1st new class major issue I see.

[Vex]

Problem solved.

Watering a rather class empowering skill down, and making natural hazards a non-issue to even more people, doesn't seem like solving any problems. I'm still failing to see, how giving direction sense to the majority is good for the game, if the idea is to encourage people to work together, or make people more dependent upon interacting with others.

If you give an equal number of city stealth guilds direction sense, or some variation of it, than there will be... what, three or four that aren't essentially immune to the hazard of their environment? Why even have it there at all, if only a class or two, is going to end up dealing with it?

If its so important, sub for it.

Problem solved.

[Synthesis]

I'm just sayin'...it doesn't make sense for Batman to be stumbling around in the dark like a fucking idiot just because he didn't earn his Outdoorsman boy scout badge as a youth.

My pilferer shouldn't need a damn scout to lead him back to the 'rinth.

I totally agree with you that storm navigation is a Really Big Deal, which is why I suggested that splitting the skill into city/wilderness versions is the best way to go.  It doesn't make sense for an enforcer/slipknife to be able to storm-nav.  It also doesn't make sense that a scout/jeweler can circumnavigate the entire Labyrinth flawlessly at night with no moons up.

[Hauwke]

As a culture that is barely aware of the fact the environment can be harmed, I find it hard to believe that there isnt a torch on the walls every couple feet, if not for visibly than for letting people know that: "Hey, the door to my super awesome business is here!"

In my headcannon I view pitch black in a city as being so windy that it might as well be pitchblack.

[Vex]

I'm just sayin'...it doesn't make sense for Batman to be stumbling around in the dark like a fucking idiot just because he didn't earn his Outdoorsman boy scout badge as a youth.

That doesn't avoid the fact, that it would mean almost everyone in both spheres, would then be circumventing an environmental obstacle, simply because of built-in convenience. There would be little point to having those hazards exist, if so many had been immunized against it by default, and severely devalue the subguilds that provided the option of immunity.

I can't help but feel, as if your argument is centered not on class inadequacies, but on your wanting a certain class+sub combo that has great synergies, but also not wanting to stumble into walls, like a dunce. That choice is the entire point, though, and has only been reinforced with the change to the new classes.

My choice, is not to stumble around in the dark, because...

[Synthesis]

I notice you keep assiduously avoiding the parts of my argument that would be detrimental to yours...which I suppose is a good debate tactic, but y'know...I'm not buying it.

You have yet to explain why it makes sense that experience with navigating through storms in the desert ought to translate into navigating the city at night.

I already granted that it's a powerful, useful skill, and as such it should be limited in distribution.  Desert-traveling classes should get it, because that's what they've been doing their whole lives.

However...sneaky bastard classes have been roaming the streets at night their whole lives, and they should be able to do it in the dark.  Without picking a gamey desert-traveling subclass, which works for no justifiable IC reason.

[roughneck]

I think it makes sense, as long as there's a coded difference between dark streets night and caves. Wilderness direction sense should work in caves.

[Cind]

Make a distinction between city direction sense and wild?

[MeTekillot]

Blind fighting should be for navigating in the dark and direction sense should be for storms.

[RogueGunslinger]

I hate darkness as a gameplay obstacle. The more ways we are given to deal with how shit and stifiling night time is in this game the better. I cant be the only person to log in with a plan, see it is late afternoon, and just log right back out again.

[Vex]

You have yet to explain why it makes sense that experience with navigating through storms in the desert ought to translate into navigating the city at night.

I already granted that it's a powerful, useful skill, and as such it should be limited in distribution.  Desert-traveling classes should get it, because that's what they've been doing their whole lives.

However...sneaky bastard classes have been roaming the streets at night their whole lives, and they should be able to do it in the dark.  Without picking a gamey desert-traveling subclass, which works for no justifiable IC reason.

I think being able to navigate in total darkness, or blinding storms, by instinct, shouldn't be handed out so trivially.

Storms or darkness, being able to accurately navigate them with a mundane eye is almost a supernatural sense. I don't see it as something you learn by doing, but rather something you're born with and hone over time. An instinct, as I said, that should come with the same kind of suspicion people have, when someone spots an invisible witch with naked eyes.

I think, the better argument would be, to make the city have many less total darkness rooms, than to make every rogue a master of darkness. I would also take direction sense away from two of the classes, whom currently hold it, as well as a couple of subs, if it helps you to understand my position better.

If you want backstab on any desert class, you are required to sub for it. If you want real combat potential on crafter classes, you need to sub for it. If you want survival skills as a city class, you need to sub for it. If you want crafting skills on your warrior class, yes, you must sub for it. This isn't "gamey", as you say, but how the game has been designed... and, as I said, reinforced with how the new classes have been structured.

Direction sense is a powerful skill, and being able to ignore environmental hazards should be as rare, if not more so, than backstab or archery. Just because it can't be used to kill people, doesn't mean it should be treated at trivial.

If you want it as a class who doesn't have it, you should have to sub for it.

