Since Javac is hanging around making notes, I wanted to table a discussion of some of our other abilities.
Contacts: This one has always been pretty much a fail for me. The only time I remember using it in the past 10 years is to find out which hole the Haven guild is in. And frustratingly enough the game never tells you that you can use contact for that. It just kinda...shows up. But the range on the other ones seems small for me, it costs some actual coin, and the effects are pretty lackluster. Contact fix, for example, might be useful if you could FIX ALL or something, but as-is it's just a rather expensive way to have one piece of equipment at a time fixed. Compounding the problems are that they only work in urban settings for the start AND finish. So you have to be in a valid town, and the target does as well.
Lockpick carving: I think there's some general upset that this one's getting carted into crafting, but that's realistic to me.
Slip: honestly, I think this one's good. A nice slew of combat uses (slip stalk, slip weapons, etc.) and some fun RP ones.
Hidden loading: Eh. So everyone who hides gets a +1 RT to load weapons, and thieves can negate it. It's nice, but I tend to forget it exists. I'm assuming good for PvP?
Passages: An interesting bag. They seem like a 'fun' tool rather than a useful one, aside from 1-2 cases where you can bypass skill checks or the Shard walls. Also due to the way the game engine seems to parse things, if you pretty much anything in the room the passages will show up in your room window in Genie.
Sign language: I think this one does what it sets out to do. No complaints, on improvements I can see. Maybe allow users running khri to bypass skill checks on being seen.
Backstab: This one is...interesting. I'll say upfront I don't have a good solution. The alpha strike idea is good, but tends to get neutered due to hiding issues and flex issues in PvE. Also, melee requirement. The current limitation is 30 stone medium edge weapons. What I'd like input on from smarter people is how that compares to heavy TM templates, and TM in general with TM foci active now.
In PVP it's a big deal, but in PVE I've never really loved it. I was wondering if we could get changes approved. Even with khri training the skill, it would be nice to be able to train it with non-SE/ME weapons for convenience.
The SE/ME templates are also very low on volume, which really limits the options you have for tweaking weapons. It means all thieves basically have the exact same sword somewhere on their person and it's interchangeable. The one Elec uses at level 5000 is the same one I'm using at level 20. It diminishes growth and potential because the skill effectively hard-locks incredibly early according to your weapon, because of the template, volume, and so on, limitations.
It would be interesting to see the evaluations done on increasing the weight limit for light or medium to 45, and adding in some new templates in the small edge stabbing type that use more volume.
Barring that, maybe adding a penalty similar to the one applied to ME types, to heavier and larger weapons. Where you can use it, but it reduces the effective power increase to a few percents. I'd lock it behind a higher level requirement too, probably 70+, to give room for growth.
Bonuses (all):
It would be really nice if someone just...gutted...this system. Replace the triple-bonus/penalty/thing we've got going on with a unified system. Urban bonus is nice, but almost everything seems to be set sort of neutral to play nice with Rangers. Confidence wasn't ever finished and you can only manipulate it with backstab and lockpicking. Reputation is a pretty nasty double dip on penalties, with no upside and a potential death if you let your stealing fines rack up.
