Tradeskills are your friends.

[Vibius]

What has inspired me open this topic is the fact that tradeskills although useful really few people have them trained to a point which it's more beneficial to you acquire an item by buying it to a shopkeeper than one made by a player.

I believe that mainly there are (or should be) two clear benefits in buying from a player:

-Roleplay.
-A item of better quality/price or one lightly personalized.
-It gives a possibility to characters to make coin.

Although Roleplay is nice and always welcomed, at the end of the day trusting your life to low quality weapons/armor which are inferior to those sold in shops isn't going to do any benefit to your health.

Unfortunatelly acquiring the level of skill in a tradeskill to the point that your items are likely to be requested will require a lot of doing practing that particular skill producing substandards items meanwhile.

This could have some possible solutions, taking in consideration that there is a point where items made by players are actually better.

-Making items sold by shopkeeper of worse quality. (Not practical or desirable)

-Making players achieve this level faster. (I think that this is the best idea)

The problem is achieving that point neither too fast or too slow.

Possible ideas that I have in mind are these:

-Creating the concept of favored tradeskill, a character would choose a tradeskill and he would get a one-time-unique high skill boost to this skill, it will make characters specially good in that skill and perhaps people could organize themselves; a PC decides to become an smelter and other a Weaponsmither and both work together buying the ore to an specialized miner.

-Access to specialized/antique machinery (which could give you a good bonus meanwhile you use your trade in that room) or access to high quality instruments (Which would give a bonus as well), access to those things might be granted upon doing a quest or paying a large amount of money.

-Trainers of tradeskills; For me is the less desirable option but it's an option after all.

Feel free to discuss.

[Dalvyn]

I would be very favourable to revising the trades in such a way so that

1) You can make useful things from the start. No more making 500 junk daggers then burying them or junking them because they have no use except for training.

2) Using the trade with a goal in mind is enough to get better. Smiths should only make armour/weapons/whatever that are going to be used. It's kind of related to point 1: if you can make useful things from the start, you might not need to use your skill just to practice. As a side note, I think that should be the case for ALL skills/spells/whatever: you should only use them when they are needed and not just "to practice", and that should be enough to bring you to interesting levels.

3) Revise the gains obtained when your skill increase. There shouldn't be thresholds of the type "Before skill level 7, you cannot make plate mail; after level 7, you can make plate mail." I think it would be better to make it so that making plate armour is possible at all skill level; the difference might be that it would take much longer at low level than at high level. One could consider for example the notion of "partial object".

Let's tackle the armoursmithing trade only for now. Assume we associate different "values" to each kind of armour. Just a random example (I haven't thought those values through, but it's just to give an idea):

chainmail base value = 500
splint mail base value = 1000
plate mail base value = 2500
full plate mail base value = 5000

body location modifier = x 1
arms/legs location modifier = x .85
head/hands/feet location modifier = x .75

So, for example, plate mail leggings would have a "value" of 5000 x .85 = 4250.

Now, let's say that you are limited to using your craft skills X times per RL hour/day, and that each time you use your skill, you can contribute "some value" to a project. The value you can contribute would depend on your skill; for example, it might be something like (skill_level)d10. If your skill was 5, you would be able to add 5d10 to the value of a project.

First, you'd have to start the project. That would work as per the current command. Something like "construct armour leg steel full". That would create an object in your inventory that is "partially constructed full plate steel leggings". The object state would be 35/4250 (where the 35 is the result on 5d10, if your skill level is 5).

Later on, you could work on your project. Maybe with a special command like "work <name of project>". That would add 5d10 to the value of the object.

Since you are limited to X uses of your craft skill per day, and how much value you add with each use depends on your skill, the more skilled craftsman would be able to work faster.

Obviously, other options are possible: adding in critical success (good work might mean that you add twice the normal value), modifier for material types, option to craft masterwork items [which would add to the value, and that could later be enchanted by wizards], ...

Note: this is quite close to the 3rd edition crafting system.

[Solaghar]

I definitely agree that this is a good idea, and I loved Dalvyn's notes about being able to use trade skills from the start. I had a dwarf once, and worked on mining and found it so completely dull that I couldn't go through with it. The idea of wasting hundreds of hours to learn to mine, smelt, and craft armor and weapons with nothing else going on but the mindless repetition of commands occurring just seems to me the opposite of what this game is built upon.

If someone could manufacture something useful from the start, if you could choose to mine for a rare ore (knowing that it might take much longer to find a vein), and if you improved just as fast no matter what you chose to construct, then I think we'd see more people picking up trades and utilizing them.

[Lathander]

Throw feats into the mix. Maybe one that allows you to decrease the time between construction. Or, one that adds to the modifier.

One of the things I liked in tabletop (remember I'm a good old 2nd ed. guy) was the list of professions from which you could choose your background. What were you before becoming an adventurer. You'd then have some VERY SMALL ability in that profession (because, of course, you abandonded that for adventerous glory!). Yet it was enough that the navigator could at least not get lost on the seas, the shipsmate could sail a small boat without crashing, you get the point. It might be cool to allow a list like this at creation. Just a thought as I read the above posts.

[Aegir]

One of the things I liked in tabletop (remember I'm a good old 2nd ed. guy) was the list of professions from which you could choose your background. What were you before becoming an adventurer. You'd then have some VERY SMALL ability in that profession (because, of course, you abandonded that for adventerous glory!).

