Some Skill Questions

Some questions about specific skills:

Aim - Does this affect melee chance to hit, or just ranged?

Parry/Dodge - Do these stack, or does invoking one preclude the other from being used?

Forage - Does this only work in "natural", outdoorsy environments, or can this be used to scavenge in urban spaces?

And some more general questions:

Do all crafting skills have the ability to make custom crafts like the cooking example shown in the reddit posts?

Are languages improved the same way other skills are, in terms of setting an expenditure of XP and then practicing?

On the stats page, there is a chart explaining what each level (1-10) means in terms of ability. Is the breakdown the same for skills? What does it mean to have 4 in a skill? Or 10? Or 12?

What does the "boost" from your origin-based skill do?

All guidance appreciated. Thanks!

Good questions!

Regarding Aim:

Aim only affects ranged accuracy in combat. It has some efficacy outside of combat in terms of flavor minigames, like throwing snowballs at your friends. 

Melee accuracy depends on a combination of factors including:

• the individual weapon's accuracy,
• the accuracy of the stance you're using in combat, 
• your "poise", which is a pool used in combat that depends on strategic choices such as whether you use an unbalancing but very powerful attack or take a second to rebalance,
• your "willpower", which is another pool used in combat that depends on strategic choices but in a more mental rather than physical way,
• your "fatigue", which is a pool used both in and out of combat that is fairly self-explanatory,
• your Finesse stat,
• and your skill with the weapon you're using or unarmed combat

Here's the equation that determines melee accuracy: 
 

accuracy_score = ((((current_willpower + current_poise) * 1.5) / (current_fatigue + 1)) + (skill_roll * 2)) * stance_accuracy_mod * weapon_accuracy_mod

(Note: in understanding this equation it's useful to know that willpower and poise are both pools that range from 0-100 with 100 being fully powered, and fatigue is one that ranges from 0-100 with 0 being fully rested. The skill roll tends to be a number roughly between 20-80, and the accuracy mods can range from .1 to 2.)

It may need balancing down the line, like pretty much everything at this stage, and we'd like to hear about any thoughts!

Regarding Parry & Dodge:

Parry and dodge do stack. Ideally you want to dodge, because if your opponent misses, their poise in combat will suffer more. But if you're wielding anything (even if it's not a weapon), your parry skill will take effect and give you a chance to parry on top of your dodge roll. This literally adds to your dodge roll right now, so it's pretty strong, but we haven't seen that it's unbalanced yet. We haven't had a lot of people fighting and testing combat balance, though, so it's subject to change if necessary.

Regarding Forage:

Urban foraging is totally something you can do. In most cities or towns, you can find trash food, rocks, possibly things like flint among the rocks which can be useful for firestarting, and often city-growing plants. Mint comes to mind as a hardy little plant that grows on dusty streetsides in Omrazir, and mosses can be found most places. Foraging depends largely on the "environment" of a room, as well as the zone of the world that the room is in, and there can be many different environments within cities. Beaches, subterranean tunnels, gardens, roads, deserts, and dockyards all offer different sorts of scavenging opportunities.

Regarding crafting:

No, not all crafting skills provide the ability to do custom crafts. Some are mostly resource-gathering or resource-manipulation skills that work in very straightforward ways. While we are planning to have custom crafts for some resource-manipulation skills down the line, some of them will probably never include custom crafting simply due to the limitations of the skill itself. Here is a table on the wiki: http://songofavaria.com:8080/mediawiki/index.php?title=Crafting_Basics that shows which crafting skills are currently slated for custom crafts. Right now, some of those crafting skills do not have abilities yet, but we are hoping to finish adding those through alpha phase. Herbalism may eventually have custom crafting as well, but we haven't planned the specifics of this yet.

Regarding languages:

Languages take time to learn, and there's no way around that in Song. The linguistics skill helps you learn languages faster, but it takes either repeated practice or repeated exposure to a language (either through studying texts or listening to people speak or trying to speak yourself). It doesn't cost any XP to learn languages, just time and exposure. It costs XP to learn the linguistics skill, which can certainly speed up your acquiry of fluency in different languages.

Regarding what it means to have a point in a skill:

We should probably include a chart on the skill page in chargen explaining what it means! But it's mostly the same idea, except... everyone is expected to have a stat, whereas not everyone is expected to have any knowledge of a skill. While a 3 may be "average strength", a 3 in the education skill is certainly not "average education", it's a bit high and you're well on the way to becoming a scholar! A 10 in education would mean you're the equivalent of an academic expert, a multiple-PhD-holding professor of like 10 years at a well-known university in the real world. If you have anything above a 10... then you are extraordinarily talented, with Einstein-level genius in whatever field it is that you're pursuing. Anything above a ten requires that the skill is not only something your character has practiced immensely, but they are also innately skilled at. Someone might have an innate skill regarding something they don't know about at all, but it is their hidden talent that they might eventually discover.

