Languages

[Tyr]

You cannot learn an unlimited number of skills. You are limited by your class. That is the entire idea behind a class system.

If you were able to learn every skill out there, then what is the point of having classes?

Languages are limited by intelligence. There is already a feat called linguist that allows you to learn more than your intelligence would normally allow.

Tyr

[Dalvyn]

You cannot learn an unlimited number of skills. You are limited by your class. That is the entire idea behind a class system.

That is not the entire idea behind class sytems though. You can restrict available skills according to the chosen class, then have the player select skills amongst that list. That's basically the system used by D&D 3E: skills are either class skills (learnable at a relatively low cost in "skill points"), or cross-class skills (learnable, but at a higher cost), or skills that you cannot, ever, learn.

3E removed the last category, using only skills and cross-class skills (there are no longer skills that cannot be accessed).

I'll take a typical example of a class based on skills in D&D: rogues/thieves. They are given access to a large number of skills, that range from pickpocketing/steal, hide in shadows, listen, spot, search, use magic device, find traps, disable traps, pick locks, move silently (typical thieving skills) to persuasion, bluff, intimidate, read any language (typical roguish skills), in addition to "basic" skills like riding, handle animal, swim, and so on. Most of them are class-skills (low-cost) in D&D but a typical thief does not have enough skill points to learn them all.

If you were able to learn every skill out there, then what is the point of having classes?

Determining relative costs to skills though. But that's a bit beyond the initial topic, which basically was "Why limit the number of languages one can learn when there is no limit set on the number of skills that a character can learn?". And that question was being posed at two different levels: ICly, how can you explain a limit on languages but not on skills; and OOCly, what is the point of this limit, does it add to the roleplay value?

[Algon]

Wow, kind of puts in into perspective when you put it that way. lol So I would have to agree, there should be a cap on languages.

[Dalvyn]

Well, there are two ways to go I think: the realistic way, and the unlimited way. Or, more precisely, these are two extremes and there are several ways to go in-between them.

The realistic way: you can learn at most N languages (based on your Int). But then you can only learn to use N' weapons; you can only learn up to N'' skills; and you can only pratice effectively up to N''' trades (with N, N', N'', N''' carefully chosen).

The unlimited way: you can learn all the available languages, all the skills available to your class, all the weapon proficiencies available to your class, and all the trades you can find.

Currently, we go the realistic way for languages and the unlimited way for all the other "skills" (in the broad sense). I can find advantages and disadvantages in both extremes, but I am not really fond of going one way for languages and the other way for the rest.

Some advantages of the realistic way: (1) it's realistic; (2) it makes players make choices between options, as in "You cannot have them all"; (3) it makes for more variety in characters (instead of characters who all have the same set of skills, all those they could find a trainer for)

Some advantages of the unlimited way: (1) why bother with restrictions that are not fun?; (2) you don't have to choose what to spend your "skill" points on since you can have them all; (3) there is no better "build" and there is no way to get a useless character by choosing poorly where to spend skill points (and ignoring more important "skills" for example)

[Talos]

Another way to go, is the way which is as close to 3ed as possible. Having the rules fetish as I do, I'm always for this, and I would say that it basically follows the limited languages/unlimited skills route, and here's my logic:

In 3ed, You get one or two starting languages automatically. You get an additional language for each stat bonus point you start with. That's 6 languages max for a 1st level character with an 18 INT.
Conversely, neither weapons or spells are skills at all, and both are effectively unlimited. Fighters in particular start out proficient in nearly every weapon under the sun. Mages have the ability to learn every spell in their schools which they can find, and clerics automatically get every spell of a given spell level when they attain it.