I am, firmly, in the sneaky bastard camp. I would immediately and consistently benefit from what you're advocating. However, giving away or watering down a skill, that is rather class defining, for someone else, doesn't seem to benefit the game. It's a self-serving request, plain and simple.

To reiterate: If you want it, you can sub for it. If you want something else, you will have to choose between them.

RGS: Carry a torch, or something. You can get, literal bands, that glow, you can wear on your person, even...

[Synthesis]

Alright, you're consistently missing the point, so I'm just going to quit arguing with you about it.

[Vex]

Alright, you're consistently missing the point, so I'm just going to quit arguing with you about it.

I'm not missing your point. You're just wrong.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

[Dar]

Alright, you're consistently missing the point, so I'm just going to quit arguing with you about it.

I'm not missing your point. You're just wrong.

Enjoy the rest of your day.

I'm sorry, Vex. But I'm reading the discussion and I rather agree with Synthesis's line of thinking.

Imagine you're playing a character.

You're an elf. Who does her dirty work only at night, in the cover of shadows and pitch black. During the day, you live in a dunky dark tower, waiting for the sun to set. When you come out into the moonless night to perform your nefarious act, your very first deed is to ... light up a torch. Which invalidates every stealth skill you've got, so you can wonder around like a giant shining beacon for everyone to look at.

Or ...

You can take a wilderness subguild. Granted, your elf never left the city. Is afraid and distrustful of the wild. Thinks whomever leaves the walls are suicidal idiots and thinks Jozhals are mutated rats that forgot themselves and allowed their hides to become too colorful.

But you 'will' take the wilderness subguild, because otherwise ... you're a bumbling fool with a torch.

It is not a huge deal truly. But please dont say that it is fine. It is merely 'tolerable'. Would be nice if it become so the concept of the "Dark Knight" of the city was feasible without gamey solutions, like picking up a set of skills that your character should  never ever EVER know how to do, just to get one singular skill that he should be proficient at. Once again, not the end of the world. But not perfect either.

[Brytta Léofa]

Storms or darkness, being able to accurately navigate them with a mundane eye is almost a supernatural sense. I don't see it as something you learn by doing, but rather something you're born with and hone over time. ... If you want it as a class who doesn't have it, you should have to sub for it.

Right now wilderness-column classes can use direction sense to navigate in dark city rooms, so you're not arguing against splitting direction sense into "city" and "wilderness" versions. By your logic we should do that, and then give each version to the Wrong Classes (sneakies get wilderness direction sense, survivalists get city direction sense). So that everybody has to sub for it.

(I do value your opinions; I'm just having a sarcastic day.)

[only_plays_tribals]

The sense of direction is a form of spatial cognition that pertains to how well a person is able to recognize where they have moved/are moving in a space, with or without visual cues. It includes the orientation of one's position in cardinal directions, how much distance you have moved, and the ability to keep track of both.

Direction Sense has never once saved any of my characters from a fall room if I didn't know it was there. Hasn't saved me from walking directly into a murderous critter in the dark either.

Because it doesn't have anything to do with how good you are at "sensing what's ahead". It just allows me to MOVE when I cannot SEE because I have a sense of where I am going, how far, and if I have gone off course because I am able to keep track of my relative position.

TLDR; Direction sense works as intended. I don't think it should be split. It's highly accurate in execution. As to /who/ should have that particular amount of spatial cognition, or if the darkness volume in cities needs an examination.. well I don't know. But please don't split the skill because it will make it stop making sense... North is north. Fifty steps is fifty steps.

[Vex]

I'm sorry, Vex. But I'm reading the discussion and I rather agree with Synthesis's line of thinking.
...
It is not a huge deal truly. But please dont say that it is fine.

It's perfectly fine. I'm saying, it's perfectly fine.

... within the confines of the established system. The staff are, as is plain to see, going to stick with the class/sub system for the enduring future. "This or that", where this and that are subs that provide you with additional skills to round out your character, is core to that system. When you have to decide between two packages that offer skills you want, or are ideal for your pc, that is another part of the system.

I would love for everyone to have up to apprentice skinning. It makes sense, yes, that any idiot with a sharp stone, can cut a hand-sized chunk of meat, from an animal the size of a buffalo. However, skinning is a core aspect of a different style of play than mine, and if everyone could have it by default, it would make the value of being a skilled hunter much less marketable, or valued.

I would love to have direction sense as a skill offered in criminal packages, because it would let me pick a sub with sknning, or other skills that make sense to have. That is a core aspect of a different style of play than mine, and having it as a convenience would diminish the value of the people who used to have it as an bread and butter, marketable skill.

If we want to reach across class limitations, we should have to pay for it. We do that, in our choice of subs. We can't ever have everything we want, and that is obviously intended.

There is nothing gamey about it, at least in the negative connotation. That is the system we have in this game we play, and you are free to make your choices, and live with strengths and weaknesses that come with them. Just like everyone else. The name and blurb for classes and subs, exist as flavor, and to give an idea of how the skills MIGHT be employed, a possible example, when making a character.

