2003/06/10 When gaining a new level, there is now a chance to get a small percentage boost in a random skill.

The percentage is based on your unmodified wisdom. You must have a minimum number of skills practiced to get the bonus. The bonus will never move you above 99% in a give skill. The skill picked is totally random (with some exceptions that will never be picked, like assassinate).

Questions/Comments/Concerns should be directed at the Gameplay forum.

So long, and thanks for all the fish!

Summary
We're expanding the number of skills/spells/powers/etc. ('abilities') which care about the toughness of the target as far as improvement. Starting with the next reboot and continuing to be phased in this week as time permits, we'll be switching a lot of ability improvement over so that:

- Using these abilities against higher-level opponents will have an increased chance of improving them.
- Using them on opponents of your own level will be the same as it was.
- Using them on opponents of lower level will be less effective. The chance of improvement doesn't go to zero, but bashing kobolds to death as a level 15 warrior is not practical for becoming a master of bash.

Scope/Goals:
These sorts of changes have been in for subsets of abilities (defenses, etc.) for a while, and we hope that this expansion (along with the ability points gained upon leveling) will make it a lot easier for people to raise their abilities as they level and explore, and de-emphasize any need people feel to spend lots of time doing repetitive spam-esque tasks.

Most importantly, we want the system to reward challenge and clever tactics, not 'cheap tricks'- the same philosophy we apply to earning XP, landing PKs, etc.

Some Exceptions:
- These changes do not effect PC-vs-PC combat- level plays a smaller role there (relative to PC/NPC combat).
- The changes will also not be very noticeable in the level 1-10 range- the level of difficulty there is pretty low, and the system is meant to reward challenge more accurately.
- Non-hostile skills (Detect Hidden, Herbs, etc.) are untouched- the level of the person they are being used on doesn't really matter as far as challenge.
- Invoker spells will continue to use the code they have been using because of their more stringent requirements.

Feedback and discussion should go to Gameplay.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com

Per feedback from the Gameplay forum, I talked things over with some other folk, and we've added:

1) The "difficulty" scale is less generous at low levels, and more generous at higher levels. This accounts for the relative challenge of fighting an NPC of your own level at varying ranks.

1B) The maximum learning rate increases slightly at very high levels.

2) If an NPC is exceptionally weak or tough for their level, the "difficulty" scale accounts for that, in a similar fashion as the experience point code.

3) As your character goes through their lifespan, they will gradually accrue bonuses to learning all abilities. Unnatural aging has no effect on this, and the bonuses do not correspond with the age categories in 'score'. It's enough to know that the longer you've been around, the easier it will get.

valguarnera@carrionfields.com