They have something similar in 3E with the profession skill. That would be a bit hard to implement in a game like this, unless a list of background professions was added to char creation perhaps, which give varying benefits.

About my only comment, aside from I love this craft system, is to avoid the problem 3Es has, in making alot of the better items prohibitively time-consuming to make. When you're talking about 2 months to construct a suit of platemail... it just gets a bit useless. Now, if the most expensive items took, say, 7-10 days, then that'd work well.

[Jaenoic]

I have to say, Dalvyn, I think that's an amazingly innovative and workable idea.

Along the line of feats, to sort of join Lathander and Vibius's ideas, have a set of specialty feats like "master weaponsmith" that would give you a worthwhile bonus, but perhaps would limit the amount of trades you could learn/you could only take one of these feats/it prohibits you from learning and or using an opposite trade(think specialty wizard but with trades).

[Tobias]

I myself have a character I play as a smith but I lack the armour trade skill. I am quite adequate with weapons and slowly on wood. I wish they had a armour trading quest other than in mithril hall. The lack of people who can actually know/teach are few and far inbetween really. But Aye! It's fun rp and good way to make coin and to be known as. Someone wants some armour they are like hey! this smith and this smith are really great you should seek them out etc.. etc..

[Nedylene]

As an addendum... Any chance a Metal Enamelers (trade skill) to just paint the armour a solid color. IE turn a platinum gauntlet to a Red platinum gauntlet etc. Nothing fancy, just a color

[Tobias]

sounds nifty! and if you fail it has a chance to lower the quality of the said piece of equipment?

[Solaghar]

Another idea might be to allow more open quests in the game which would improve one's trade abilities by a point. Right now people learn trades once to inept and then must train them up from that point on by repeatedly doing the trade commands. If there were say, five or six mining quests, armor-smithing quests, wood carving quests, each taking on some different aspects of the trade, it would allow people to RP learning about it and increase to an extent without spending as much time working through the commands.

Another good option would be to take advantage of the new teaching system you've spoken of, and i'm sure trades makes up a part of that.

[Dalvyn]

Right. Plus there are some books in game that can increase your skills too.

But, yes... definitely waiting on the new system to see things changed a lot.

[Nysan]

Always interested in trade skill changes. My dwarf's a smith, thats all he does. His career, his life, he joy. He hasn't been to a dungeon type area in years, merely content to be a crafter. It is annoying to have to continue grinding away 1001 daggers, arrowheads, and various mail items to get to a place where he can have the code back his dwarf-smith life. I make use of many of his 'practice' materials by giving full sets of armor to younglings or smelting weapons down for arrowheads... but it would be nice to not have to spend another few hundred hours to make more useful items than ammo parts and newbie gear.

Hehe, not to mention the return of brew and the introduction of herbism in some form for certain other characters.

Happy to help in any way to revive the trade skills, if there is anything I can do.

[Tobias]

Aye Nysan! I feel the same. My elven smith does his own mining and smelting to go along with his crafts life to. Mining is equaling blah. You have to grind and grind at a wall to get enough base material to do any smithing as well.

[Nysan]

Aye Nysan! I feel the same. My elven smith does his own mining and smelting to go along with his crafts life to. Mining is equaling blah. You have to grind and grind at a wall to get enough base material to do any smithing as well.

Finding a spot you can mine and finding the right metal alone is a challenge. Then you get to stare at your stamina for the next 4 hours while you gather a bag or two full of ore just to make half a set of ring mail... On the brighter side, I am getting REALLY good at minesweeper.

[Belose]

I LOVE the idea proposed, and Dalvyn's analysis of it. Braeck hardly spends any time at all on mining and crafting the tools of his trade..WARRIOR.. for those who DIDN'T know that he really prefers fighting because he takes to long to get any better at it. Tie in with this time that we lose because we can't be in the game 24/7 even though we ARE passing time in the game while we are offline. Now if your charcter is aging in the game while you're not playing.. they should be doing SOMETHING. They can't sleep for days or weeks at a time till you get back to them to play them. I mean, just the skills they use while online in the character could be added to while offline.. basically, the continue to do what you were doing while playing, just not as well when you're not.. I played one mud where they had a set up like that.. can't remember where, honestly.. And honestly, I'm not trying to twink, either, but that's the main reason I got rid of a lot of my alts was because I couldn't give them the time they deserved to get good at anything. This would help a lot..
Thanks for reading.. have a good game!!!

[Lathander]

My elven smith does his own mining

That just never sounds right to me.

[Tobias]

Yea..lack of metals forces one to do what must be done! Although elves are self sufficient especially in thier kingdoms cut off from the rest. So of course they have miners.

[Vibius]

Also lapidary might be used to make jewel-like components; Silver mirrors, gold ankhs...

[Larethiel]

Whatelse are dwarves useful for than getting metals for elves?

I'm quite in favour with Solaghar's idea of offering a few mini-quests to improve a tradeskill and perhaps providing a list of tradeskills available for a class from which you can pick one at character creation which you know i.e. as inept? But then it's way easy to gain a tradeskill and I always like the quests that go along with learning a tradeskill.

[Sindri]

-Creating the concept of favored tradeskill, a character would choose a tradeskill and he would get a one-time-unique high skill boost to this skill, it will make characters specially good in that skill and perhaps people could organize themselves; a PC decides to become an smelter and other a Weaponsmither and both work together buying the ore to an specialized miner.

I like this idea a lot (perhaps everything but the favored trade would become a "hobby" and have its skill level capped). It would promote division of labor.