Trials of Ascension – Dev Journal: Skills and Stats

Trials of Ascension has a new Dev journal on their site. This one explains the skill and stat system that the devs haven’t talked about before:

Greetings, ToA fans! Spring is in the air here in ToA-land, and with it you can see all kinds of things flying through the air. Rain, birds, clouds of dandelion seeds, bits of vaulted information… err, wait a minute…

All jesting aside, ToA’s skill and stat system is something that we’ve been keeping tightly locked away, but since it’s also something that undergoes regular review and tweaking, it makes for an excellent Dev journal subject. And since we know just how much everyone is chomping at the bit for some information – *any* information – we’re going to let a few little details slip through that securely guarded vault door. The recently-posted FAQ update describes some of the basic ideas behind the skill system, of course, so this journal will try to expand on what’s presented there rather than simply restating the already-known.

Click the link to read the rest.

As you’d expect, a character’s effectiveness in a skill is heavily dependent on the degree to which they’ve studied it. Hundreds of hours of experimentation with new techniques will certainly put you well ahead of a complete novice, but an important element of the skill system is that there are inherently declining returns to this: A more-skilled character will always have an advantage, but the extent of that advantage declines steadily as the character’s expertise improves. To use a completely arbitrary example: Someone with 100 hours of practice at it will certainly do better when using a particular refinement than someone with 50 hours of practice, but in most cases they won’t be doing anywhere near twice as well at it. Of course, this also depends on the difficulty of the task in question. As the FAQ explains, being highly-skilled isn’t much of an advantage when you’re performing a trivially-easy task, but a novice who tries to perform difficult tasks is usually going to make a mess (or at least produce very shoddy goods), unless they’re very lucky or have some pretty serious natural talents (or synergies).

A character’s stats also factor into how successful someone is in using a skill. Which stats affect a given refinement and by how much varies from refinement to refinement – including differences in which stats affect each refinement within a skill. For example, different maneuvers with a given type of weapon may rely upon different stats. The “Biting the Hand” maneuver described in one of the Scrollspires is heavily-dependent on the character’s Agility and Perception, whereas trying to stun and knock your opponent back with a “Slam” maneuver is much more reliant on Strength – even though both of these maneuvers fall under the “Light Hafted” combat skill!

One significant change that we recently made was how aggressively these stats (or combinations of stats) interact with the skills that depend upon them, so they now have a stronger influence. While we’ve always been concerned about making any given skill (or refinement) too heavily reliant on stats, we felt that our prior formulas didn’t do enough to account for them. Thus, while a character’s skill performance will receive a significant boost from high stats in an area (and will definitely be hurt by low ones), the difference isn’t so great that it can’t be at least partially overcome by enough time and dedication. That’s not to say that all characters are created equal, of course – a character with natural talent (high stats) will still tend to outperform the one with low stats in an area – although the abovementioned declining returns will also help to keep the unlikely prodigies in competition!

It should also be stressed that most general areas of expertise (such as combat, or crafting) rely on a combination of refinements with widely-varying stat dependencies, and those stats also have other non-skill effects. Thus, your “best” choices are usually circumstantial; a particular high (or low) stat will help (or hurt) in some regards, but it won’t be a universal no-brainer to raise (or lower). Likewise, the stats which factor into a particular refinement’s performance may not always be the ones that you’d expect from other games (it takes much more than Strength to be a good smith, for example), though they’ll always have a logical association. Nonetheless, physical activities may well be affected by mental stats, and vice versa!

Another major factor in the effectiveness of a character’s skills is the condition of the character at the time the attempt is made! Here’s where that mysterious Concentration comes into play, along with Stamina and any wounds that your poor, unfortunate avatar may have accumulated whilst struggling to survive. All of these things can hamper the character’s performance in a skill. If your character had received an arm injury, for example, then he won’t be nearly as effective in performing skills which require that arm. How severe the effect is depends on the type of wound (a cut is different than a burn, which in turn are different from nerve damage), the seriousness of a wound (a nick isn’t nearly as bad as a gaping gouge), and where it has occurred (head and torso wounds tend to be much worse than damage to a limb). Your character’s overall health also factors into it; a character who is covered in cuts and bruises will be much worse off than the sum of those individual injuries might indicate. Don’t forget such cheerful conditions as being diseased, poisoned, starving, or otherwise-afflicted, either!

Likewise, a character who is physically or mentally tired (Stamina and Concentration, respectively) will tend to perform more poorly at many skills; Stamina primarily affects physical skills, while Concentration primarily affects mental ones. Keep in mind, though, that many skills have both a physical and mental component. If you want to do some craftwork then being mentally worn out is just as bad as being physically so! These two factors can have a feedback effect, too – performing the actions in question tends to tax your Stamina and/or Concentration further, so if it’s an ongoing activity (like swimming, or an ongoing construction task), then the more heavily you burn up your Stamina or Concentration, the more poorly you’ll do at the skill checks and the more quickly you’ll continue to burn Stamina and Concentration! Needless to say, if you weary yourself to the point of collapse, you can expect a failure at whatever you were doing – at the very least.

As an aside, this is one area where dwarves are at a major advantage. I’m solidly of the opinion that their “Focused Precision” ability is one of the best in the game: It effectively halves the skill penalties that result from decreased Stamina and Concentration. Coupled with their Hardy trait and their stats in these areas, this means that Mr. or Mrs. Shortstuff can keep right on fighting, or crafting, or fleeing in panic long after everyone else has worn themselves out to the point of being near-useless at the task, or talking up a storm long after everyone else is so tired as to be completely incomprehensible. (If you’d ever sat through one of our design meetings, you’d know how much of an advantage this could be.)

Of course, many other factors modify the final success of a given attempt: The tools and resources that are being used (both type and quality), the conditions under which the task is being attempted, the effects of anyone opposing or assisting in the endeavor (Just *try* operating siege machinery by your lonesome!), and how well the player performs the minigame or other activity which is associated with it; as noted elsewhere, player skill has a major impact on the outcome!

So what else has been happening on the skills front? We’ve finally solidified how the doppelganger’s shapeshifting is going to work in terms of skills: Suffice it to say, a doppelganger is going to need to watch its Concentration *very* closely if it wants its nature to stay a secret! There’s always the occasional tweak to what a refinement encompasses or how it’s put together on the mechanics side, although we’re mostly settled on the “where does this one go?” questions. The actual mechanics effects of synergies are also a relatively new addition, and deciding what gives synergy to what was a significant task for me to finish; I anticipate a lot of future tweaking to that aspect of things in the future!

And so we come to that old question: What’s he going to show us? I can’t spill the beans on the mechanics behind this all (that would cost me my job, and then I wouldn’t be able to sneak other information out to you later), so I’ll tell you about the skill which currently takes the prize for “most refinements”, and what they are: Unarmed Combat. Now, you need to bear in mind that each race has access to different refinements within this skill -depending on what appendages they have – and each race *definitely* has different styles of performing these maneuvers. Also, even when you’re fighting unarmed, there are other skills which factor directly into how well you do (like the defensive ones!), so this isn’t the be-all-end-all of punching another character’s lights out. One other minor note for those who were wondering: The old “double claw attack” ability didn’t go away – it has been subsumed into one of these refinements!

And so, without further ado, here are the eighteen (that’s right, eighteen) current Unarmed Combat refinements: Bite, Chop, Claw Swipe, Forward Kick, High Kick, Impale, Jab, Parry, Rear Kick, Rend, Shove, Spit, Sweep, Tail Slap, Tail Sweep, Takedown, Toss, and Uppercut!

That’s all for now!

– Neutronium Dragon

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