12-04-2007, 10:07 PM
Ive only read a bit through the second page.
I think Galen is on the right track.
However, I think most all the skillgains are fine how they are. At the very least, they definately don't need to be slower. The only reason skillgain should be changed is if resources are significantly changed.
I think the only problems, or at least the main fixable problems are with items, and mostly revolve around PvP. If scrolls were harder to come by (either blank scrolls only craftable, or - my personal favorite - only allow scrolls to be found on monsters).
For scrolls, lets say you do this. Make it so that each scroll is almost .1 percent. As you get higher, maybe make it so you get .1 per few scrolls. On an average hunting trip, I might get 3-6 blank scrolls. Hell, lets say I get 20 blank scrolls per day, casually hunting. That is 2 points per day. You could buy them, but they would probably be worth a prety penny for their rarity. Some people might farm them, and get maybe 100 per day, but that would still take like 2 weeks + to GM. However, that is ALOT ALOT ALOT of time spent hunting to get that many scrolls per day, so they would deserve it. Id imagine that buying them would cost 500-1000gp each. If you compare buying 10 scrolls and spending 5-1k for one point, to spending 5k-10k buying 900-1600 blank scrolls for the same skill gain, that isn't too far off. Even at 100gp per blank scroll, that is well over 100k that someone might spend training inscription.
The result is that the important scrolls are far more rare, but being GM inscription still means that you can easily get 3X as many FS scrolls as you could hunting normally (find one FS scroll, and 2-3 blank scrolls, and make FS scrolls with those). And they would have far more value than just 100gp each (which, currently, means that most peope spend less on scrolls than they do on regs to PvP...).
And, of course, increases use of the spellbook.
*edit*
The only reason to change the inscription skillgain along with the drop in resources is so new people could also train it. If transfers werent done, Id be more inclined to say screw it, make high-end scrolls only obtainable from monster loot. Still, though, that would make inscription useless, while with the above suggestion it still does have pretty good value.
Ive already made lots of suggestions that have gone essentially ignored, but Ill sum them up and add a few more:
1) Make the damage from most spells lessened by higher armor, probably by a more drastic amount than most of you are thinking.
2) That will increase the need for higher end weapons (which need lots of tweaking) to do damage.
Both of these will significantly boost the economy, from both craftors selling more items (BS - armor / weapons, Bowcraft - more bows, Tailoring - magical leather armor). This in turn will increase the demand for resources, which gives miners, lumberjacks, and even leather-gatherers more to do.
3) Give food a purpose. Make GM-crafted food give you bonuses like faster health / mana / stamina regen (which is perfectly logical). Not by a huge amount, but by enough that it is worthwhile to do it. Make cooking hard to GM. The enabling of cooking will make finishing itself more valuable, especially if you add special fish that themselves add bonuses to the meal. The affect should not last long, and shoud require you to eat a (500gp?) meal every 5 minutes to maintain it. Try to balance the effect timer with the cost so that it is both profitable for the cook, and worthwhile to use.
If it is balanced well enough, GM-made food could actually be a reasonable profit when sold to players. Even during training, if you catch all the fish yourself / obtain all the ribs yourself, you should be able to create certain types of meals and sell them to appropriate vendors. Think something like "gourmet" meals could be sold to taverns (where people would tend to sit down to eat), and "traveler's" meals could be sold to provisioners (where people stop in, grab what they need, and are back on their way). Both would have the same player bonuses, but they just add another "RP" aspect to the skill / system.
If it is made profitable enough, it might even become worth it to start cutting monsters / animals and taking their ribs when hunting, if you could come back and sell ribs for like 5GP each (or whatever). That would make it pretty easy for newbs to start up, if they could make a "survivable" living killing mild-mannered forest creatures.
*edit*
BTW, I think it should be resonably profitable to train a crafting skill, even if you buy the resources. However, it should only work with nicer pieces.
For blacksmithy, one should only make a profit after buying resources if making something like plate chests / legs / arms. That way, you burn through ingots like crazy, and you spend alot longer GMing it, but you can still make enough to keep buying ingots, as well as support yourself. By the time you reach GM, it isn't unreasonable to have made 100k profit (which, over several weeks, isn't all that much). This further increases interaction and trade between players.
