I have an idea on how to implement abilities to the skill system. This will not remove the current skill system, but adds abilities to define your character deeper.


Example.

Blade Skill.

Abilities:

Disarm Attack: 15 % chance to disarm Next Upg: 20 % Chance to Disarm. [Unlocked]

Bleed: - 1dmg for 5 seconds. Next Upg: 3 dmg for 7 seconds. [Locked]

Light Armor Penetration: Increased light armor penetration with 8 %. NExt Upg: 12 % Penetration. [Unlocked]



Example 2.

Destruction Skill.

Abilities:

Freeze: 15 % chance to freeze an enemy for 7 seconds with frost spells. Next Upg: 23 % chance to freeze enemy for 10 seconds. [Locked]

Scorching: +2 burn dmg for 6 seconds to fire spells. Next upg: 3 dmg for 7 seconds. [Locked]

Lightning Beam: Peformed by holding down the cast button with a shock spell as you like until your magicka is drained. [Unlocked]

Now, when you level up, you get 3 points to upgrade an ability or either unlock a new one. Of course there will be way more abilities to each and every skill. You are welcome to add new abilities.

Thoughts?

Overall a pretty nice idea but the whole "You have gained a lvl and 3 skill points" is kinda meh. Make these abilities obtainable by actually doing something related to them.

Raising athletics so you can lvl up and then unlocking lightning beams and fire meteors and such is rather immersion breaking, even to the casual gamer.

I like the idea. However, I think that you should unlock abilities by doing certain actions with a skill, rather than just getting a bunch of points every level. For instance, when you cast frost spells, in addition to gaining exp for destruction, you would also gain some exp towards unlocking frost abilities. I'm not really sure how that would be implemented for other skills though.

I know it seems unrealistick the way that abilities is unlocked, but it still keeps a warrior from unlocking spell abilities, because the he would loose skill points and loose new abilitis that his class needs.

I like it

but I want MORE

I know its an example so

Sounds like Dragon Age, to an extent.

Or a MMORPG.

Oblivion's skill system was nearly perfect; they just needed to cut down on exploits or make it level faster.

Implementing this idea also comes with a lot of problems. For example, Bleed would be rendered completely useless past character level 2. Also, having freeze would be unnecessary as we already have Paralyze. The problems continue to pile-up so on and so forth until you're left with only a few useful abilities, unless of course you had a nigh-infinite amount of upgrades. But then you could become TOO powerful.

I think TES should stay away from perks and special abilities entirely, character development and stats are already more or less perfect as-is.

I always thought it would be interesting if they gave each skill (or at least each major skill) a diablo 2 style skill tree with a "perk" every earned skill level, with some perks have skill rank prerequisites. Training, magic, and racial bonuses would just give a bonus to skill, but would not give any perks.

But the skill system in TES becomes repetetive. I mean, you play a warrior at level 20 just as you did when you are level 2. You actually dont learn anything new or get to use new strategies. I think that when you get skilled in something, you will learn new things at the same time as new moves or powers.

I like the idea of rare special abilities, but definitely not in a system with skill points and staring at an entire galaxy of statistics each time you level up.

Rather have abilities that you can learn from actual characters in the game.

I think that's what we are going to see this time

no point arguing though the game is already finished I guess

Still, if they did it in such an extensive way, why use the skill number directly at all? Which would make skill bonuses irrelevant, though you could always have bonuses to specific abilities, or to all abilities under a skill.

No, it adds another layer of complexity. I think those types of abilities should be tied automatically to the skill rank of a skill. The abilities "upgrade" on their own with increased skill ranks. Or something like that. I'm not sure. All I know is that adding another points system on top of the skill system gives me a bit of a headache. I'd rather see the significance of skills improve, rather than add on an entire new layer of abilities to keep track of.

TES isn't the traditional "you leveled here's some points" RPG if a warrior want's spells then he'll have them in TES, don't take away my ability to make the class i want to make the way i want it made, if you want to play a warrior with no spells then don't go buy spells and don't pick any of the casting schools as your primary abilities simple as that.

You couldn't play a warrior with no spells in vanilla Oblivion...

You should be able to learn abilities from skill trainers if your skill is high enough, instead of getting perks at 25 level increments. It doesn't make sense how you can suddenly be able to do a new attack or cast a new spell when you defeat a thousand mudcrabs. These must be learnt from a trainer, however there should be multiple abilities for each skill at each increment, so you can choose from one of three perks at Apprentice, then again at Journeyman, etc. This prevents every warrior/mage/thief/etc. from being exactly the same.

agreed...Increases in your major skills should result in massive perks that give you really cool abilities and proccs.


wether it should be a perk pool, talent tree, trained, or passively learned like Oblivion...not sure....but I want them.

Good god no! Leveling faster than i did on oblivion would be the worst possible thing they could do (mainly due to the leveling problem where if you don't level properly mobs start to become ultra hard to kill)...

If they get refine their leveled monsters system then things would be fine though...