Actual in-game lore lead me to believe that Cyrodiil was a jungle.


The early games had well represented Daedra, each had thier own minons, quests with good rewards, there where cultural races, languages, and a bunch of other stuff. It's a little bit different to Oblivion. While Morrowind was mainstreamed, it was nowhere near the standard of Oblivion. And I'm a Morrowind fan. I can understand how Morrowind was mainstreamed.


Oh my god, are you being serious? Do you not understand english?

• Summerset was the speculated location of Oblivion.
  
• Oblivion was mainstreamed.
  
• Summerset being Oblivion would have been bad, because Summerset shouldn't be mainstreamed.
  
• Summerset is full of non mainstream culture. Mainstream Summerset = Bad.

Ok, now what don't you get?


Have you ever used medieval armour? It's awkward and hard to use heavy armour, and light armour needs tobe used correctly (some dodging involved - it's not perfect)

I agree, armor skills should be gutted from the system. Suits of armor should have their own properties, not some divinely mandated hierarchy.



Dodging and parrying are fine, delegated to Acrobatics and Block. These actions should be entirely automated, entirely skill based, and not crazy rolls and jumps I need to twist my fingers over.

I had a thought on the armor skills, it kinda involved rolling them all into one [PLEASE READ FURTHER THAN THIS POINT] but still keeping them kinda separate.
The general idea is based on a older suggestion for skill grouping, like daggers, short swords, knifes being in a "Short short" group, swords, small axes, clubs in a "one handed weapons" group and so on because they do share a similar BASE handling. The mechanics there is that all objects in that group level on their own but they also have a "group level" which is calculated by adding up all levels of the subskills and dividing them by the amount of subskills. The group level gives the maximum effectiveness of weapons that are BELOW the Group level, so lets say you have a group level of 20 and a subskill at level 10, that means your maximum effectiveness with that subskill is up to level 20 at that point, you'd still lack special abilities that could raise with it's level though.

Now armors would be in a group too which is generally "Wear" as it doesn't just include armors but also clothing and other "restrictive" objects. The grouping there could be:
-Armors: All stiff and rigid protections like full plates which restricts movement
-Burden: Heavy items like mails, open plates and your backpack which generally isn't restrictive but slows you down
-Gear: Weapons, bags and objects you loosely carry on your body that hinder motions and makes noise
-Attire: Clothing, robes, dresses and disguises, can hinder motions depending on the type and craft of the outfit but give some protection and can change how people percept you (disguises, stealth clothes...)
-Restraints: Ropes, chains, cuffs, nets but also when you're grabbed by something, with high skill you can escape better and move more freely even while restrained


Also I really wouldn't differ between heavy armor and light armor but just how the armor is built, it's material and individual abilities of that material. That way there's no "THE BEST" armor but always best for certain situations.

Imo, that's terrible. A longsword is different to an axe. A Claymore is different to a warhammer. etc. I also wouldn't want to see it like this for armour.


Certain armours should give different bonuses. It's a far easier, and more practicle solution.

• Leather armour, being the quietest armour (and related heavily to thieves), should give me some kind of a sneak bonus.
  
• Steel armour, being the paladin-ey, anti magic type of armour, should be a spell reflective armour.
  
• Glass armour, being brittle and magic looking, should be highly enchantable, but wear out quickly.
  
• Silver armour, being silver, should lessen attacks from undead.

Also, armour rating should be included, but a higher armour rating generally means less of another bonus. For example, Orcish armour may have a high amount of protection, but silver armour may be the best choice, if you're on your way to a coven of necromancers.

My suggestions for what the bonuses should be may be wrong, but that's not the point.

Cool. I was thinking with endurance and agility and so on that those numbers would represent the burden this armor places against those attributes or skills. That way you would fatigue faster while wearing larger armors, you would have trouble with acrobatics, and be slower running. That would all need to be tweaked a lot.

Fluting is a procedure to make metal armor stronger and lighter, so only certain types in the game could have it. Steel, Iron, Orcish, Elven, and Mithril. Dwarven wouldn't have it because you'd have to reforge all the pieces to put it in.
http://myweb.cableone.net/thor276/GIFS/FLUTED.JPG

I think enchantability and spell resistance could be worked together if we say the material that is very enchantable is not very resistant. To the opposite, maybe Orcish, it protects you from magic and won't take well to enchantments.

Sound and shine are related to stealth. I think stealth should be three things: how well they can see you, how well they can hear you, and how distracted they are. Shined armor reflects light quite a bit, so you'd be easy to spot. Sound is the clanking while you move around. Leather mostly wouldn't have shine or much sound.

Weight is quite an important one that I forgot to include. :foodndrink:

Sure, and I've made some before. It is awkward and hard to use it, but I don't believe that the use of armor qualifies as a 1-100 skill rating in the same way that weapon mastery or magic would be. The effect of this was discussed previously to be taken care of by having an adjustment period to the armor when you put it on, that would then apply to similar types of armor.

