Re: DM: Skills vs. Stats

From: johnjohn@cco.caltech.edu (John Carlos White)

Date: Thu, 27 May 1993 09:44:10 +0000

jas@rdii.com (Jim Smith) writes:

>OK, back to the original thought regarding skills.  Once you get 20 skill
>increases for a given skill type, you can no longer increase that skill
>type by training skills.   You CAN, however, gain skills by raising stats
>over the breakpoints.  The problem is, if you do this BEFORE you hit your
>limit of 20 skills, the additional skills are counted as part of the limit
>of 20.  If you wait until AFTER you hit the limit, the skills you gain would
>take you over the limit of 20, gaining you extra skills.

This is all true.  This is the reason that people don't train stats on their
warriors that they want to go really high.

>Now, you have to be cautious here, because timing is everything.  If you
>wait too long to train stats, you might get transfered to ADM sooner and
>miss out on training your stats.  The reason THAT is bad, is that when you
>go to ADM, the stat raise percentage chance is RESET so that you are back
>to having a WL * 5 / 1 percent chance of raising a stat on your first turn
>of ADM.  (Isn't this a lovely system!)  This makes it very feasible to raise
>high WL characters 6 or 8 times without huge effort.  By the way, there is
>a limit of 21 on stats in regular DM, but there is NO limit in ADM.

No, this is completely wrong.  You want to wait until you have learned all
120 skills before you start training stats (this will most probably happen
sometime in ADM).  The reason is that training in ADM is nothing like what
you described. Here's how it works:  Normally, you have about a WL*5 percent
chance for your train to happen.  Your chance is cut in half every time you
train successfully.  This second part is not true in ADM.  There, your first
three trains ever occur at WL*5%.  The halving occurs after that.  So, if I
don't train my strength at all in DM, then get the invite, I'll get 3 trains
at WL*5% in AD.  If I train strength once in DM, then never touch it again in
DM, then in AD, I'll get _two_ trains at WL*5%.  If I train strength twice
in DM, then I'll get _one_ train in strength at WL*5%.

Make sense?

Oh, and there's a maximum of 25 on stats in AD.

>You tend to get the skills you use the most, i.e. attack, init and dec for
>slashers, so it is fairly easy to get 2 or 3 skill areas maxed out before
>you need to start training stats.  It's a very "touchy feely" sort of thing,
>and every manager has his own system for predicting when to train what.
>My understanding is that once you raise the most important skills for a
>given warrior by 20 (like attack, init, and decise for my slasher), you
>should then start raising the stats that would further enhance those skills.
>A warrior with a WT of 17 will generally average about 2 skills/fight.  A
>13 WT averages around 1. (Your mileage may vary, tax and dealer prep extra ;-)

You started out strong but fizzled around the first turn. :-)
All that analysis after misconception that I pointed out don't apply.  You
wait for 120 skills (if you can stand it), then train stats.  Probably wit/will/
deft... Ahh, I'm just speculating now, though.

John White

References

DM: Skills vs. Stats
jas@rdii.com (Jim Smith)
Thu, 27 May 1993 05:52:01 +0000

Referenced By

DM: Skills vs. Stats
jas@rdii.com (Jim Smith)
Thu, 27 May 1993 05:52:01 +0000