One of the problems of these comparisons is the different environments between tabletop and mud. mud lends itself to incrementally increasing skills. Tabletop lends itself to streamlined rules and not having to keep track of fine points like how many times you've swung your sword.
This difference is worsened in that FK has no skill points. In tabletop you get your rush from leveling up, taking your hard-earned skill points feat points, and other points, and distributing them. In mud, you get the rush from seeing the "You improve your skill at ....." text. I believe this is largely because skills are generally more important in terms of power on FK. They have effectively usurped the role of THACO/BAB in tabletop, or doing your level in d6 damage for fireball. The point of this is that muds depend upon a slew of skills to keep players excited, and contantly working to improve themselves.
As far as weapons and spells go, I could go either way, but I lean towards maximum allowance, simply because this is similar to 3ed. People can try out different weapons, and not find themselves at a disadvantage because their chose to specialize in Ping Pong Paddles, only to find that there are no magical paddles in the game. Spells and weapons are largely a stylistic choice, in my view.
However, for languages I far prefer a limited selection. I view languages from two points. One is that of a builder, the other that of rp flavor. To me there is much rp value in making parts of a quest take part in a rare language. This requires the party to enlist magical or translational help. This increases the flavor of the world, and encourages grouping. When someone knows every language, the flavor of the world is decreased, because they still read every language they know in english on their screen. It decreases the foreign or exotic nature of encounters. I find a certain excitement in meeting a giant or demon that spouts a paragraph of gibberish. What did he just say? Is he threatening to eat me, or asking for my aid? Do I dare nod in agreement, or will I be selling my soul? Best go find a bard who knows giant/infernal. IF it lets me leave alive...Personally, I would like to see languages even MORE limited than they are now. For a fighter, there's the serious choice of power vs. knowledge. INT has skill-related benefits in FK that do not exist in 3ed, that skew this equation. But it is still a serious choice for fighters. Your fighter of average intelligence should know only 2 or 3 languages at most. For mages it comes as a bonus with more mana. And well it should. They are the bookish class, and they would need to be more familiar with other languages, on average.

Enough rambling. In summary, I think that spell and weapon skill availability should remain as it is. I think max languages should be halved. I'm not familiar with the precise working of the linguist feat, but it sounds pretty good to me in the help file. I think that focusing language skills in the mage/bard/cleric classes (and mostly mage and bard) would help to increase the usefulness of those classes in parties and set them apart from other classes. I think it would help bring a sense of the exotic back to the basic races such as elf and dwarf, and heighten that of non-pc races.

[Dalvyn]

I'm afraid you forgot several points of importance in your comparison, Talos.

- When you refered to the official rules, you forgot that it is also possible to learn new languages by simply spending skill points for that (1 per language for bards, 2 per language if you are not a bard). The initial (and that's the keyword) allotment of language is limited by your intelligence. Past that point, you can spend skill points to learn more, with no limit (except the number of skill points you have).

- "Weapon proficiencies are not limited". That is right, yet, we are only talking about proficiency here, not grandmastery. And here, we face a major difference between D&D and the mud: weapon skills in the mud give a character way more than a D&D proficiency. It would take a coder to confirm it, but I strongly suspect that being a grandmaster in a weapon skill means that you have big bonuses to your "to hit" roll and big bonuses to your "damage" roll. And, in D&D terms, that corresponds to weapon focus/specialization, which are feats (and thus heavily limited).

I did not preach for a limit on the number of weapon skills you can get up to apprentice (a level that I guess corresponds to proficiency). I would preach for a limit on the number of weapon skills you can grandmaster though, perhaps. But that's not really a major unbalancing point, since you still can only use one or two weapons at the same time.

- "How many spells you can learn is not limited in D&D". True again. I don't think the number of spells you can learn should be limited either. There are already other kinds of limitations (the most obvious one being that not all D&D spells are coded).

- The major point you forget in my opinion: You completely avoided mentioning skills. That's actually the main topics I wanted to inquire about. Skills are more important in the mud than in D&D, because we actually roleplay the day-to-day activities (that are generally ignored in table-top games). Now, try using the D&D rules to make a fighter with an average Int who has good scores in the skills Profession(cook), Craft(armor), Appraise, Craft(weapon), swim, ride, heal, animal handling, and spellcraft. You will most likely see that it is impossible to master, or even practice, all those skills. Why is it possible in the mud then ?

Your last paragraph explaining why languages should be limited can be applied to skills as well. And that's the question I asked in my first post here: why limit languages and not skills (skills as in 'D&D skills', mostly)? Or, in other words, why would it be interesting (balance-wise, rp-wise, ...) to limit the number of languages you can speak, but not the number of skills you can practice?

I am not saying we shouldn't limit languages. I am saying that we should either limit both languages and skills or neither, just to be consistent.

[Nysan]

If my prior post was unclear I'll be short and sweet here.
When I said unlimited weapons, skills, spells, ect. I was refering to those allowed by class not everything under the sun. I am confused with our current set up. We can learn any skill, spell, weapon, ect allowed by the class but not languages. I understand and respect the idea behind the lanuage limit but consider it unfair that only one of the areas of learning avaliable to us is limited while the others are not. In other words, all or nothing. I would support limiting all areas or not limiting any of them. Only limiting one feels like its unbalanced or half done. Hope this clears up my thoughts. Sorry for the confusion.