You can choose THIEF for peek and slight of hand, and never be a thief, or use the steal skill. You can be a desert-dwelling nomad, choose THIEF, and pick the arrows out of Soh quivers, and never once use your city stealth skills. His argument, and by extension yours, that you're being forced to have a background that is inappropriate, is false, and wrong.

Pick your class/sub based on the skills you want/need, to make your concept work. If you want to be Batman, pick something that will give you the skills you need, to feel like Batman. If that means being infiltrator/outdoorsman, that's fine. You don't have to use your skinning, or your outdoorsy skills. You never have to go into the desert, ever. You can just use archery and direction sense, if those are important enough, that you're subbing for it.

Your background is what you write it to be. Choose your class/sub to best represent that. Even if its a desert dwelling enforcer/outdoorsman, or a born and raised in Allanak fence/nomad. Those are just names, for a skill package. They are totally irrelevant, to who and what your character is. Choosing thief for a skill or two, is not forcing you to rp being a thief, or having the background as a thief, or requiring you to steal from people to justify having it.

The entire premise he presented is wrong. He's wrong, and you're wrong for agreeing with him. The reasons being used to justify it, are wrong.

Use a torch, Batman up, onto a roof, and get where you need to go, or a safe place to wait, until it's light enough to find your way in secret among the crowds. There are piles in-game solutions, to this most petty of problems. If you don't want to make the effort, sub so you don't have to.

I cannot say it more plainly. I feel, it was a total waste of time.

[roughneck]

I mean, I don't think having a city only directions sense that works for night time darkness in the streets/alleys is a is a terrible idea....

But, hide still works in the darkness, and you can always just wait out the night. At -most- you're waiting two IG hours for daylight again.

I have a feeling this has more to do with wanting to sneak around tunnels and underground areas without a torch than it does wanting to sneak around streets at night.

[Inky]

Or you can turn on a light. The real problem is that you still get sandstorm blindness inside the cities sometimes.

[Brokkr]

I think it is fairly obvious that Batman is a drovian.  And that he is always so mad because your crime interrupted his twinking in the dark alley.

[Synthesis]

Another minor issue:

There are a few "breaking piles of stuff into individual stuff" crafts that are based on the skinning skill.  Wasn't a huge deal before, because everyone except pickpockets, burgs, and assassins had the skinning skill to a certain degree, and PPs, burgs, and assassins didn't interact with those craft recipes much.

However, there are a bunch of craft-heavy main classes now that don't get skinning.  Which means you have to go around begging your grebber to break piles/heaps/etc. down for you.

Either change those crafting recipes to use the forage skill (since they're so very basic) or add jman skinning to those craft-heavy main classes.  It's not a huge add for them, since they're (presumably) so combat-inept that they won't be out there grebbing their own hides on the regular.

[roughneck]

Another minor issue:

There are a few "breaking piles of stuff into individual stuff" crafts that are based on the skinning skill.  Wasn't a huge deal before, because everyone except pickpockets, burgs, and assassins had the skinning skill to a certain degree, and PPs, burgs, and assassins didn't interact with those craft recipes much.

However, there are a bunch of craft-heavy main classes now that don't get skinning.  Which means you have to go around begging your grebber to break piles/heaps/etc. down for you.

Either change those crafting recipes to use the forage skill (since they're so very basic) or add jman skinning to those craft-heavy main classes.  It's not a huge add for them, since they're (presumably) so combat-inept that they won't be out there grebbing their own hides on the regular.

+1

Particularly Laborer, Craftsperson and Artisan.

All these classes have cooking and tanning... yet not skinning. Seems like they'd naturally have at least some idea how to skin. It's a pretty common skill in any low-tech setting.

[mansa]

Re: Skinning
In game, anyone with a skinning knife can attempt to skin.   With the right tools, you can be even more successful.


I think I recall Brokkr stating that it was an economic decision to reduce the number of classes with a skinning + crafting combo - to allow players to buy/sell among themselves, rather be mini crafting factories.

Current Classes - Stalker, Adventurer, Dune Trader
Current Subclasses - Hunter, Forrester, Master Chef, and Outdoorsman



I think having a few classes at apprentice might not be a bad idea.  Maybe scout & raider at journeyman?

[Delirium]

You can attempt to skin an animal without the skill, but you can't attempt a skinning craft without the skill.

I, too, wish that would be changed.

[Synthesis]

It would be easier if those select few recipes were changed from skinning to forage, rather than giving the heavy-crafting classes the skinning skill.

Working from memory...it'd be stuff like...sorting a pile of bones into separate bones, separating scrab guts, separating generic guts, taking apart a scrab head.  Simple shit that anyone with a basic knowledge of grebbing (which I presume the forage skill reflects accurately enough) should be able to do.

[Inky]

It would be easier if those select few recipes were changed from skinning to forage, rather than giving the heavy-crafting classes the skinning skill.

This is a good idea.