Skills

Veilan · Post by **Veilan** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 11:29 pm

I suppose it may be prudent to combine some of the movement skills into one. Balance / jump / climb could just be "athletics" or something (no, tumble is useful enough on its own), or similiar groupings. We may have to end up doing the same with lore again, so it may not be too bad an idea to consider.

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 1:42 pm

Of the unimplemented canon skills, I would break them into three categories: core, secondary, and impractical.

The core skills are those that almost every PC is likely to make use of, and which can be integrated into various scripts, be it static conversations or mobility-type scripts.

The secondary skills are those that are either peripheral to a general PC experience, or which would rely on as-yet-undeveloped code in order to effect a static implementation.

The impractical skills are excluded either because of the huge number of canon variations or because they lack any reasonably forseeable in-game use.

Core
Climb
Decipher Script
Jump
Sense Motive
Speak Language
Swim

Secondary
Balance
Escape Artist
Forgery
Gather Information
Handle Animal
Use Rope

Impractical
Craft
Disguise
Knowledge
Profession
Ride

Evro · Post by **Evro** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 4:39 pm

Wha?

Forgery, Escape Artist, Disguise, Mislead, Trick, Stab-in-the-back-just-when-you-thought-you-could-trust-them all should be the highest priority!

Oh, wait...that's right...not everyone's playing a rogue.

danielmn · Post by **danielmn** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:10 pm

I like the way you broke that down Rusty.

Nyarlathotep · Post by **Nyarlathotep** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:24 pm

I could see Gather Information being knocked down to the impractical level or needing to be reworked somehow since its primary usage is as an alternative to RP. For anything other than the general information about a locale I can see many of the same problems surrounding disguise plaguing GI (How'd you know where that Sharran temple was at? Great GI roll).

Not that it wouldn't have some limited usage in ALFA but given the hard ceiling we seem to be looking at in terms of skills that can be added I think it would probably drop into the impractical level.

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:28 pm

*nods* I would agree re. GI although an area-information GI-based text display would be relatively easy to implement. It's probably the lowest ranked of the 'secondary' skills.

Briefly, I would suggest that the core skills have to be included; the secondary skills could be considered individually along with NWN1 non-canon skills; and the impractical skills remain just that.

Nyarlathotep · Post by **Nyarlathotep** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:41 pm

Hmm I never considered an automated version of GI being able to give some general information on things found in game, I was thinking purely in terms of DM handled stuff. The text display thing sounds pretty cool actually.

BlakOrkz · Post by **BlakOrkz** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 6:45 pm

Couldn't that be tied into that nasty beast called: "Lore" ?

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » Mon Nov 26, 2007 12:59 pm

As Lore already represents the multitude of Knowledge skills, it is not ideal to further burden it.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 6:51 pm

Bumping this thread again for update: I did a bit of tinkering with the character creation XML files in hopes of finding a way to get them to display more entries for skills with very limited success- but now I've seen a report that the current NWN2/MotB patch actually lifts this limitation in part. Still not quite useable, but coming along.

-Character creation and levelup screens can (supposedly) now display expanded custom skillsets.

-These skills do not, however, appear on the character sheet, nor are they available at time of creation when used from hak files for a PW.

I'd at least call it signs of progress.

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 9:05 pm

Righto: two scenarios then.

1. We can used expanded skills.2da: ditch all the non-canon skills, add all the canon skills. Happy campers.

2. We can't use expanded skills.2da: we replace non-canon skills with key canon skills, see how many non-canon skills are left over.

The first needs Ciph to confirm a post-creation skill-allocation conversation; the second, just good pre-creation documentation.

Also, Ciph: do you want to directly ask Obsidian about skills.2da or shall I?

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 9:42 pm

Rusty wrote:1. We can used expanded skills.2da: ditch all the non-canon skills, add all the canon skills. Happy campers.

I think a decent case was made for keeping at least a few of the noncanon skills (parry especially, set trap possibly, Perform probably- though we could run it behind the scenes for bard skills).

I'd be keen to hear from OE if they've plans/suggestions to facilitate the addition of custom skills, in a manner that is PW-friendly. Campaign overrides accessible at character creation would be one possibility for this.

Rusty · Post by **Rusty** » Mon Dec 17, 2007 9:50 pm

Perform is a canon skill, just with more potentially usable skills.2da lines we can add variations (same with Lore->Knowledge). And while I agree that the case for Parry is a little stronger than Set Trap, if we have the option to go with a full D&D skill set, then I think that trumps any extra skills.

If we have to just go with replacing then we need to know, in particular:
1. Can we activate the disabled skills?
2. Can we ditch 3/4 crafting skills and run any crafting implementation off a single skill slot?
Yes to both frees up six additional 2da lines for canon skills; no to both means we have only five non-canon 2da lines to work with, and at least five core canon skills to include.

ç i p h é r · Post by **ç i p h é r** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 12:04 am

Rusty wrote:Also, Ciph: do you want to directly ask Obsidian about skills.2da or shall I?

By all means. I presume you mean through the round table?

Rusty wrote: 1. Can we activate the disabled skills?
2. Can we ditch 3/4 crafting skills and run any crafting implementation off a single skill slot?

1. If you mean can we use the skills they've commented out, yes. But, if there were any engine dependencies (ala something like KD), we can't do anything about those if they've been removed from the code.
2. Sure, but that would result in a very very poor crafting implementation.

AcadiusLost · Post by **AcadiusLost** » Sat Dec 22, 2007 5:35 am

They've apparently sorted out the charactercreationskills and levelupskills XMLs with this last patch, but the character sheet still doesn't show the custom skills, nor are haks available at character creation yet.

We can try to implement on what they've given us, with a convo-based skill point reassigning tool, if someone has time to make one, and let the later character sheet xml fix sort out the character sheet at 1.12 or so.