Skills

[crymerci]

That would be correct crymerci, as well as unneccesary. No need to point things out like that, just try and be helpful instead of critical.

Thanks for policing my posts.  You might want to take your own advice.  As you can see, in the time it took you to write that I was actually editing it of my own accord.

[Cuusardo]

Look at how many people the Byn kill in a quiet, shady manner.  I'm willing to bet a million bucks that not all of them are assassins.

[creeper386]

The spiced up Sergeant leading a bunch of green backs off the Shield Wall doesn't count a quiet killing... I'm sure they all scream on the way down.


Creeper

[Rindan]

I would say that it is safe to say that someone who is a warrior will never have the backstab skill.  Simply put, if it was easy to be both a warrior and have backstab, you would have a truly terrifying killer.  The advantage of being a warrior is that you can face all attacks out in the open.  You can always uncork a can of whoop ass with little to no thought in the matter.  An assassin on the other hand fights in a completely different way.  If he launches an attack without surprise, he is in deep trouble.  More then that, even with surprise he usually needs planning.  I can tell you that I have had warriors that could have been knocked down to 1 hp, then proceeded to beat the living shit out of a completely maxed out assassin.  So, an assassin is really a character who bases his combat around surprise and planning.  This is how an assassin's skill set is designed.

Now, that is not to say that you can't play your warrior like an assassin.  In fact, I would say that I have had warriors that were damned close to being assassins, spies, and all manner of unsavory 'sneaky' folk.  You just needed to RP being a sneaky silent killing bastard in other ways.  Will you ever be able to code wise kill someone in broad daylight on a busy street and not have the guards notice?  Nope, but even the most skilled assassins would find that task somewhere between very hard and completely impossible.  Will you be able to sneak around using the code?  Nah.  That doesn't mean you can't still do these things in your own way.

For instance, let's say you want to be a contract killer and you are a generic old warrior.  

First off, get good at combat.  A warrior who has first strike against an unarmed opponent who is not wielding a weapon is an absolute terror.  Two rounds from a skilled warrior is more then enough potential to kill an unsuspecting target.  Backstab is nasty, but getting hit four times on the head before you can move is just as nasty if not more so.  Next, you have that nifty bash skill.  Again, against a person unarmed, sitting, or otherwise unskilled, you are bound to cause a world of pain, and keep them from running.  Once surprise has worn off you really come into your own.  If you attack a person skilled at combat with your assassin, and they manage to whip out a weapon before you kill them, you are in trouble.  If someone manages to whip out a weapon before your warrior has killed them, they are still trouble.  Simply put, you have all the tools to be a killer.  

Second, add in the planning and the stealth.  The planning and the stealth are easy, you just need to do it more through RP then your average class based assassin would.  Don't be fooled into thinking that RPed stealth is in any way less effective then code based stealth.  Let's say you want to take out Lord Inbreed.  Using code based stealth, you would probably need to shadow the bastard to his bedroom and kill him there, then use your skills to sneak out.  Truth be told, such a feat would be damn near impossible without magik, and you would need more then a little luck to escape his bodyguards who would surely take offense to you killing their master.  As a warrior you would not have this option.  You would need to use a little grey matter to get to him alone.  Just because you are a warrior does not mean you need to wear armor.  Strip off your armor, pose as a merchant, and try and get him alone with you.  Hell, he doesn't even have to be alone.  You are a bad ass warrior.  Just get him some place where he only has a couple of guards.  The fact that you are a warrior works very much in your favor skill wise, as if you have decent skills at guarding, you also are decent getting past a guard.  Further, after you have dispatched your target, unlike an assassin you would have a decent chance at dispatching his body guards.

Even hard coded skills can be mimicked with a little forethought.  Want to bled into the 'rinth, throw on a proper 'rinth cloak.  Unless someone is using the look command at each person they pass, they will just pass you off as another resident.  Need to get into the Traders Inn without raising any eyebrows, just buy yourself a fancy silk cloak and perhaps a silk veil.  That alone will deflect most casual glances from staying on your persona for anything longer then a few seconds.  Need to sneak into the Byn?  Just grab yourself a Byn aba and throw it over your head.  For all anyone knows you are just another new recruit.  Simply put, sneaking around is very easy as a warrior, you just need to actually think a little bit about it.