Tailoring would probably be left alone, since most everyone gets their resources free.
Bowcrafting should also follow the same pattern as blacksmithy. Maybe have little to no profit after buying logs, as long as you are still making bows or crossbows. However, when you get your skill high enough that you can make crossbows, you should be pretty self-sustaining. This, again, increases demand for logs, which further boosts the economy. Also, similarly, it means that you can make smaller items and gain more per amount used, but you will need to be able to spend money doing it.
Carpentry and Tinkering should follow a similar path.
Here are also some potential additions to carpentry and tinkering to make them more useful:
Maybe even make it so that you can use carpentry to add tricks to bows (like if you know both carpentry and bowcrafting, you can make bows out of thicker wood that are thus stiffer and shoot harder, or anything along those lines).
With tinkering, maybe make it so you can "infuse" gems or even ores / ingots into weapons to give them bonues. Like, infuse one type of gem or ingot into a weapon and make it poison you (think Tetnis, heh). Or, infuse a blade with diamons to make it hit harder. Or "infuse" materials into the handle to make it swing faster. Or anything like that. For simplicity, it could only work with plain iron weapons. If you wanted to add another economical feature, make it so only GM-crafted iron weapons could be used for this (meaning, a tinker couldn't just buy a bunch of store-bought weapons). Of course, there would need to be a balance between cost of material for the "upgrades," the failrate of said upgrades (succeed; fail without loss; fail and lose additional resources; fail and lose entire weapon), and the effectiveness of the upgraded weapon to make it both profitable to the player, and worthwhile to use in battle.
Another way to keep that tinkering feature simple would be to only have a short list of custom "infusionables" (I should patent that). Like, you add one type of item to make it hit harder. You add one item and it is the equivalent of a ruin weapon. You add five of those items and its a vanquishing. Either increase the number of required items, or the failrate, to give similar (or slightly higher) prices to their monster-loot counterparts. The same system would apply for the "poison" feature and its item, and the same system would apply for the speed / tactics feature (maybe make it so you infuse some ultra-light material into it so that it swings faster / more accurately).
I think Galen is on the right track.
However, I think most all the skillgains are fine how they are. At the very least, they definately don't need to be slower. The only reason skillgain should be changed is if resources are significantly changed.
I think the only problems, or at least the main fixable problems are with items, and mostly revolve around PvP. If scrolls were harder to come by (either blank scrolls only craftable, or - my personal favorite - only allow scrolls to be found on monsters).
For scrolls, lets say you do this. Make it so that each scroll is almost .1 percent. As you get higher, maybe make it so you get .1 per few scrolls. On an average hunting trip, I might get 3-6 blank scrolls. Hell, lets say I get 20 blank scrolls per day, casually hunting. That is 2 points per day. You could buy them, but they would probably be worth a prety penny for their rarity. Some people might farm them, and get maybe 100 per day, but that would still take like 2 weeks + to GM. However, that is ALOT ALOT ALOT of time spent hunting to get that many scrolls per day, so they would deserve it. Id imagine that buying them would cost 500-1000gp each. If you compare buying 10 scrolls and spending 5-1k for one point, to spending 5k-10k buying 900-1600 blank scrolls for the same skill gain, that isn't too far off. Even at 100gp per blank scroll, that is well over 100k that someone might spend training inscription.
The result is that the important scrolls are far more rare, but being GM inscription still means that you can easily get 3X as many FS scrolls as you could hunting normally (find one FS scroll, and 2-3 blank scrolls, and make FS scrolls with those). And they would have far more value than just 100gp each (which, currently, means that most peope spend less on scrolls than they do on regs to PvP...).
And, of course, increases use of the spellbook.
*edit*
The only reason to change the inscription skillgain along with the drop in resources is so new people could also train it. If transfers werent done, Id be more inclined to say screw it, make high-end scrolls only obtainable from monster loot. Still, though, that would make inscription useless, while with the above suggestion it still does have pretty good value.
Ive already made lots of suggestions that have gone essentially ignored, but Ill sum them up and add a few more:
1) Make the damage from most spells lessened by higher armor, probably by a more drastic amount than most of you are thinking.