N.R.
Opinions mean something only if you let them. Just because one has an opinion that is different that yours doesn't mean it should bother you. Just means people are different. Enjoy,

[Alaudrien]

When it comes to limiting weapons I think it should be partly considered on the life span of said pperson. When reading FR books like about drittz when h ew as training he spent so much time with his daddy. Now any race could possibly master many weapons to become a true weapon master...but humans and other short lived races would be older. You don't really have to be smart. Learning to fight a certain way with weapons is more muscle memory...plenty of sparring with friends. Your mind learns so much but its your body that retains it to where it is just mere reflex. So limiting could be both good and bad. I don't see why it should be limited. While learning languages would take more meticulous things. Since you have to be able to seperate each language and like file ita way somewhere in your brain. Mages extremely smart and even if a fighter was smarter than a mage(unlikely yea) a mage practices many things in filing spells away in there head as long as in there books. I think a non mage really should be limited to a few 2 or 3 and could learn smattereings of others. That is just my opinion but everyone has made very valid points as well. It could go either way.

[Argentia]

Think about this, though:

With spells you have a spellbook, so you have something to help you "remember" them. Hence you can learn as many spells as you would like.

With skills they are all "different", IE you can learn how to start a fire, as well as learn to kick, punch, dodge, attack many times, ect. ect.

But with languages, they are all stored and processed in the same part of the brain. It is very difficult to learn many languages. And Mystra, just a note, just because you cannot learn languages does not mean you are not intelligent. =D I know many people who I consider smarter than me but they cannot learn languages for the life of them.

Take a real life example. Me. I know one language fluently and must put A LOT of practice into learning a few new ones. But at the same time I know how to dodge and attack, kick and punch properly, I can start a fire, I can cook, swim, I could ride a horse if I took the time to learn, I am proficient in many martial arts weapons, and I can disarm opponents with those weapons. But languages are a different thing. I only know five, and of those five I know one fluently, one rather well, one I do not speak but only read and write, and the other two I only know the basics. And it has taken me years of hard work to get that.

Anyway, that's just my take on it. I think it is rather realistic as is. Feel free to disregard/disagree with my post.

[Talos]

Yes, I did indeed overlook the fact that you can use skill points to learn as many languages as you want in 3ed. This does not, however, change the way I would like to see things. It only adds one more house rule to my list.
I'm not really concerned with what is (hyper)'realistic', because D&D does not concern itself with such things. It is an abstract system, meant for having fun with. Hit Points are not 'real', Saving throws are not 'real', and as many have pointed out, knowing twelve languages fluently is not 'real'. But that's not the point of the game.
Nor is the point equivalency between skill sets. I maintain that limited languages could contribute to the flavor of the world, as well as getting classes to group up. I do not see the same, if any, benefits to limiting weapons or spells in the same way. Making the three sets of skills conform to the same standard just for the sake of being the same makes no sense to me. And what of the rest of the skills? Are we going to end up with four skill families with four limits? How will we determine the limits of the less cerebral sets?
Or are we going to end up with all skills counting towards the same limiit? I could get behind this. I think it would give an even greater preponderance towards languages being a rare skill, especially amongst fighter types. I would have to converse with friends who are more familiar with the likely min/maxing consequences of such a move, but I am not against it offhand.
In summary, The worst thing we could do in my mind is unlimit languages. The best is to limit it further. A universal skill limit pool is still a wild card. The other skills I'm not overly concerned about; we limit weapons, great, people use different weapons, maybe. We limit spells, instead of everyone having all the same spells, everyone has a smaller number of the same spells. The rest of skills, maybe we see some benefits. I'm not sure we have enough other skills to make it work, but I haven't sat down and looked at tables yet. And that's it for me. Realism? Equality? Feh. Flavor, Challenge, Rp. These to me are goals to work toward.

Edit: Saw that I didn't really address Dal's specific questions, so;

"The major point you forget in my opinion: You completely avoided mentioning skills."
As far as non-trades go, I view them as largely inconsequential. Skills like pick lock are already limited by class. This helps cross-class grouping. Dig and Cook and the like do not impress me as skills of wide-spread importance that would help grouping, or unbalance the game. Regarding trades, it has been my assumption that the admins goals have been to allow people to contribute to the economy of the mud through trades, which is why we can get so many, as opposed to tabletop. In tabletop such trades are just for your own benefit, that of your group, or perhaps even just rp. Here there is a certain cachet in being able to make mithril armor, or your own nifty arrows, because this is a social game. Tabletop just does not have that same feel (in my experience).

