Some potential new skills

[SilverNexus]

I was cruising around the world map in a boat and thought that maybe there should be a seafaring skill, that gives experience to the player as they careen through the ocean. Such a skill, however, would probably induce the need for shipwrecks as a counterbalance. The player need not die, but they could wash up on some nearby shore.

Which brings me to the next skill: swimming. Again, like seafaring, the player would earn experience by traveling through water. But if their character can swim no further (as would be determined by their Str, Con, and level in the skill), they die. This would discourage people from attempting to swim to Darcap from Scorn. But to work, the player would have to have some sort of endurance points that slowly regenerate when not swimming, jumping, running, climbing, etc., else the player could cheat the system by getting up on shore every few tiles. Swimming could give a new use to climbing, as it would be needed to get out of the water anywhere where the elevation doesn't slowly taper out of the water (like a beach).

And my last skill idea: cartography. Given the right tools, the character could draw maps of where they can see, so that they can keep a record of where things are and where they've been. This would have the best use in mazes and on the world map. Perhaps low-level cartographers would make crude, general maps, with a significant speed penalty (to simulate the time taken to draw the map), and higher level cartographers would make detailed, clean maps, with less of a speed penalty. When readied, the player would only have to move and they would gain cartography experience until they had mapped the region they were in, only gaining experience for mapping areas unmapped by that player. Magic mapping could be used to speed up the process of cartography, albeit at less cartography experience.