The point is that you can play a sneaking conniving bastard who is a warrior.  If it is in your nature to beat people when they are defenseless, don't let the fact that you don't have the backstab skill stop you.  A warrior tearing out two weapons and beating a person who doesn't have his own weapons out is just as effective as an assassins backstab, if not more so.  Further, there really is no good instance I can think of that having backstab is the only way your character can make sense.  It might be something he would be interested, but certainly any amount of reasoning can come up with a reason why it simply isn't his style or something he just isn't good at.

If you really want a skill, the thing to do is the mail the MUD account.  Let me promise you though that if you mail them offering to exchange one skill for another, you will be flat out rejected.  Offering to exchange shield use, cooking, bludgeoning, slashing, and chopping in exchange for backstab will without a doubt get you rejection.  

A while back Sanvean write a blurb about getting skills that might be of help to you.

Don't email in offering to "swap" things. This isn't some sort of negotiation, where skill X is worth 5 points and skill Y is worth 10, and so forth. Particularly silly are the emails where people write in offering to trade cooking for backstab.

Don't write in and just say "I rped this out". Attach a log, preferably a couple. Be aware that we're going to make you work for it. By the same token, if you send in a log, we are not then obliged to add the skill with no questions asked. A log or logs strengthens your case; they are no guarantee.

A character with 10 days on it that has been RP-ing out something consistently has a much better chance of it than a character with 10 hours on it.

Be sensible. On occasion, yes, people that are non-magick users have gotten a spell or psi skill - but this is always the result of an extended plot line and some amount of work. You are welcome to go into the Temple of Vivadu and RP with a NPC there infusing you with the power of Greyskull, but it's probably not going to work.

Be aware that there are code limitations. Hide and sneak are particularly problematic if you are not the appropriate class.

If it's a request that requires code specific to your character, like being able to shoot fireballs from your butt, it's going to take a LOT of valid explanation about how this would add to the game.

If you have had problems in the past with game or OOC abuse, maybe you should work on clearing that up before asking for special considerations.

Some skills are more powerful than others. Picking up floristry is going to be a lot easier to talk me into than listen, backstab, or Atomic Fist.

[FiveDisgruntledMonkeysWit]

Well.... Sanvean's relpy brings up some important questions itself... What the heck is Atomic Fist? And how can I get it?

Must have... Must HAVE!  :twisted:

[EvilRoeSlade]

That's nice, you don't need any skills to play a shady type character, you do need them to act on things he would do icly, such as being hired to kill someone in a quiet manner, right?

I think that people are too focused on game balance.  If you want the backstab skill, then I would suggest that you find somebody who is incredibly proficient in the skill, have them give you lessons on the art of stealth and anatomy, use a lot of thinks and emotes in order to test out what you've been taught, experiment with different styles, and other such things.  Log it all and E-mail it to the account.  The immortals may comply, and they may not.  In the future you should choose a class that is suited to the concept you wish to play, because you shouldn't expect or count on customization such as this.  To everybody else:  Come on people, if the game was balanced than magickers wouldn't SMOKE you, half-giants wouldn't EAT you, muls wouldn't RAVAGE you, and templars wouldn't SMITE you.

That being said, Carnage and the others have a point.  You don't need the backstab skill to pull off an assassination.  My last character was killed by, get this:  A WARRIOR AND A PICKPOCKET!  There was no backstabbing involved, just cleverness and trickery.  So no, if you never get the backstab skill your concept isn't ruined, and if it is then you have nobody to blame but yourself because you don't have the ingenuity to use what you have to your best advantage.

EDIT:  Whoops, didn't read the second page of all this.  Some of what I've said may have already been said.