"why would it be interesting (balance-wise, rp-wise, ...) to limit the number of languages you can speak, but not the number of skills you can practice? "
I thought I explained this in my first post, but to recap;
1. Languages bring a flavor to the environment of the world. When you cannot understand a mob, you realize that 'hey, this guy is way different from me. I'm in a way different place. What race is this guy? What language might he be speaking? How can I overcome this barrier?' Helps immersion, in my mind. When you know all languages, Mobs move more towards becoming all the same. This is because once I know dwarven and elven, they read exactly the same as common and each other and every other language I know. When I have mastered both axe and longsword, I still have to switch weapons, and people still notice what weapon I am using. When I master both smithing and leatherworking, I still make two entirely different sets of things. People notice. I notice. When everyone knows common, dwarven, elven, halfling, giant, and trollish, then nobody notices anymore. Not me, and not anyone else. Maybe I have to switch what I speak to talk to a shopkeeper. That's about it. Me and my buddy can't switch to elven to talk in secret amongst humans, because they all know elven as well. I would enjoy very much to see an even greater diversity of languages in the mud, down to regional dialects.
If I choose to use my limited skill slots to learn x weapons, y spells, and z other skills, by and large, this does not bring flavor to the world. It brings flavor to invidividual pcs. This is not to say it is a benefit not worth our time, but it IS different, and please keep in mind that my main point is to limit languages, or at least not broaden their availability. If Greg or Martin wants to code limits for other skills, that's kosher with me.

2. Languages can be used to increase the challenge of quests in ways that other skills cannot. Yes, I can key a quest off your dig skill. That's probably going to be a very limited type of quest. Languages have to do with communication, the basic building block of questing, and so can be used with any quest of any type. Even in combination with requirements for specific skills. It can further encourage grouping across many more types of quests in my mind, and with much less reaching to make it so. I can do it for any class quest, for any reason, at any place and time, reapeatedly, possibly requiring extensive and prolonged grouping. To me the magnatude of this effect for any single language skill is orders of magnitude greater than any other sinlge skill I can think of right now.

3. And while I'm going into exhaustive detail and rantage, here's another language related pet peeve of mine (mostly for those builders reading). Shop keepers and other busy folks who'll train you in a language. I'm going to contradict my statements on realism here, but it is in favor of increasing language rarity. A guy who is minding a shop, or temple, or who is on guard, is probably not going to have the time to train you in their language. It takes a lot of time, and concerted effort. MAYBE they could train you once, depending on what they're doing. Actually this should apply to most skills. Now, you are paying them, so rply you could say that you pay them to take a day or two off of work and teach you. Fine by me. You might consider how likely you would be to take a couple days off from your dayjob to train some random guy in a language - and how effective you would be at it, and how that might affect your standing at your job. And I'm sure we can come up with many other fancy rp reasons they can do it. But hey, I'm just saying I would like to see a bit more care taken in who trains intensive skills like languages. My opinion.

"I am not saying we shouldn't limit languages. I am saying that we should either limit both languages and skills or neither, just to be consistent."

I am saying we SHOULD limit languages or at least should NOT expand their availability. I see no need to treat languages like other skills with respect to limits. Not realism, not balance, and not 'just to be consistent'.

[Dalvyn]

You still fail to convince me in any way that limiting langages is, even marginally, more interesting than limiting skills (and when I say "skills", I mean "skills" specifically, not weapon proficiencies, or spells) or weapon proficiencies (as I wrote above, I'm not for limiting spells further, because they already are limited in several ways).

Making the three sets of skills conform to the same standard just for the sake of being the same makes no sense to me.

That argument is easy to turn upside down: It makes no sense to me to choose arbitrarily one pool of proficiencies to limit, when there is no specific benefit to limiting those and not the other proficiencies.

I can see some benefits in limiting langages, but I can see exactly the same benefits in limiting skills (and, to a lesser extent, weapon proficiencies). I'd advocate to limit the first two kinds of proficiencies, or none of them. Why arbitrarily limit one and not the other one?

we limit weapons, great, people use different weapons, maybe. We limit spells, instead of everyone having all the same spells, everyone has a smaller number of the same spells. The rest of skills, maybe we see some benefits. I'm not sure we have enough other skills to make it work, but I haven't sat down and looked at tables yet. And that's it for me. Realism? Equality? Feh. Flavor, Challenge, Rp. These to me are goals to work toward.

Realism. That's still a worthy goal in my opinion, no matter what you say. Isn't it one you use to actually justify limiting the number of langages one can learn in the first place? It also applies to other kinds of proficiencies, obviously.

Equality? If you mean equality as in treating the various pools of proficiencies in the same way, I answered above: in my opinion, if they aren't treated in the same way, there should be a reason for that. It makes no sense to choose arbitrarily to treat them differently.