The skill difference also gets murky between heavy and light armor, because it's saying that a master of heavy armor wouldn't be well protected if he puts on glass armor because it is classified as light. Lighter armor that protects him to a better degree is what he would want to be using anyway so he wouldn't wear down his fatigue in a fight.


:rock:

Oh, I read it shrine. :bonk:
Yeah, definitely add sound and shine.
Fluting could just be like a "Fine Steel ------" instead of an armor variable.
And the attribute stuff makes more sense.
:mohawk:

But they handle much more alike than a hatchet and a two handed waraxe, grouping those together would make even LESS sense (looking kinda similar does not mean they ARE similar).
YES they are different but they are HANDLED kinda similar, what is different is their center of weight but the BASE use is very similar.

I think its a kinda cheat, I mean, you get 5 skills in picking "wear" skill alone.

That's why I'd get rid of the whole "pick your skills" entirely and have just USE skills instead.
Plus instead of the group you could select the subskill instead which is more trained, I'm for a complete overhaul of the whole system and not just reassigning them.

Also if you think of it like this, if you'd "pick" the wear skill the "points" you'd get are evenly distributed over all the subskills, if you pick a subskill it's individually trained higher, the others just have the maximum efficiency due to the skill groups level which, as mentioned, would not include certain abilities that are only useful on higher levels.

Swords and hammers are used compltely differently.

Swords stab, slash and chop.

Hammers smash things.

Swords are the more... delicate? version. Hammers are the more brutish version. You need to learn differently to use each one.

I would actually rather have Oblivion's system than this, tbh. And that svcks.

If anything, the weapon skills should be expanded. My characters should all be super unique. One specialises in one handed swords, one specialises in 2 handed hammers. One specialises in spears, etc. etc.

That probably is just me though, but at least one handed weapons and two handed weapons of a type should be the only things grouped together.


Something else: When I have a two handed weapons, I shouldn't be able to use a shield. It's kinda the whole point of a two handed weapon. More damage, less defense.

Agreed, it was acceptable to mix Blunt and Axe into one skill, but swords are nowere near the same as a wahammer!

For this situation, I would split the skills from what they currently are into:

Sword (Agility) - One handed swords
Greatsword (Strength)- Two handed swords
Hafted (Strength) -One handed warhammers, axes, and maces
Large Hafted (Strength) - Two handed http://medieval.stormthecastle.com/images/productimages/warhammer, axes, and maces
Concealed Weapons (Speed) - Daggers and thrown weapons

Well the thing is this, imagine you're swinging a sword, then imagine swinging a hatchet and the imagine swinging a hammer. The movement your arm and hand does is very similar between all three.
Now do the same imagining you swing a two handed sword, a large axe and a sledgehammer. You'll again find the movements are very similar.

This system is not based on weapon types but their HANDLING. The weapon types still play a role as they are split into SUB skills, the group skill simply tells you how well you can HANDLE weapons that use that kinda of motion. In a sense the system I suggest is even more split up, it just groups those together that have a similar handling, I didn't really MERGE any I split them into even more sub groups.
And yes you can jab with a hammer and an axe, some made for combat even have a pike just for doing that.

Axes have more torque than a sword of the same length.
They handle differently enough.
And a 2 hander axe does not handle like a 3-4 foot sword.

Granted the weapon classes could still be split up depending on the weapons weight center, ones that are more top heavy like axes, morning stars clubs and hammers and ones that are more center balanced like swords, blackjacks and nightsticks

Though the system as I suggested would NOT merge them in any way, it actually adds a lot more separate skills and just combines them in groups.
You'd have One handed swords, One handed axes, One handed clubs and such all as THEIR OWN SKILL, they all are just in one SKILL GROUP. This means they do level ON THEIR OWN but just PROFIT from each other, this system would not take ANY away it adds a LOAD more and still not makes leveling each individually a pain since they profit from each other.

So it would look like this:
----------- Misc ----- One handed ----- Two handed ----- Speech ----- etc.
Stealth:

Magic:

Combat:

And the skills would fall under 2 separate categories, as well as attributes?

Partly, first i hate the "big 3" sorting, there is no clear distinction between "this is for class X and this for class Y", so no "all is dividable by 3" and such, I don't even try to squeeze it into that direction.

The skills would be like this:
Skill group:
-Subskill 1
-Subskill 2
-Subskill 3
...


