Forgotten Kingdoms Forums

It's been a while but I hope I'm not rusty.

I thought of an idea, suppose skills/spells were on a 0-100% scale (100% being grand master). The teach skill instead of being a one time thing could be like a setting turned on, and it continues to go off every tick.

For example, I type teach steal Joe. Then every tick he gets 5% of the skill I know.

So about this grandmaster teaching? This game takes WAY too long to skill up most things, and long for weapon skills or spells you use every day. I suggest you can teach to 50% of your ability. Thus if you know a skill/spell at 55%, you can teach someone up to 5% of it. If you have the teaching feat that reduces it to say, 30%, so it means I could teach someone up to 25%. If I take it again it reduces the penalty less.

I'm writing this while I wait forever between memorising my spells (got lots of downtime now with this new memorization system). So if it seems a little confusing just ask.

So what do you guys think?

Aglaca

The descriptions of skill levels are as follows:
Inept
Amateur (Can teach to here)
Novice
Apprentice
Journeyman
Adept
Expert (2 points in teacher feat)
Master (1 point in teacher feat)
Grandmaster (Teacher no feats)



This is how our teach is set up now i believe.

New systems for teaching, including setting up master/apprentice relationships have been under discussion since Feb 19, 2007. In my opinion, that's the number one change from which the whole game could benefit the more currently, but we haven't managed to agree on a system yet.

But yes, it's being discussed.

And once this problem is fixed, we can have more PC-taught spells and skills and perhaps even present PC-teaching as a valid alternative that would allow players to completely ignore mob teachers if they wanted.

Dalvyn wrote:New systems for teaching, including setting up master/apprentice relationships have been under discussion since Feb 19, 2007. In my opinion, that's the number one change from which the whole game could benefit the more currently, but we haven't managed to agree on a system yet.

But yes, it's being discussed.

And once this problem is fixed, we can have more PC-taught spells and skills and perhaps even present PC-teaching as a valid alternative that would allow players to completely ignore mob teachers if they wanted.

So what do you think of the system I suggested?

I'm not going into details, but the main goals of the system currently being examined are as follows:

• Allow PCs who choose to do so to train exclusively from players, thereby offering a valid (= better, or equal) replacement to training from mobs;
• Remove the GM restriction to teaching; allow PCs to teach skills much sooner (obviously, the more you know a skill, the higher you can teach it);
• Use a three-tier system: (a) normal PCs, (b) teacher PCs with one "teacher" feat, (c) devoted teacher PCs with two "teacher" feats;
• Offer a technical base to master/apprentice roleplays, where an elder ranger can tutor a novice, where a master wizard can tutor apprentices, and so on

Just one more idea,

The skills could be in line with true D&D and you either know a skill/spell or you don't. It works as it's supposed to or you don't have it.

Then make the teaching feat the only way you can teach the skill to other people.

If this has been discussed for 6 months it may be time to come up with something rather than let the casting player base sit around, reading the help files, being taunted by the spells list, seeing other people use skills that you can learn but never get and the like.

Aglaca

Wiiiind that neck in a tad

Aglaca wrote:If this has been discussed for 6 months it may be time to come up with something rather than let the casting player base sit around, reading the help files, being taunted by the spells list, seeing other people use skills that you can learn but never get and the like.
Aglaca

Why can you never get these skills? Scribe is sometimes an option as well - not completely ideal since you start at inept, but possible. And if they can cast it but didn´t get it via scribe, persumably it can be learned somewhere? Not everyone has to have every spell or skill - I´ll quote The Incredibles here...´When everyone's super...no one will be´. No one has every spell or skill...and it will take time for them to be put in.

They say that imitation is the nicest form of flattery... so my kids are duly flattered Hviti

http://www.gallwey.com/fk/board/viewtopic.php?t=6625

Nice to know that some of the things I post seep into the subconscious

Hviti wrote:Why can you never get these skills? Scribe is sometimes an option as well - not completely ideal since you start at inept, but possible. And if they can cast it but didn´t get it via scribe, persumably it can be learned somewhere? Not everyone has to have every spell or skill - I´ll quote The Incredibles here...´When everyone's super...no one will be´. No one has every spell or skill...and it will take time for them to be put in.

