course used for creating/deciphering coded messages, and for non-language communication, such as a small symbol on a sign meaning the shop owner is also a fence, or a lamp in the window meaning "the attack is tonight." Intercept uses search mode to find weak spots in security, like cracks in the wall to eavesdrop through, and uses of Secrecy skills by non-allied NPC's. Passively increases range at which the player automatically gets new keywords by overhearing conversation.
Cartography: Largely used to manage walking-based fast travel. Geography increases warning range of environmental hazards, the safety of fast travel, monetary value of the map, and is used for general "land knowledge" effects, like finding ore. Mapping improves minimap detail, speed/safety of travel, and ability to travel to more specific locations, as well as ability to give directions to NPC's and have them find the place. Passage helps for spotting abnormalities like an oasis or secret passage in a castle and increasing travel speed. Aside from personal use and fast travel, maps can be sold to make a profit, or given to NPC's to improve their AI (such as making them aware of those secret passages).
Lore: Magical increases the character's ability to identify magic and applies in a variety of ways, including seeing the source, effects, and skill level of foreign magics, dialogue options when using spell-based keywords, and chance to notice the presence of subtle spells both with and without actively searching. Bestiary compiles a sort of "monsterpedia," with general stats and info on encountered creatures. Aside from benefitting the player, the information can also be shared with allied NPC's to improve their ability to deal with certain creatures. For Legendary I will quote again.
Lets the player draw on a library of legends to make rumors into something more. Legendary lore is increased mainly by connecting two threads; hearing a rumor about a ruin and then finding it, discovering markings on a door and then seeing them in a book, and so on, as well as through the collection and study of myths. When a piece of legend is mentioned in writing or by an NPC, a skill check is made. Success adds a new dialogue option in which the player recognizes the legend and confirms whether it's real. False rumors can generally be ignored, though some extremely obscure myths may be "confirmed" as false simply because nobody has ever discovered proof. When the character recognizes a legend they can look it up in their keyword list for additional information, including known books or NPC's that can provide more info, helpful facts, and even locations. For example, an explorer may encounter an ancient door with peculiar markings. With enough lore skill they might recognize the symbols, giving them more info on what they've found or even a way to open the door.
Guidance: Strategy functions similarly to Instruction from Necromancy, but is applied through dialogue and used to give directions to NPC's who are for whatever reason subservient to the character, such as friends, allies, or slaves. Can range from combat commands to simple instructions like "At 10pm use *designated object*" to make a servant lock a door. Training lets the player act as a trainer, to impart specific skill sets to those who follow them. Leadership increases the number of individual NPC's who can simultaneously operate on the player's instructions, increases range of spoken commands, and passively increases influence over those you have official authority over.
Creativity: Art involves creation of things like paintings, masks, and sculptures. Art has both monetary and social value, and can improve your standing with hard-to-impress groups like nobles. More practically a piece of artwork can be created to invoke a type of reaction like fear or calmness, such as a bandit gang wearing fearsome masks that harm enemy morale. Music can influence disposition and mood, and skilled musicians may be invited to play in high-profile areas that are normally hard to get into. It can also change reputations; a bard might sing of someone's adventures and make them more famous. Writing can be used to make money like other art forms, but can also spread information. The player chooses their own skills, quests, and known keywords to designate the subject, and may either give the book to specific people to share information or publish it to try and influence public knowledge. Write spellbooks to give other mages for aid in rituals, or publish info of a crooked quest offering from a noble to try and ruin them. Obviously, some information can make enemies.
» Sun Sep 30, 2012 12:38 pm 
