But you ruin some of the simplicity, IMHO, by having the requisites
for skill use/learning.
> - Each skill would have at most one use which you could call via 'use X'.
Yes.
> - Higher levels would just increase the proficiency at a skill.
Yes.
> - Most skill would be completely ineffective at level 0.
Let's say "all skills".
> - Each skill level might have another skill at a certain level as a
> prerequiste. eg. the spell skill 'call lightning' might have weather
> magic 4 as a prerequisite for level 1, 'call lightning' level 3 might
> require weather magic 5 aso. Here USE-less skills like 'weather
> magic' come in. You could require many such skills for the more
> scholarly professions like eg. magic.
Ugh.
Requiring one skill to know before knowing another one is possible,
but not a complex layout like you describe above. It would be just
as tanged as the current system, but harder to figure out just where
you were in the skill graph.
> - Whenever a player reaches level N, he is informed of the
> prerequisites for level N+1, if any. He can then go on studying the
> skill as long as he wants, but he won't reach level N+1 without the
> prerequisites. However, the studies aren't lost but accumulate up to
> (level N+1) - 1 day. This provision prevents people from losing when
> they study a skill and reach a new level during the month.
What if I go an immediately study Assasination, without knowing any
other skills? Should I be able to do this? Would it require stealth-8
to use at level 1? I wouldn't be told that until I started studying it,
right?
The appeal of this system is its simplicity. One skill, one use, anyone
can study anything. As soon as you thread a complex graph of requisites
through it, I'd rather have parent/subskills, or ioctls. I can at
least visualize a tree. I think it would be too awkward to present the
requisites to the player.
-- Rich Skrenta <skrenta@rt.com> N2QAV