Flavour. I'll interpret that as the opposite of a world where every character knows and does the same thing; that is, as a world where you sometimes need to call upon (more or less renowned) experts in various fields. Obviously, this is not limited to langages either. You can need an weapon expert, or an expert at first aid, or an expert at detecting secret passages, and so on.

Challenge. Another interesting goal in my opinion: provide some obstacles that characters will not always be able to overcome on their own. Frankly, limiting that to language obstacle is really a cheap trick. There are so many other ways to do that: monsters immune to some kind of damage (thus requiring experts at various kinds of weapons or some other "tricks" to bypass them), collapsed underground tunnels that require good mining/digging skills to open, magically greased cliffs that require high climbing skill or spells, and so on.

Rp. I agree that limitations give more to roleplay about that being all-knowing. In that sense, limits, not only to langages but also to other kinds of proficiencies, is obviously an advantage: not only do they give you the opportunity to roleplay about choosing what to learn, about knowing some things, but also about not knowing some other things and thus requiring other people's help. Obviously, you can think of "Hey, I can't understand what this giant says. Can you come here and translate for me?", but you can also have "Hm. I can't hurt this kind of golem with my blades. I'd need some blundgeonning weapon. I know you're an expert at wielding maces, can you come and give me a hand?" or "Dang. This door is locked and I'm not going to headbutt it. I'll see if this halfling can come and pick it open."

All the arguments you cited obviously also apply to other kinds of proficiencies... and not only to langages. So, once again, limiting languages but not other kinds of proficiencies seems to be an arbitrary move.

As far as non-trades go, I view them as largely inconsequential. Skills like pick lock are already limited by class. This helps cross-class grouping. Dig and Cook and the like do not impress me as skills of wide-spread importance that would help grouping, or unbalance the game.

I'll agree with you on that one: Dig and cook are not that impressive. Let's compare that with a language like Giant, or Terran. Which one do you think will be used more often (for quests or for normal "roleplay")? I can actually think of at least four quests where you need Dig, and only one (maybe two) where you would need to speak Giant (none for Terran). You can continue and compare other languages and skills like Mount, Handle Animal, Aid, and see how often you use one or the other.

So, basically, if you mean that it's not worth limiting skills like Dig or Cook because they are not used that often (and/or because they are not unbalancing), the same holds true for langages other than Common and perhaps Dwarven, Elvish and Gnome. Following through with that line of thought, there's no reason to limit the number of languages you can learn, since you will nearly never use them anyway.

1. Languages bring a flavor to the environment of the world. When you cannot understand a mob, you realize that 'hey, this guy is way different from me. I'm in a way different place. What race is this guy? What language might he be speaking? How can I overcome this barrier?' Helps immersion, in my mind.

A two-part answer here.

First part: How often would this happen? How many mobs do currently speak an uncommon tongue (as in something else than common, elvish, dwarven, and gnome)? I don't think there are that many such mobs. So, basically, assuming that people would choose to learn the languages that will be most useful to them first (especially if they can only learn a limited number of languages), situations like those you describe would seldom happen.

Second part: The logical answer to the first part would be "Hey, that's what I'm saying: add more languages, add more mobs that speak those rare languages. Create a more immersive world." I see two really big reasons not to do so.

First reason not to do so: As a builder, I am not too fond of building things that only 1 or 2 characters will enjoy; I'm not really making areas for the 2 or 3 characters who will choose to learn that language that will seldom be useful; I prefer to spend time building areas that more people will use (and hopefully enjoy).

Second reason not to do so: How much fun would it be to face, again and again, the same old language obstacle ? Sure, you could do it once with Aquan, twice or thrice with the regional dialect that is used only in that small village lost in the jungles of Chult, but that's about it. If you get, again and again the same kind of obstacles, it quickly gets very boring.

When you know all languages, Mobs move more towards becoming all the same. This is because once I know dwarven and elven, they read exactly the same as common and each other and every other language I know. [...] When everyone knows common, dwarven, elven, halfling, giant, and trollish, then nobody notices anymore. Not me, and not anyone else. Maybe I have to switch what I speak to talk to a shopkeeper. That's about it.

Limiting the number of langages one can learn is not the way to go to fix that problem in my opinion. I'd rather try and come up with various systems similar to the "dwarven translator", where English turns into DwarvEnglish. That kind of transformation sets people who speak Dwarven apart.

2. Languages can be used to increase the challenge of quests in ways that other skills cannot. Yes, I can key a quest off your dig skill. That's probably going to be a very limited type of quest. Languages have to do with communication, the basic building block of questing, and so can be used with any quest of any type. Even in combination with requirements for specific skills. It can further encourage grouping across many more types of quests in my mind, and with much less reaching to make it so. I can do it for any class quest, for any reason, at any place and time, reapeatedly, possibly requiring extensive and prolonged grouping. To me the magnatude of this effect for any single language skill is orders of magnitude greater than any other sinlge skill I can think of right now.

