Skill Help(2)
As you no doubt have noticed by now, The Two Towers is a skill based
system. Combat, abilities, spells, and more are all based upon your
skills, which are on a 1-100 scale. The better your skills, the better
you will perform at certain actions. It is important to note that skills
are not used directly by the player. Rather, they are checked by the MUD
when a player tries to use one of the professional abilities (headbutt,
cast, steal, etc), as well as in many other places.
In short, skills determine how successful you will be at many important
actions.
^ How do I get them?
Skills are learned through a variety of means. Some skills, like combat
skills, improve with use, while others do not. In general, all skills must
be learned and improved by visiting a trainer. Trainers are located in
many locations, and teach a variety of different skills.
^ Skills and Professions
At the heart of the Profession system is the dynamic skill system.
Each profession has its own set of skills. These are called
professional skills. When you join a profession, you will see these
labeled as 'professional skills' when you type 'skills'. Each profession
has 4 major skills. These skills can be learned up to 100 percent, and do
not degrade as long as you are a member of that particular profession.
Also notice that you may have, or can gain 'other skills'. You may learn
4 'other' skills (skills not specific to your profession). These 'other
skills' may be learned up to 60 percent, and will degrade over time (So
retrain them!!).
You may only have a total of 4 professional, and 4 other skills.
Thus, you may be a member of a profession, and excel in that profession's
skills, while also 'dabbling' in other fields as well. This allows for a
warrior who knows a bit of magic, or a wizard who knows a bit of
thievery, and a bit about being a warrior, etc, etc, and allows for
maximum character variation, while maintaining a balanced game.
^ What happens when I change my profession?
When you change your profession, your old professional skills will be
moved into your "Other skills" slot, and the new professional skills will
move into their place.
Consider the following example:
Newguy the thief wants to change his profession to wizard. However, he
still has tactics skill:
Professional Skills: Other Skills:
Nimbleness : 20 Tactics : 10
Locksmith : 20
Stealth : 20
Theft : 20
When he goes to a wizard trainer, he will receive a message that he
cannot become a wizard just now: there is no space in his "other"
skills to move his current professional skills. So, he needs to wait
until his tactics skill is gone; he may use "skills disuse" command
for that (see below).
After tactics is gone, Newguy can become a wizard. He goes to the
trainer and confirms change of his profession. After that, his skills
look like this:
Professional Skills: Other Skills:
6th sense : 10 Appraisal : 20
Concentration : 10 Locksmith : 20
Control magic : 10 Stealth : 20
Resist magic : 10 Theft : 20
Note that the old 'professional skills' that NewGuy had as a thief have
now become 'other skills'. They will begin to degrade, and will need to
be retrained if NewGuy wants to keep his skills up.
--REMEMBER: 'other skills' can only be practiced up to 60 percent!
ALSO NOTE: Since 'other skills' are trainable only to 60, and decline,
when you change professions, your professional skills, if greater than
60, will become 60.
^ What are "disused skills"?
Disused skills are the skills that you no longer need and want to get
rid of, most probably because of them blocking your wanted profession
change. You may select one (and only one) skill to disuse with the
"skills disuse" command. See 'help skills' for detailed syntax. Also,
for abilities currently restricted to a single profession, skills which
are useless to you after a change will be disused as well.
A vast amount of character variation can be created with this system!
Try the different professions, test out the different abilities,
mix/match until you have found the perfect settings!
See also:
skills,
skills3
