RE: Skill Costs.

[Steve Ames <steve@ns1.cioe.com>]

> Hmmm, I'm hearing things that I'm not sure I like or understand
> fully, so if Jevan doesn't mind my skepticism, I'd like to reply with
> some comments, questions, and perhaps a suggestion or two.

*grin*

> 1)  Since 2500 has been the basis for a 'rating' from day in the AQ
> system, we cannot change that value without the whole requiring a
> complete rebalancing.  So, my suggestion is that we find another
> mechanism for balancing the spending of experience such that we
> are able to more closely model reality.

Actually not. All changing what a 'rating' is does is slow down
or accelerate skill development.

> Proposal:
>
> The system already accommodates the idea of keeping eep 'pools'
> where the character stores up eeps for something really big (e.g.,
> that 16th rank spell, that rank 6 Spirit Snare incant, that STR increase
> from 15 to 17 so you can finally use that magic sword, etc.).  My idea
> uses that as it's foundation and builds upon it.
>
> The basic idea is this: an adventurer may spend no more than 1/4 of
> the eeps from a given adventure on a particular skill between each
> adventure.  Before you react to this idea, think a bit on it.

Gotcha. This actually has a much more harsh affect on everyone who
isn't a low level adventurer. As soon as one point of skill costs
more than 1250 eeps you can no longer buy more than one point rating
anyway. Most skills hit that at around rank 4. Where it becomes 1
game, 1 point... around 8 this also stops and it becomes multiple
games per point.

Your mechanism basically has the effect (for specialists) of dropping
the eeps they got to 25%.. only 625 eeps per adventure. Of course
this slows development (specialized development).

I just don't know. Some of the results are good (IMO) I'm just
not sure how much it would annoy me (of course this is from an
adventurer standpoint, having not had to deal with such a 
restriction in the past). You'd have to be rate 36-ish to have
a rank 12 spell... That does seem more in keeping with reality
as its mid-level-ish... that would also mean rate 36 before you
had a rank 12 long-sword skill... definately cuts down on the
number of killers.

Very interesting suggestion... I just don't know. I guess the
biggest problem is existing characters. Any change in the curve
would leave current mid/high level characters as unchallenged
gods for just that much longer (4 times longer with above).

Dunno. Nope, don't know at all.

> 2)  Removes ability to instantly specialize in a skill (in my opinion,
> this is actually a _pro_, but not from the perspective of a power-
> gamer, so I would imagine that many players will find this to be a con).

heh heh...

					-Steve