I don't agree with you here. I think that language obstacles are actually more limited than say, dig.

Language obstacle = you cannot understand someone who speaks Giant or you cannot read something that is written in Giant. And finding someone who actually knows Giant is not the only solution; you can bypass the obstacle by quaffing a potion of Comprehend Languages.

Now, dig obstacle ... that could be : digging open a passage down into a tunnel of Undermountain; finding lost ruins buried in the sands of Anauroch (it's not that simple to dig a hole in sand without letting the sand flow back in it); carefully removing boulders to open a collapsed tunnel; verifying the stability of the (forgot the word ... props maybe?) pieces of wood that support the ceiling of a tunnel; or, on the other hand, finding the right piece of wood to cut down in order to collapse a tunnel and bury enemies.

All in all, "dig" is a much much more wide skill than any language skill, that allows for varied quests/challenges.

Dalvyn: "I am not saying we shouldn't limit languages. I am saying that we should either limit both languages and skills or neither, just to be consistent."

I am saying we SHOULD limit languages or at least should NOT expand their availability. I see no need to treat languages like other skills with respect to limits. Not realism, not balance, and not 'just to be consistent'.

To restate it once again, I'm not simply saying "Let's discard the limitation on the number of languages you can learn." I am rather saying "Let's think up WHY this limitation on languages and no limitation on skills". It seems rather clear to me that all the reasons for and against the limitation on languages can be used for or against the limitation on skills too.

With that in mind, I don't think that arbitrarily choosing one of the two proficiency pools and limiting it and not the other one is a good idea; instead, it seems logical to me to either limit both, or limit none. I might have missed a reason why one should be limited and not the other one though, that's why I wanted to start this debate.

[Tyr]

Dalvyn

When I said skills are limited by class, you took my meaning of the word skills too literally. By skills I meant anything that a character of that class can do including, skills, feats, spells, languages, weapon skills and other abilities, not just what is in the "skills" chapter. Note skills without quotes in this post refers to all abilities of a character.

A thief may be able to learn many "skills", but he cannot cast fireball. Only a wizard can do that. The thief however, can backstab(sneak attack) which a wizard cannot.

Now in the mud each subset of these abilities are limited.

Weapons are restricted based on class/guild.
Spells are restricted based on class/guild and level.
Languages are restricted based on class/guild and intelligence.
Feats are restricted by various prerequisits and a limited number of feat points.
"Skills" are limited by class/guild and level.
Trades are the only subset not limited.

As you can see across the board, we are limiting the abilities of a character, however, the mechanism of that limitation varies depending on the subtype. There is no inconsistancy.

It is in part the "real world" limitations that influence these mechanisms.

Language being a purly mental ability is limited by intelligence. No matter how long a person of low intelligence studies, he will not be able to hold within his head the knowledge of many languages.

On the other hand, most "skills" and weapons can be learned through practice. It may take a person of lower intelligence longer to learn, but in the end it can be done. In this case our limitation is the time available to learn "skills". In the mud this translates into class. A class is a set of stereotypical abilities that the average character has the time to focus on and learn well.

The system I think you are speaking towards is closer to a skill based system, where rather than grouping skills into classes in order to limit a character from knowing everything, there is some other limitation on the number of skills that can be learned. On this mud as in D&D we are set on a class system.

Tyr

[Dalvyn]

The system I think you are speaking towards is closer to a skill based system, where rather than grouping skills into classes in order to limit a character from knowing everything, there is some other limitation on the number of skills that can be learned. On this mud as in D&D we are set on a class system.

I don't think I ever mentionned getting rid of the class system; that's a core part of the D&D rules. Actually, classes are not incompatible with restrictions on skills; and the system I described is precisely what D&D is doing.

You can take the rogue class as a perfect example (especially in 3.0, where there are skills that are not available to all classes). In D&D, they are given access to lots of skills (skills in the D&D sense): disable device/traps, open lock, bluff, appraise, pick lock, sleight of hand/steal, move silently, hide, spot, listen, use magic device, and so on. By choosing the rogue class, they restrict the available skills in the way you mention above (e.g., they can't - or at least couldn't in 3.0 - learn/use Animal Empathy). That's the "class" part of the limitation.

And this class-limitation is restricted further by the number of skill points they get. No matter how hard you try (unless you give them a 18 Intelligence), you will not be able to have your rogue character train up all their available skills as much as possible: You might get 10 skill points to distribute amongst all those skills each time you level up, yet, you have much more than 10 available skills.