I can tell you don't play a wizard/cleric

Scribe can no longer be learned, and no one can teach it because no one has the hundreds of thousands of plat it would take to get it to master (Not kidding). Scribe is not used nearly as often as a weapon skill, now think of how often you use your weapon skill (blades, 2nd, 3rd attack) and how long it took to get it to master or grandmaster. Tons of times, right? Now imagine scribe, that every time it's used stops you from doing anything else for 20-45 seconds (never counted), and costs 3x the already pricy spell components (need to have the spell memorised 3 times, and have the components for 3), plus the plat for the blank scroll to start with. Plus if you start at inept like most of us, you fail most the time and still burn expensive spell components.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying anything bad at all about how scribe works, I think it's fair. But expecting someone to get it to grandmaster or spend a feat and get it to master as a means of teaching others is not viable. Also pointing out that you must have scribe before you can learn spells from scrolls.

I consider spells to be broken down into categories:
Category -- Example
Damage -- Magic missile, lightning bolt, meteor swarm
Defense -- Stone skin, fireshield
Resist -- Resist fire/ice/cold/acid, mind blank
Utility -- Fly, invis, teleport
Incapacitating -- Blindness, sleep

As far as skill/spell availability, they arnt. My mage who has 9th lvl spell slots has to fill them with magic missiles, and sometimes lightning bolts, as far as defense, we get 2 4th lvl spells Stone skin and ice/fireshield. Now take a look at the wizard spell help files and see how many spells are coded and just not in the game (I understand the instant death spells and not asking for em, can seem over powered even if the saving throw system worked). Other than that we know resist spells, and a couple utility spells. My friend the invoker, the supposed battle wizard, uses a 2nd level wizard spell as his main attack. Specialty classes get it worse than anyone currently, because as a mage I can learn every spell I come across, but specialty classes can't, and the bonus slots they have for high level go unused because their spells arnt trainable.

Think about this, how many wizards have managed to get to 50? A handful, and how long do they play after they get to 50? Not long, why? Because of this. Also I talked to 2 lvl 50 priests (both used to be lvl 51), they both quit playing because of this and one of them another factor I wont get into.

Just noticed this topic got off topic, but I figure we would need the spells in the game before we worried about teaching them.

Not complaining, simply explaining to non-casters what it's like currently, and what it's been like since I started playing this mud (Before the first year anniversary, a mage was my first toon).

Aglaca

[Edited to clean up post]

I'd just like to say that I don't really agree with the argument that not everyone should have everything. Although actually I agree with this, I prefer systems where you can only pick a finite amount of skills/spells because it makes characters unique. But the way things are going now it seems like NO one can get these skills(scribe, brew) because the mob that people used to learn it from was removed and few characters are good enough at it to teach it to others. It seems that when you start thinking it's fine the way it is, because not everyone should have these skills, then not everyone having these skills becomes everyone not having these skills.

One thing I've noticed about changes is that skills ect are removed before their replacements are added, and then their replacements don't get added. I'm not criticizing or making a judgment call, merely making an observation. I think it's rather unfair to remove any way of learning a skill except via teaching(which in my opinion at present is a flawed system, there simply aren't enough teachers and teach doesn't teach high enough - but these are points that have already been raised and are known) and then expect people not to want those skills that older, veteran casters got but younger ones have little hope of ever obtaining.

Just my two cents, I like to see things added rather than taken away I guess.

And as a small side note, Hviti's player does play a wizard character. A rather prominent one if I do say so myself.

First let me state i play Wizards almost to the exclusion of all other classes. Most of them are specialists including an invoker and even a necromancer (in my opinion the weakest of the specialist classes). And I do not agree that mages are necessarily weak or disadvantaged. I have certainly stood toe to toe with priests and other characters without feeling out gunned. I might not have won every fight but the potential was certainly there.

Firstly, you do not need to know scribe to be able to write spells from a scroll into your spellbook, the write command does this.

Secondly, Spells are out there to be found, both defensive and offensive. I have never lacked for variety and though I do use Stone skin ( a bit of a no brainer) i do also use several other defence spells my personal favourite being Mirror image which is not that hard to find. As far as offence goes one of my characters with invocation as a banned school still has 4 or 5 main attack spells to choose from. And though I would love to be chucking polar rays and meteor swarms around i am quite happy to wait and use what I have in as creative way as I can.