For example, one group can be "One handed weapons" which for example includes (in my current system) swords, small axes, clubs and hammers (there would be more but i only made 4 for simplicities sake), everything that's "relatively" heavy and large but still wielded in one hand and is a weapon you swing with (ones PRIMARILY used for stabbing [not spears though, they are polearms] are in another group). Every subskill has it's own level so you could have swords at 40, small axes at 20, clubs at 15 and hammers at 5.
However they are also GROUPED which means their levels influence each other, the mechanic behind that is simple, take all levels of the subskills, add them up and divide by the amount of subskills, this gives you the "group level". This is how efficient you can use subskills that are actually below the groups level. With the above example all levels added together are 80, divided by 4 subskills that means the group level is 20, so you could also use clubs and hammers to a maximum efficiency as is they'd be level 20, however you don't actually get the full bonus of actually being at the level out of it. Being experienced with a sword and only having the group skill increasing your efficiency with a hammer means you'll still tire out relatively fast from using you, pretty much you got SOME skills in it already but not as many as if you really trained it.
With this system skills that are lower than the groups level get a little push but not really a level up, sticking to one subskill in a group can make that rise though.

So in total you have a lot more skills you can train and a lot more within that group you can simply use "efficiently". So when your sword gets knocked down a dark hole and all you got it a hammer you're not screwed, you're not as good with it as you'd be with a sword but you still got SOME experience because they handle similarly enough.


The exact calculation could still be overworked, like a skill that is lower does profit a little less from the groups level but this is still open, I just wanted to explain the system in some more detail and hopefully make it a little more understandable.


EDIT: Additionally it has some pros and cons to put skills in a group, the pro is that all skills in the group profit from the group level, the con is that the more are in a group the more the level gets split up between them. A group having 4 skills means those 4 will profit to a bigger degree, one with 6 means more skills profit but to a smaller degree. This kinda balances out how many are on one group, more skills means less bonus, fewer skills means more bonus.

EDIT 2: And on Attributes, each attribute would count towards the subskill it's more fitting to, NOT the skill group. Additionally I'd also change that every subskill can connect into MORE than just one attribute, some weapons require just as much strength as they do speed, some demand more strength, some a mix of strength and dexterity and so on. Which attribute dominates is dependent on the USE of the weapon, swinging a dagger sideways to keep someone off you requires speed, jamming it deep into someones body requires more strength, but they are still ALL needed, the degree of how much just changes.

I would instead make all skills under one attribute increase faster if the attribute is high. So using a Maul makes you strong, and that allows you to learn to use a greatsword at a much faster rate than learning to use throwing knives.

More strength still means you can throw the knife stronger, not more accurate but stronger.

I wouldn't tie it into learning/leveling speed, just what is useful for what. High speed means you can handle a weapon faster, high strength means you can use it with more strength.

I was mostly meaning that knife throwing wouldn't be a strength skill. Weapons need to be tied effectively enough to their governing attribute that the other attributes only contribute in a minor way.

I agree that it makes little sense for armor skills to improve through a character's getting beat up, but just because a realistic mechanism for improving Armor isn't found doesn't mean that the skill should be ditched.

The benefit of armor: it reduces damage.

The cost of wearing armor: It impedes movement:

• Your maximum attack rates are reduced.
  
• Your skill effectivness is reduced (as spell casting is reduced in Oblivion).

Armor skill:

• Offsets the movement penalties for wearing armor, but never completely offsets it.
  
• Somewhat improves the durability of armor (because the character is better at maintaining it).

The benefits of being unarmored are higher attack rates and no reductions in skill effectiveness.

If we were to shoehorn the above handling of armor into Oblivion, we would see things like:

• You can't run as fast.
  
• You can't jump as far.
  
• Your Sword, Axe, or Hand to Hand attacks do less damage.
  
• Your maximum attack rate is reduced for Sword, Axe, Hand to Hand, and Archery.
  
• Your blocking isn't as effective.

There are enough plausible and interesting consequences to having armor as a skill that I think it is good to have it even if the means for improving it is quirky.

And does this as a 1-100 skill stand up in the ranks of mastery with things like Mysticism and Mauls? Is being able to run slightly faster in armor any comparison to being able to summon spider daedra from Oblivion? Is proper maintenance of your gear a good companion in the skill hierarchy to being able to make pinpoint shots with longbows? I don't think it musters itself as the same quality of a skill as the others we list.

Not that I want to keep the Armorer skill either, but your idea for this armor skill steps into what the Armorer skill would do in terms of maintenance. Most of what you laid out could appropriately be tied to the armor itself with a period of familiarity. Your penalties are slightly reduced as the period of familiarity goes on, but never improves past a set point.

With armorer, I mostly don't like it because you can't fix armor by banging on it with a hammer out in the woods. And at that, you can't fix leather, or glass, or several other types by that method at all. I don't think it's too prohibitive to take armor to a blacksmith for repair if it's a metal, cordwainer for leather, and so on.

No it wasn't.

It is better to have blunt and axe weapons in one skill than it is to have one handed blunt and two handed blunt weapons in the same skill.

Not to hijack this but as mentioned with my system they would be grouped but not merged, meaning they are ARE somewhat together but still each their own thing.