That forces you to make choices, to decide which skills you wish to learn/train and which skills you decide not to train. A good-aligned dungeon explorer rogue could select to ignore sleight of hand and rather concentrate on trap finding. A typical street thief won't need trap skills but will insist on learning sleight of hand as much as he can.

To sum it up, the two systems can be combined, just like they are in D&D: First, by choosing a class, the "skills" (in the broad, mud sense) you can access/learn are limited. Then, you could be given an amount of "learning points" that you can distribute amongst those skills, in such a way that you cannot learn everything your class allows you to learn. You don't have to get rid of classes to add this restriction.

Language being a purly mental ability is limited by intelligence. No matter how long a person of low intelligence studies, he will not be able to hold within his head the knowledge of many languages. On the other hand, most "skills" and weapons can be learned through practice. It may take a person of lower intelligence longer to learn, but in the end it can be done.

I can agree with the first part: there might be a limit to the number of languages you can learn, ever (actually, that's what the linguist who posted on here said - forgot who she was - but she should know what she is talking about). Yet, I believe that this is not valid only for purely mental skills: it also applies to non-purely mental skills.

I don't believe it just takes time to be a grandmaster blacksmith, grandmaster tunnel digger, grandmaster lock picker, grandmaster swimmer, grandmaster cliff climber, grandmaster (first aid) healer, grandmaster pickpocket, grandmaster cook, and so on. I do believe that, sooner or later, you will reach a limit : you cannot know all those non-purely mental skills. And observe that I only cited skills available to all rogues, so the class restriction does not take care of that limitation.


Basically, what I do not agree with is the discourse saying "You cannot learn all the existing languages because you are limited by your intelligence, but you can learn to be grandmaster in all the existing skills [that are offered to your class], no matter how intelligent you are." Taking an extreme example, that would mean that very-low-Int-Jack (sorry for all Jacks, it's just an example) can craft perfect blades, perfect armour with metal or leather, can pick locks, find traps, climb any cliff, beat the Olympic Games swimmers, overview the digging of a new mine, be a grand cooking chef, ... but cannot even learn to babble a few words in another language.

[Talos]

Dal, you and I have fundamental disagreement on several issues. So rather than continue the point-by-point tit for tat, I'll return to your orginal statement.
Your original question concerning languages was should we
a) Keep the limit the same
b) Remove the limit
c) Keep the limit, but have feats that increase it
d) Limit all skills [whether by attributes or skill points left undetermined]

We have found that 'C' is moot. We already have such feats. 'A' and 'D' I could go along with, though 'D' then opens up the question of what skills to limit and how. 'B' is the only option I do NOT support. I have seen 0 compelling arguments for it. 'Because other skills are unlimited' is not a compelling argument. I think it would do more harm than good. Can we then agree on this one point? That B is not a good option, and A & D are really the only two left under debate here?

[Balek]

From a purely logistical standpoint, to begin limiting skills at this point would be difficult at best, barring a player wipe. By starting the limitation of languages, there was not any kind of disturbance to game balance. Knowing more or less in the way of languages does not increase or decrease the intrinsic power of a character. If we started to limit skills within classes, it would undeniably tip the balance toward older characters who are not 'skill limited.' While I understand that this is a roleplay game and not a PK game, roleplay in many cases involves combat. The entire concept of our game comes from a roleplaying game and a series of books which all involve fighting to some degree.

Let's say that we limited skills for fighters, as an example. By my estimation, most of the people playing fighters would not sacrifice their combat skills, since these are the only things that keep fighters competitive. We can't honestly expect fighters to take cook instead of fifth attack. The end result is that fighters are just going to skip getting cook, ignite, search, concentration, and likely other skills like listen, doorbash, swim, dig and spellcraft. Limitation of skills would not make for more diverse characters, it would make for just as many cookie cutter characters, they would simply have fewer skills to use.

[Dalvyn]

Right. A simple limitation like "you can learn only 8 skills" wouldn't work; that would require a much more in-depth modification to make things more like the D&D rule books.

One of those in-depth modifications would for example involve getting rid of the pseudo-skills like 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th attacks (you automatically get those when you reach some levels in D&D; they are not things that you need to "buy" with skill points). And I guess that another in-depth modification would be to turn to a system with less focus on mindlessly repeating the same task to "train up" a skill (i.e., a system where you would basically spend skill points to train up, instead of typing "steal coin rat" thousands of times).

All in all, such a system might not work for a mud perhaps, since there would have to be a time when you cannot "improve" anymore (at least, where you cannot improve anymore just by doing something again and again). Then again, there are implementations for D&D out there that are based on the D&D point-buy system for skills and that work (thinking about Neverwinter Nights for example).