As far as memorising low level spells into high level slots, i certainly do this intentionally so that I can use metamagic on them. The possibilities of twin spelled or quickened mid level attack spells are many fold and often extremely lethal. Even putting a spell one or two levels higher can be uses to your advantage for certain feats.

And if you want to try really being hard done by as a mage be a Drow or Orc mage, almost no access to spells and even when you can learn them you cant get half of the components you need to cast them.

Dont get me wrong though, clerics are in my opinion the strongest class on the mud because of there access via there domains to some of the higher level spells that no mage can currently learn. But I am not complaining about this, new spells will i am sure become available as areas are built and updated. And there have been IMM run events in the past that have released some new spells to the general spell casting public. What is annoying is that without scribe or a teaching system it is impossible for the players to pass these spells on to other players.

A properly working teaching system is i think one of the main solutions to the current problems. There are characters out there that know more spells than others and lack the ability to pass this information on. It would be a tremendous boost to RP to allow proper teaching of spells and skills. Obviously with some limits, no learning a spell from a scroll or book to inept and then teaching it all and sundry. To me this is the single most useful change that could be made to the whole mud.

Personally i do wish that scribe and brew as well as the wand and staff creation skills were available. And i do find it somewhat annoying that older characters could learn them but newer ones can not. If i can suggest a possible solution, could we make them take a feat point as in table top ? this would limit them somewhat but would allow a mage or cleric who really wanted such feats to learn all of them at the cost of learning other useful feats such as metamagic. Anyone want to play an alchemist and magic item creator? Not going to be the greatest adventurer but would be good fun to RP.

What would be even cooler would be if some of the item crafting skill worked like the current baking craft whereby you could combine various items to produce different wands or staffs, which you could then be enchanted. But perhaps i am thinking too far ahead.

Duranamir the Drow mage.

For wizards specifically - while i think the current system isn't too unreasonable, i do believe there are a few valid points made here.

I think an easy way to fix a lot of the grumbling about not knowing every single spell available to learn, would be to open up guild halls (the ones for schools of magic) for all wizards...and then allow the benefit of being that type of wizard to be the potential to fully utilize that spell, as opposed to being the only wizards in faerun with those spells.

But when it's all boiled down, Wizards are sitting fat once they get the coin to be able to learn what they want to and buy the components they need. I know quite a few PC's out there would pay a lot of platinum to have wizards in their debt.

For memorizing spells, I just want to remind wizard pc's that the standard role for a wizard in a party isn't to be a consistent source of damage. 90% of the combat a wizard can very realistically just stand around with their shield/stoneskin up and applaud when things fall over. The nature of the wizard role in dnd is to get around obstacles otherwise impassable, and to be a magical cannon when the party /needs/ more firepower.

Most wizards can one shot any NPC in the game, about 30% chance per cast, with an upper mid level spell. As far as class strength goes, they're far from being weak.

In summary, I don't think any casters are getting hosed. But I have never seen the point of wizard guilds banning wizards from other schools...removing that would free up a couple spells, and make a more obvious place to look from an IC perspective.

---------

Edit - I just realized that had nothing to do with teaching. Bring back a scribe teacher and it'll fix itself (for casters), but things will get crazy again. Or automatically give the scribe skill to the PC's of the IMM/admin staff or other characters played by people the staff trusts to deal with that skill responsibly...sorta elitist, but it's better than never having a chance of getting the spell (imo).

Kelemvor wrote:They say that imitation is the nicest form of flattery... so my kids are duly flattered Hviti

http://www.gallwey.com/fk/board/viewtopic.php?t=6625

Nice to know that some of the things I post seep into the subconscious

Whaddya know, I have ESP w/death (actually, it came to mind because I just saw it in spanish, but yay for coincidences)

Aglaca wrote:Also pointing out that you must have scribe before you can learn spells from scrolls.

Doesn´t write work without having the scribe skill?

I agree that PC teaching of brew/scribe would be almost impossible without a new teaching system.

Spells, however, can still be learned by scroll from at least 3 or 4 active wizards. Starting at inept is a problem, but until a new system comes in I hope it´s sufficient.

Starting at inept isn't that bigger problem as skills increase easily at the lower levels. Especially with a high base intelligence, as most wizards have..