Revised SoI 01/10/2013 01:52 PM CST
I've gone through and systematically re-balanced SoI for all guilds using actual formulas and stuffs. Here's the final list for Bards:

Charisma
Reflex
Agility

Tactics
Bardic Lore
Performance
Appraisal
Mechanical Lore
Scholarship
Enchanting
Alchemy
Outfitting
Engineering
Forging

Outdoorsmanship
Thievery

Debilitation
Augmentation
Arcana
Attunement
Elemental Magic

Missile Mastery
Melee Mastery
Offhand Weapon
Brawling
Heavy Thrown
Light Thrown
Large Blunt
Small Blunt
Large Edged
Small Edged
Parry Ability

Light Armor

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 03:10 PM CST
Looks good to me! :)

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 03:10 PM CST
Umm, but I thought everyone would have Evasion as in SoI?

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 03:41 PM CST
>>Umm, but I thought everyone would have Evasion as in SoI?

That would probably defeat the point, right?



The teeth lands a solid (5/23) hit that pokes the teeth into Turul's rear end (more embarrassing than painful!).
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 03:52 PM CST
>>That would probably defeat the point, right?

Except Socharis is the one who said that's the way it was going to be originally. Just curious if it's an oversight.

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 04:05 PM CST
>>Umm, but I thought everyone would have Evasion as in SoI?

>That would probably defeat the point, right?

>>Except Socharis is the one who said that's the way it was going to be originally.

If he did it's news to me and I consulted him on the revised list, so I assume he changed his mind if that was once the case.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 04:22 PM CST
Ok, just checking :P

Also I'm curious as for the reasoning for Outdoorsmanship as I never really associated Bards with the outdoors much, neither in history or in guild requirements. I more associated them with Hiding to be honest, due to the looooong history of opression and hiding from dragon priest, etc, and their more Thiefy nature.

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 06:53 PM CST

>>Also I'm curious as for the reasoning for Outdoorsmanship as I never really associated Bards with the outdoors much, neither in history or in guild requirements. I more associated them with Hiding to be honest, due to the looooong history of opression and hiding from dragon priest, etc, and their more Thiefy nature.

The type of hiding they did wasn't really stealth as much as it was hiding under the floor boards and not saying a word. Bards in nature aren't very stealthy.
_______________________
It is impossible to strive for the heroic life. The title of hero is bestowed by the survivors upon the fallen, who themselves know nothing of heroism.
-Johan Huizinga

The Light is Crimson through the Darkness.
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 07:04 PM CST
Wow, that's a lot more weapons. And yay for Alchemy.
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 07:07 PM CST
>>The type of hiding they did wasn't really stealth as much as it was hiding under the floor boards and not saying a word. Bards in nature aren't very stealthy.

Actually that's a very good point -- more the kind of hiding that has to do with staying in a different room, than the stealth which is DR's combat stealth(hax predator camouflage).

I'm still curious about Outdoorsmanship though, although I vaguely recall Raesh giving some justification as to his thoughts at some point on these forums, I think.

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 07:14 PM CST
Picking the survivals for Bards was a little odd. In general I view Outdoorsmanship as the the most "general knowledge" survival skill - the sort of knowledge Bards would pick up on the road.

tl;dr version:

LOL WANDERLUST

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 07:31 PM CST
lol fair enough :P

Also agree, <3 Alchemy. And Enchanting.

~ Leilond
http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h307/ss1shadow/Leilond_Progression.jpg
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 07:32 PM CST
So I notice that Athletics was dropped. Also our Athletics booster has been dropped. Is this an intentional part of making "travel" a weakness for Bards? Not a complaint, just curious if I'm seeing the pattern correctly.
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 07:38 PM CST
>>So I notice that Athletics was dropped. Also our Athletics booster has been dropped. Is this an intentional part of making "travel" a weakness for Bards? Not a complaint, just curious if I'm seeing the pattern correctly.

Not really, no. Survival just isn't a Bard's thing (tert etc) so there's only room for two survival skills in SoI. The reason I made the call to axe the new Merelew's Legacy is it just didn't seem that useful - you rarely need a group athletics booster, and it certainly isn't the sort of thing you're generally going to want to use as a cyclic spell. Top that off with not really liking that Merelew's Legacy would be a climbing booster (due to the new athletics definition) and you had spell I didn't feel needed to exist.

Could Legacy come back if a sufficiently robust idea was put forth for it? I suppose, but I'm also not going to bend over backwards to come up with a spell concept that happens to fit the song just for the sake of reusing some messaging.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 07:51 PM CST
So I was trying to be too clever. I guess I'll go look for conspiracies elsewhere.

> Top that off with not really liking that Merelew's Legacy would be a climbing booster (due to the new athletics definition) and you had spell I didn't feel needed to exist.