For reference, when we roll a skill to determine success or failure, it's basically a number of d10 that correlates to your knowledge of the skill. If you have a 1 in Animal Ken and you're rolling for the affection of a feral dog, you get a 1D10. A low pass difficulty is 15, a medium pass difficulty is 25, and a high pass difficulty is 45. Those are the default difficulties in the function, though, and there are often many modifiers in terms of penalties and boosts, and a stat will be rolled involved in the equation too, with the same rules (Magnetism + Animal Ken, for instance). So if you have average Magnetism (3) and a 1 in Animal Ken, you'll be rolling 4D10 to determine the initial affection that dog may have towards you. If you have no Animal Ken at all, it'd be a 3D10. But if you have 12 in Animal Ken, it's a 15D10, and you can see how powerful that could end up being. There's still a chance of a flub but it's incredibly low -- even if you roll 15 single pips you'll have passed the low difficulty, and in the majority of cases, that dog is going to love the heck out of you for basically no reason at all except your borderline supernatural dog whispering skills!

Regarding the boost:

The boost simply adds a +1 to whichever skill you choose, due to that selection of skills being widely practiced in your land of origin. It shouldn't put you above 10 in any skill besides your innate skill, but that's something I'll need to have a look at.


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Hope that clears things up! I'm happy to answer any further questions. :)

Edit: looks like forum links need some work and are broken right now, so you'd have to copy that url into your address bar for the wiki, sorry.

Thanks for your thoughtful and thorough answers! Just what I was looking for!

Okay a couple more questions... :D

Footwork - what exactly does this govern?

And secondly, do you get stat dice for skills you have 0 points in? For example, will my Finesse always be rolled to determine Parry dice, even if my Parry is 0?

Thanks!

Footwork is essentially a measure of how quick on your feet you are. So, one thing it helps with in combat is your "poise" pool. It's also a factor in how quickly you can execute moves in combat (how soon you'll be able to do another move afterward). Footwork also matters in how easy it is to knock you down, and how well you can keep your footing when traumatically injured. Blocking exits and getting past other blockers, chasing people, your chance to counter an opponent's move if using counter-acting abilities, as well as other weaponry abilities like the feint-and-strike, are governed largely by footwork. 

And yep, you always get the stat dice. In that way you can sometimes succeed at something you know nothing about, just because it's something you'd be pretty good at if you learned the skill. A unique stat spread can pair with innate skills to make a very unique character with a noticeable niche in which they excel, despite the classless skills system.

One thing I want to add about stats is that while Finesse is used for the accuracy of your strikes, most usually it's a crafting skill that governs fine motor ability, whereas Grace is the main stat used in combat that pairs with dodging and the majority of footwork rolls. In combat, literally the only place Finesse factors in is accuracy. Grace pairs with footwork, dodge, parry, to resist knockdown effects, to flee, etc.

"In combat, literally the only place Finesse factors in is accuracy. Grace pairs with footwork, dodge, parry, to resist knockdown effects, to flee, etc." Does this remain true for skills like daggers, smaller swords, and other things that list 'Finesse' or 'Finesse or Strength'? How do the Finesse and Finesse-or-Strength skills actually use Finesse?

Hmm, you're talking about the skills table on the wiki, and I see what you mean. That's a good question and it's probably something to make clear in the documentation before alpha opens.

In combat, there is a core code that governs almost all the moves that can happen. A stab with a dagger is the same "combat move" as a stab with a sword, and is dealt with in the same core code, even though a dagger has different stats than a sword, and requires different ranges (a dagger at close range is far more effective than at medium range, while it's the opposite for a sword). But it's still the same move that uses the same roll. Finesse for accuracy, strength for damage, and grace for almost everything else.

While this core setup remains true across every weapon style, at some point there will be more special flavor abilities that belong specifically to that skill, and in that case it's likely that they would follow the guidelines of correlated stats shown on the wiki. A special dagger ability would probably rely on finesse but we don't yet have any special dagger abilities. For now, a lot of things are still liable to change as future development happens, and that table on the wiki is definitely one of them (it's actually on the list of things I am supposed to edit, but I haven't yet, because we haven't yet coded in special flavor abilities for many weapon types).