In order to deepen and expand character development and make characters further customizable I propose bringing in two additional categories of skills that are present in various forms in other games in the genre. I am referring to synergy skills and specializations.
Synergy skills
Synergy skills exist in some systems, and are skills that are enabled when certain combinations of skills and attributes are met. An example would be an Acrobatics skill that is enabled when a character has sufficiently high levels in Agility, Climbing and Jumping.
They would serve as a good incentive to diversify and attempt different ways of playing, and would also augment your playing style and let you make a character with more depth. At the moment swashbucklers and ninja are only fighters with a different sprite.
Specializations
Where a synergy skill is enabled from having a combination of skills, a specialization skill is enabled when you have a sufficiently high level in a particular skill. An example here would be a specialization in swords for the one handed weapons skill.
For them to be attractive they need to incur a noticeable benefit, but on the other hand we might not want players to just get all the specializations they can (at least not easily) so perhaps they should be difficult to obtain, or expensive, or incur some sort of penalty?
One idea might be that each specialization to a skill increases the exp cost to raise the associated primary skill, or gives a penalty to the exp gain.
Skill suggestions
Skills I would like to see include defensive skills, which are completely absent from the game as it is. I'll throw out a couple of suggestions...
For a swashbuckler, skills like parry, dodge, riposte, disarm and banter come to mind. Parry is straightforward - you get a chance to deflect an incoming blow. Dodge is equally straightforward, but instead of a parry, which relies on your weapon skill, dodging depends on your agility. A riposte is something you do after a successful parry - it's a quick counterattack that circumvents the opponent's defenses. Disarm would mostly make sense with armed opponents unless you made it into a more generic skill, perhaps a chance to cause the opponent to be temporarily unable to attack.
Banter is the skill made famous by Errol Flynn, the archetypal swashbuckler. It's the ability to mouth off at the opponent, annoying him and throwing him off balance. The effect in game terms would be a reduction of ac and wc due to being annoyed. It would only affect ones that can actually understand banter, of course.
To make the fighter more interesting, he could be given skills to use his shield actively in the course of battle to damage the enemy, push him away, throw him off balance etc. A fighter with a two-handed weapon might get the ability to damage several opponents in one blow or something similar.
For a ninja, underhanded tactics are everything. One skill that would be interesting for a ninja is the ability to strike a blow on someone you are moving past, not into. And both a ninja and a swashbuckler needs the ability to use two weapons instead of a weapon and a shield.[/b]
Two new skill categories - synergetic and specialisations
Moderator: Board moderators