[Kregor]

All in all, such a system might not work for a mud perhaps, since there would have to be a time when you cannot "improve" anymore (at least, where you cannot improve anymore just by doing something again and again). Then again, there are implementations for D&D out there that are based on the D&D point-buy system for skills and that work (thinking about Neverwinter Nights for example).

As far as hitting the ceiling with skill points, it wouldn't have to be that way. It could be set up to purchase skill points for X number of glory, just like feats and stats. Using glory as a way of building those things IMO encourages questing, and participation in IMM RPs, I know personally, at 50th level, I am cherishing every glory point I get from an RP, saving up for that next feat point, and would even more so if I could use it to build my skill rankings up. It's encouraging me to party up and quest in some higher level areas, and to hang around others when I can ICly, since imm RP's often happen when a group gathers.

[Tychina]

Allright, I just did see this thread so forgive me for coming late to it, but here is my thoughts/opinions..

I tried to learn spanish, I was pretty good at it all things considered. Until I got moved to another school and couldn't take the class, stopped using what I had learned and so forget everything beyond the basic hello. I agree, languages are hard. Unless you are spoon fed them from birth ie. you grow up with X amount of people speaking to you fluently in X amount of differant languages, then maybe you could know them all. Maybe. But I think there is a feat for that.. not sure. For the average person, even with a high intell, learning uber amounts of languages would be hard I think, as stated before, after a while I think they would begin to run together. And if you did not use them regularily, realistically you would begin to forget and make mistakes. So I think the limits on languaes is good.

On the other hand, the skills.. well, a person never stops learning. As you grow, and are shown new things, you learn them.. if you've the inclination and desire to do so. A football star can easily learn to play a good game of chess, or bake a cake, or garden, or all of the above. If they want to and have sufficient interest in those things and are willing to learn. Untill you grow old, and lose the ability to retain, I see no reason why learnable skills should be limited, realistically. The only reason I can see to limit them, is to limit twinkage. But that would not stop folk from twinking the skills they CAN learn, so not really a solution I think. Those that really want to twink will just find other ways to do it. Their loss *shrug*

Maybe not the most coherently put together post, but those are my thoughts/opinions on the matter.

[Dalvyn]

In my opinion, you are comparing things that cannot be compared. Languages are something that you can "see" every day. Being a GM armoursmith, or a GM swordmaster or a GM at dodge is NOT something you see everyday (or even that you see at all).

That's why I don't buy the argument that you cannot master several languages easily, but it's fine to GM 5 weapons, 3 combat skills, and be a GM cook (as in, nobody, no matter where or when, ever cooked better than you), and be a GM climber (as in, nobody, no matter where or when, ever climbed things you could not climb) at the same time.

We're talking about a fantasy game here, where people cast spells, where they can slice through 8 armoured persons with one swipe of a longsword, and the argument is "It's fine, they can be GM at all those things at once, but there's no way they can learn more than 3 languages". I would rather accept the argument that you are limited BOTH in how many languages you can learn and how many other "things" you can learn as well.

In that, it's quite close to that other thread where people would have to choose one or two weapon skills where they could become GM while the other weapon skills would be limited to expert or so.

[Tychina]

I could see where a person would not GM every single weapon skill, class skill etc, but they could still learn to DO those things, to varying degree's of ability. I can dig till the cows come home, and make a nice big hole, but no way I could go and dig out a colapsed mine shaft, not safely. I can cook, but half the time my family complains I am trying to poison them. I can sing, off key. I can write, wether you can read it or not is another question, I know how to use a computer, but couldn't fix one. There are lots of things I CAN do, lots more I could easily (or not so easily) learn to do, but not do better then anyone else in the world. But I could do them. So on that argument, ok, I can see limiting the number of skills, class skills, weapon skills that a person can GM, there is a good argument for that. But I see no reason to further limit those that we can learn to do. Maybe limit how many we can GM, how many we can get to expert, and the rest can only be learned to a certain level? You know how to do a lot of differant things, and you are bound to be better at a certain select few then at others.

Maybe, if you are looking at GM as "you are better at this one thing then any body else in the world", then maybe there can only BE one person GM'd in each skill in the game? Not sure if that is codable though. But it would give folk something to strive for, as when they became GM, it would maybe bring them fame, set them apart as one of a kind. And then others as they learned, could maybe have a chance to compete with the GM to take his/her place. Again not sure if that is codable, especially with current characters having things GM'd allready. Maybe it isn't. Also not sure how people would compete for certain skills..