2) That will increase the need for higher end weapons (which need lots of tweaking) to do damage.
Both of these will significantly boost the economy, from both craftors selling more items (BS - armor / weapons, Bowcraft - more bows, Tailoring - magical leather armor). This in turn will increase the demand for resources, which gives miners, lumberjacks, and even leather-gatherers more to do.
3) Give food a purpose. Make GM-crafted food give you bonuses like faster health / mana / stamina regen (which is perfectly logical). Not by a huge amount, but by enough that it is worthwhile to do it. Make cooking hard to GM. The enabling of cooking will make finishing itself more valuable, especially if you add special fish that themselves add bonuses to the meal. The affect should not last long, and shoud require you to eat a (500gp?) meal every 5 minutes to maintain it. Try to balance the effect timer with the cost so that it is both profitable for the cook, and worthwhile to use.
If it is balanced well enough, GM-made food could actually be a reasonable profit when sold to players. Even during training, if you catch all the fish yourself / obtain all the ribs yourself, you should be able to create certain types of meals and sell them to appropriate vendors. Think something like "gourmet" meals could be sold to taverns (where people would tend to sit down to eat), and "traveler's" meals could be sold to provisioners (where people stop in, grab what they need, and are back on their way). Both would have the same player bonuses, but they just add another "RP" aspect to the skill / system.
If it is made profitable enough, it might even become worth it to start cutting monsters / animals and taking their ribs when hunting, if you could come back and sell ribs for like 5GP each (or whatever). That would make it pretty easy for newbs to start up, if they could make a "survivable" living killing mild-mannered forest creatures.
*edit*
BTW, I think it should be resonably profitable to train a crafting skill, even if you buy the resources. However, it should only work with nicer pieces.
For blacksmithy, one should only make a profit after buying resources if making something like plate chests / legs / arms. That way, you burn through ingots like crazy, and you spend alot longer GMing it, but you can still make enough to keep buying ingots, as well as support yourself. By the time you reach GM, it isn't unreasonable to have made 100k profit (which, over several weeks, isn't all that much). This further increases interaction and trade between players.
Tailoring would probably be left alone, since most everyone gets their resources free.
Bowcrafting should also follow the same pattern as blacksmithy. Maybe have little to no profit after buying logs, as long as you are still making bows or crossbows. However, when you get your skill high enough that you can make crossbows, you should be pretty self-sustaining. This, again, increases demand for logs, which further boosts the economy. Also, similarly, it means that you can make smaller items and gain more per amount used, but you will need to be able to spend money doing it.
Carpentry and Tinkering should follow a similar path.
Here are also some potential additions to carpentry and tinkering to make them more useful:
Maybe even make it so that you can use carpentry to add tricks to bows (like if you know both carpentry and bowcrafting, you can make bows out of thicker wood that are thus stiffer and shoot harder, or anything along those lines).
With tinkering, maybe make it so you can "infuse" gems or even ores / ingots into weapons to give them bonues. Like, infuse one type of gem or ingot into a weapon and make it poison you (think Tetnis, heh). Or, infuse a blade with diamons to make it hit harder. Or "infuse" materials into the handle to make it swing faster. Or anything like that. For simplicity, it could only work with plain iron weapons. If you wanted to add another economical feature, make it so only GM-crafted iron weapons could be used for this (meaning, a tinker couldn't just buy a bunch of store-bought weapons). Of course, there would need to be a balance between cost of material for the "upgrades," the failrate of said upgrades (succeed; fail without loss; fail and lose additional resources; fail and lose entire weapon), and the effectiveness of the upgraded weapon to make it both profitable to the player, and worthwhile to use in battle.
Another way to keep that tinkering feature simple would be to only have a short list of custom "infusionables" (I should patent that). Like, you add one type of item to make it hit harder. You add one item and it is the equivalent of a ruin weapon. You add five of those items and its a vanquishing. Either increase the number of required items, or the failrate, to give similar (or slightly higher) prices to their monster-loot counterparts. The same system would apply for the "poison" feature and its item, and the same system would apply for the speed / tactics feature (maybe make it so you infuse some ultra-light material into it so that it swings faster / more accurately).