So an Athletics booster isn't a priori off the table?


On a different note, I think there are some thin spots in the "global spellbook". I was thinking about where I could get an Outdoorsmanship booster, and it looks like Empaths and Rangers have the only two, and I'm not sure I could cast the Ranger one since it also boosts Scouting. I don't think there's any Thievery boosting spell, and it looks like Rangers have the only Athletics booster. And then there's the complete lack of weapon boosters. The Necro spellbook would probably be a good place for a bunch of those survival ones.
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 07:54 PM CST
> The Necro spellbook would probably be a good place for a bunch of those survival ones.

Or Trader, I just realized.
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 07:56 PM CST
There are a lot of skills with no real practical way to boost them right now (Masteries are another one). Is that a problem? Eh... sorta, but not really. It gives us room to expand and flesh out spellbooks after 3.0 launches.

>>So an Athletics booster isn't a priori off the table?

Not at all.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 09:30 PM CST
Maybe I'm missing something, but why is Mechanical Lore still listed. It's going away isn't it?



Weapons for Sale:
http://www.elanthipedia.org/wiki/User:Caraamon#Wares
Hunta Talna Kortok, built by Gor'Togs, for Gor'Togs
http://www.angelfire.com/rpg2/caraamon/home.html
Combat Balance List:
http://tinyurl.com/DRBalance
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/10/2013 10:06 PM CST
> Maybe I'm missing something, but why is Mechanical Lore still listed. It's going away isn't it?

Not immediately. The new formulas seem to be 100% of your primary skillset, ~60% of each secondary skillset, and ~20% of each tert skillset. Lore is currently 10 skills, but will drop to 9 once mech leaves. So that means SOI should be .6*10 = 6 skills currently, but .6*9 = 5 skills in the future. Easiest way to achieve that is give lore secondaries mech.
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/11/2013 12:19 AM CST
the mech lore is going to be off the list once all the crafting skills are in-game. <gm explained it in 3.0 necro folder.>





<<The real thing DR needs is to get out there to the kids who actually read books.>>
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/11/2013 02:53 AM CST
>>Not immediately. The new formulas seem to be 100% of your primary skillset, ~60% of each secondary skillset, and ~20% of each tert skillset. Lore is currently 10 skills, but will drop to 9 once mech leaves. So that means SOI should be .6*10 = 6 skills currently, but .6*9 = 5 skills in the future. Easiest way to achieve that is give lore secondaries mech.

Winner.

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/11/2013 07:35 AM CST
>I've gone through and systematically re-balanced SoI for all guilds using actual formulas and stuffs. Here's the final list for Bards:

Ah, drats, we've lost Sorcery. :(

~~
Lupdels
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/11/2013 07:43 AM CST
>The type of hiding they did wasn't really stealth as much as it was hiding under the floor boards and not saying a word. Bards in nature aren't very stealthy.

Agreed, which I think makes Thievery being on the list a little out of character. Evasion, Athletics, or Perception seem to make more sense. I feel the same way about Outdoorsmanship. Bards, to me at least, would be out on the road traveling from city to city, focusing their time in centers of population, not necessarily spending lots of time out camping in the wilderness.

~~
Lupdels
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/11/2013 08:19 AM CST
What do you think connects those cities?

As for thievery - it's not just blatant thief, it's slight of hand, clever performance arts and so forth. It's also a dash of really wanting to find at least one non survival prime to put the skill in their SoI since basically every non survival prime wants the same set up otherwise (Evasion/Perception).

-Raesh

"Ever notice that B.A.'s flavor text swells in direct proportion to how much one of our characters is getting screwed?" - Brian Van Hoose
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/11/2013 08:26 AM CST
gotta agree on the thievery part - in-game lore suggests it was a bard that taught the first Kalag how to pickpocket. <kalag's memoirs - book 1>. not that my bard can steal worth a darn. He's a Dwarf. Agility and reflex... feh! <damn elves>....


<<The real thing DR needs is to get out there to the kids who actually read books.>>
Reply
Re: Revised SoI 01/11/2013 11:25 AM CST
>What do you think connects those cities?

I've always gotten the impression that in game traveling from city to city was more along the lines of Imperial Rome than the Dark Ages. Not too dangerous. And Bards would seem to stick to the settled areas. No such thing as a hermit Bard as I've been told. But your "mileage" may vary on inter-city travel. Hah.

>As for thievery - it's not just blatant thief, it's slight of hand, clever performance arts and so forth. It's also a dash of really wanting to find at least one non survival prime to put the skill in their SoI since basically every non survival prime wants the same set up otherwise (Evasion/Perception).

If thievery is opened up to more of the slight of hand and clever performances and the like, which so far I had thought were mainly Athletics and Perception (Juggling, right?), this would be very cool.

~~
Lupdels
Reply