[gfair]

Sandor,

These questions you raise, of swapping skills, customizing skills, are good ones to raise.  I'd like to try and answer them.

Swapping skills is something that, to my knowledge, has never happened.  It could happen all the time, but it's never been discussed by anyone before.  I don't know any Muds that do it, and it would be very much out of place in Armageddon.  Arm tries to be as realistic as it can be, but when dealing with a computer game, it isn't always possible to make everything as easy as having the request granted.

Another problem is that you want your Warrior to get backstab.  There may be skills you are prepared to swap, but none can match the power of the backtab skill.  You are literally asking for the power to kill in one strike.  That isn't a common skill, and out of sixteen different classes you may have to choose, and of the six starting classes, there is one class that can do it well, and another that gets backstab only after a lot of training over a lengthy period of time.


As for being able to pick and choose the skills you want, this clearly forces one to wonder if the code in Arm can do it.  Muds are computer programs, and as such no two muds have identical code.  Arm is a highly modified Mud and, as such, has some very specific coding and scripts.  Not all Arm code is brilliantly designed, object-oriented code based on a friendly language, it is very complex.


So I suggest an alternative.  Clearly, you seem to be convinced that you wanted your character to be much more of an Assassin than a Warrior.  You have a couple options.  I don't know how new you are to Arm, but from what you've put up on the GDB I'd say fairly new.  You may want to stick with the warrior for now and get to know the game, develop your roleplay and knowledge of the game and perhaps find that you can assassinate people much easier through other avenues than by actually hunting a person down and trying to off them.  Getting good as an assassin who kills with his hands takes a long, long time, probably anywhere from six to twelve months real time.  That's a heck of a lot of time, it requires tremendous patience.

On the other hand, if your heart is set on playing an assassin and you want backstab, you have another option - you can retire this character.  Basically it means your character is stowed away, leaving you free to create another character.  However, you can never play the same character twice, so this one would have to be an assassin that is as different from your warrior as one person is to another.  Here is more information for you:

http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?retire

Good luck.

[Sandor]

But I already died, lol, so I'm making my assassin, thanks everybody.

-Sandor

[Uno Hu]

A few things you should read up on before starting to roleplay your new assassin:

http://www.armageddon.org/general/guilds.html#assassin

from the "fighting styles" page ( http://www.armageddon.org/general/fightingstyles.html )

Some groups, particularly those with shadier reputations, seem to have developed extreme skill with close-quarters combat. They utilize only the dagger and knife, both for throwing and for hand-to-hand combat, as well as training in grappling and unarmed combat. Suspected practitioners of these styles are also known to be very acrobatic, capable of performing maneuvers that, if anticipated, might be considered flashy and inefficient, but when used on those unfamiliar with them, have the useful effect of possibly surprising them into inaction for a crucial split-second.  

(the above can help you with the actual roleplaying of your combat, so you have an idea of HOW your character might fight. This is not necessarily law, just a recommendation of a style for emoting purposes)

http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?encumbrance

http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?skill_sneak

http://www.armageddon.org/cgi-bin/help_index/show_help?skill_backstab

Notes about using the coded skills:

Do -not- twink. Not only is it cheating, it also makes no sense. There is no reason why you would backstab a rat. First of all you're a lot bigger than a rat, you could just smush it with your hand or kick it with your boot. If you have the opportunity to practice backstab on a training dummy, EMOTE IT LIKE YOUR LIFE DEPENDED ON IT. Go nuts with emote when practicing backstab. If you type "backstab/flee" over and over again, it's only going to piss off the IMMs and you'll end up with no more backstab skill. Be sure your clan allows using backstab for practice sessions on a dummy before trying it. Failure to follow the rules of your clan will get you tossed out at best, assassinated at worst. Just as in real life, ignorance of the law is no excuse for disobeying it. It's your responsibility to find out, not theirs to feed it to you.

In addition, do yourself a huge favor and don't make your character's description shady looking. You do -not- want people to look at you and say "Oooh he must be an assassin!." Well, at least not until you're DAMNED good at it, and that will take a long time (real life months).

