Less skills, more feats.

I’ve been thinking about this for the last couple of days, and I think something like this would highly benefit the MUD. Lately, I’ve really disliked the fact that you can pretty much know exactly what another person is capable of because of their level. You -know- RandomPerson1 can use the Aim combat skill, so you automatically know they can hitall, grip, and disarm as well as know that they have Blaster Mastery. I think this takes a lot of the mystery out of characters, and makes everyone fit into a mold.

It’d be really nice to get rid of most of the general skills, and make the majority of skills actually feats — of course for this to work, you’d have to add a good amount of new feats, as well. It’d just be nice to not be able to size up a character just by knowing their race and main class. It’d be much different if you could, say, choose another skill in Flurry’s stead. Maybe instead of hacklift, your Slicer wanted to wait and learn a skill to bypass voice-activated doors? With more choices like these, you’re bound to get several more unique characters, instead of the cookie-cutter template right now.

I’m a huge fan of customization, especially when it comes to characters. Anything to make characters more unique is awesome. The current feats are a start, but I don’t see any that really make or break a character. The new ones that came along with Era 4 are a start, but we need more!

I know I didn’t bring that much detail with this idea, but I am sick and it is 5:30 AM — I just wanted to throw it out there and see what sort of ideas you guys could tack on.

That would only work if chars can pick more than three, and if the feats weren’t so god aweful hard to find (ship building?). People are just going to give up if they need to look around for hours for every skill they want.

What they’re capable of and what they’ll use are two totally different things.

Also, the playerbase isn’t very large, so spreading skills thinner will make things even more difficult on clans, and near-impossible for unclanned people who want to get things done.

I’m going to side with Avanga on this one. I was never a big fan of the feats system and I like it even less now that you have to hunt and explore for teachers rather than just using selectfeat.

Well, we could add more subclasses and remove the feat system. For example:
Combat feats:
50) duelist 50) quick healer 70) deadeye
110) toughness 135) iron wall 150) quick recovery

Combat subclasses, similiar to those of leadership, you choose one when you create the char.
1) Marksman – Improved rifle use, +1 dex and the deadeye feat.
2) Grenadier – Improved repeater use, +100 hp and toughness/iron wall/both feat(s)
3) Officer – Improved pistol use, +2 cha, +50 hp and +1 str and duelist feat

Piloting feats:
100) navigator 145) evading 150) precision

Piloting subclasses:
1) Squad pilot – Improved fighter use, +1 dex and evading feat
2) Cruiser gunner – Improved capital class use, takes less time to calculate your hyperspace course, precision feat
3) Explorer – Improved medium class use, +2 dex and navigator feat

And so on!

+1

The idea of having more feats, less skills could work, if everything was chosen before you got into the game. I believe someone said it earlier, but ala D&D.

For instance, you still have classes, but they basically dictate how much easier it’ll be to learn certain ‘feats’ and ‘skills’. IE. Combat classes obviously would be able to learn how to use weapons more efficiently, but also it would make sense that they can also use certain ‘skills’ from other class efficiently as well that would comprise of a good soldier. For example repairarmor/weapon. Anything pretty much combat related would be easier to learn and cost less at character creation.

The same could be said for any class. Basically, what I’m proposing is, if you want a wider variety of characters and shit, we’re basically going to have adopt a whole new system, pretty much the SWU D20 system or something along those lines.

I for one wouldn’t be opposed to this at all. I’ve played the pen&paper and it’s very enjoyable and you get some unique characters. Level 20 would be the cap and it’d be difficult to obtain it. Any of you who have played pen and paper games can attest to the creativity it would bring along with a much more diversified game. That and even a level one character can bring a good deal of things to the table, whereas with the current system, a level one character is pretty much shit on. Hell, you’re shit on until you’re level 150 in your main class, 100 at the least.

Not only all this, but you could do away with the whole point system and people complaining about certain races costing too much, not enough of this, not enough of that. Because with the system, you can’t really ‘god mod’ a great deal by choosing the right race with the right class and getting an awesome layout. It’ll force people to think about the kind of character they want, while certain races may give benefits, you’ll level slower, while those with fewer benefits will level quicker. So just because you may be much more powerful end game because of a certain race, you have to GET there first, and not get killed along the way but the more ‘inferior’ races that are already two, three, four + levels ahead of you that you can’t go running at the mouth about because they have the necessary skills and feats to stomp your face in.

Even endgame at level 20, it’s not like a race that leveled slower will be guaranteed to be all powerful. Again, for those of you who have played D&D or similar games, know that even a basic human could and can whip the shit out of other races.

So in conclusion, I for one say, if we’re going to modify class, skills, feats, let’s go balls to the wall and totally re-do it.

Well I still say get rid of the way classes work right now and allow us to customize templates like I stated. That’s what I was trying to get at before I went off on a rant.

Combat class, easier to get certain skills/feats, harder to get others. Medic class, etc etc.

Make for some unique classes and characters imo.