As an assassin, you will be a lousy warrior. You will suck in combat for a very long time. Embrace the suckitude, roleplay around it. Give your character a reason for being so piss-poor. Maybe he's a coward when it comes to face-to-face confrontations. Maybe he's just very weak, physically - due to childhood illness, or getting dropped off the shield wall by a drunken half-giant, or whatever. You -can- use your stats as a general guideline to use in your roleplay, but it isn't necessary.

For instance, if you have really high strength, you can assume, as an example, that your character works out by lifting rocks (since we don't have weights that I know of in Zanthalas). If he has really bad endurance, maybe he suffers from some sort of asthmatic condition that leaves him unable to walk very far for long periods of time.

Just remember, from a strictly coded standpoint, an assassin doesn't get a chance to BE an assassin for a very long time. Find a "cover" for your character so that you have something to do while you're working on your skills, because otherwise you'll either just sit there frustrated and bored with nothing to do, or you'll make the mistake of telling someone you're an assassin and not being able to back it up with skill.

[Sandor]

I don't plan on doing any of those things, but thanks for the advice.

[Plazgoth]

Here is a quote from the web page documentation:

Choosing a Guild:

Keep in mind that the guild of your character only decides what skills your character will get, and which skills they will be able to pick up. It means nothing to what profession your character will have, or want to have, or what things they will enjoy or be good at.

Pick a guild that suits your background: think over how your character will have required the skills he/she has. Did someone teach her how to handle weapons, if so who, and why? Is he of guild merchant, if so, where did he learn the merchant tongue Cavilish? If a pick-pocket, how did she develop quick fingers, and has she used that "talent" and if so why and where? This isn't something you have to write out in your background; it's for your own use and will give a more genuine feel to your character. More information on the guilds available in the game is available here -- be aware not all guilds are available to new players.

In addition to their main guild, characters have secondary guilds: bard, thief, hunter, forester, armorcrafter, stonecrafter, scavenger, house servant, guard, weaponcrafter, physician, mercenary, archer, general crafter. Secondary guilds are intended to flesh out a character and allow their skills to reflect their interests and history.

Here is another , what I hope to be, helpful quote:

There are eleven guilds at the present time, each with its own unique set of skills and abilities, and each should be roleplayed very differently. Some guilds are karma required; this means they are restricted to players who have demonstrated roleplay ability and responsibility. Such guilds are marked (karma required).

I hope this helps you understand the ideas behind the guilds (or as you call them classes). Customizing your skill set is not part of Armageddon's original (and current) design. Not so long ago sub-classes were introduced allowing you a chance to "customize" your character to match their background. I suggest reading through most of the web page docs on guilds and sub-classes, also look at some of the archived posts on these subjects because they do come up often, and many of the questions you will have are answered there.

Good luck, and I hope you learn to enjoy Arm for what it is.

[JollyGreenGiant]

There are eleven guilds at the present time,

I counted 16 listed on the web page.  Are some of these unavailable?

Assassin
Burglar
Fire Elementalist
Lightning Elementalist
Merchant
Pick Pocket
Psionicist
Ranger
Shadow Elementalist
Sorcerer
Stone Elementalist
Templar
Void Elementalist
Warrior
Water Elementalist
Wind Elementalist

[Sandor]

I hardly have any of those..

-Sandor

[Bestatte]

Nah, you won't have most of them at first. The majority of those primary skillsets (called guilds in Armageddon, professions in games that force you to stick with specific skillsets that never branch out, or classes in most muds), are earned through roleplay.

In most cases, karma is earned when an IMM takes notice of your RP and grants you the option of trying more complex skillsets after your current character dies. In some cases, karma can be granted through special application, and even then, such applications have to be approved based on the approving IMM recognizing your understanding of whatever you've been doing up til then.

Good luck with your assassin. There's been a lot of great advice from what I've seen posted so far. If you follow even half of it, you'll probably do pretty well.