REPOST: Duelmasters - Skills, I've Seen a Few From: kanga.caltech.edu!johnjohn (John White) Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1992 06:03:39 +0000 I guess Demon is still having posting problems despite my frequent suggestions, so, at my request, he put together from memory his post on skills, as no one had apparantly seen it or responded to it. The text follows. Remember, I didn't write this, Demon did. I included his .sig too. Lovely thing that it is. I need some sleep. Dammit. ============>INCLUDED ARTICLE STARTS HERE<========================== One of the biggest parts of the duelmasters game is the skill system. As a result (I think), it's also been one of the hardest for players to get a handle on. Over the last few years theories have been tossed about, accepted, revised, and then rejected. The purpose of this post is to give newbies and experienced managers alike a look at all of these, right up to a theory I heard just after the Face-to- Face from a friend who attended. All characters are rated in six skill areas, three offensive, and three defensive. The offensive are Attack (Att), Decisiveness (Dec), and Initiative (Init), while the defensive ones are Defense (Def), Parry (Par), and Riposte (Rip). For more description on these, see the DMFAQ or the Red Book of Alistari. Each skill achieved in an area adds five points to the characters ability. Thus a character who has the equivalent of 10 skills in riposte has a rating of 50. Often, managers talk about their warriors skill levels with these numbers. Indeed, while this has been the practice for a few years, I personally saw confirmation of this at the summer Face-to-Face in Baltimore. Without some inside info, the only way to find out a characters rating in an area is for one of six ratings to be achieved. They are listed below, with the necessary skill level to attain them. Expert (Ex) 80 Advanced Expert (AdEx) 100 Master (Mas) 130 Advanced Master (AdMas) 170 Grandmaster (?) 220 Arch-Master (?) 280 Again, these rating levels were confirmed to me at the Baltimore FtF. Characters begin with a certain number of skills in each area determined by a number of factors. These include the character's stats, the character's style, the wit comments on a character's overview, and a random roll made at character creation, although the exact nature of this roll is not known by players at large. It is possible for a new character to start with an Ex, or even AdEx rating in one or more areas. After character creation skills can be gained in two ways. The most obvious of these is to train skills during a fight. This will result in the character learning from 0-7 skills a fight, based on a number of factors such as the character's WT, the length of the fight, the experience of the character relative to his opponent, and perhaps even the character's style, as well as that of his opponent (although this is mostly conjecture on my part). A character can obtain up to 20 skills in each area through this method before the character "maxes-out" in that area. In other words, a character can learn a maximum of 120 skills. The second way to obtain skills is to train stats. If a stat is trained to one of a number of "skill breakpoints," the character will learn one or two skills (depending on the breakpoint) in one or more areas. The areas that each stat affects are as follows: Strength: Att, Par Constitution: none Size: Initiative, Defense (inversely) Wit: all but Parry Will: Attack, Decisiveness, Parry, Defense, Initiative (above 21) Speed: Decisiveness, Initiative, Parry (?), Defense, Riposte Deftness: all but Decisiveness An effort to chart the stat/skill breakpoints has been made by one manger, David Law Jr., better known in the game as Boss Rat, and a copy of that chart can be obtained from most experienced managers. If demand is great enough, I may post a copy of it to the net. The down side to training stats for this purpose is that if it is done, and the character learns a skill in an area that he has not maxed out in, one skill is removed from the potential maximum of 20 skills that the character can learn from training skills. However, if the stat is trained after the area has been maxed out, the skill is stacked on top of the character's skill learns, thus allowing development of greater than 20 skills in one area. This is how ratings of gradmaster and Arch-Master are obtained. This point is where I begin to discuss what all of the patient, experienced managers who have waded through the stuff they already know are looking for. The latest theory I have heard suggests that in addition to the absolute skill breakpoints, training stats to any other number also has a chance at raising a character's rating in any of the areas that that stat affects. This is not guaranteed to happen, but instead there is a certain percentage chance of this happening each time the stat is raised. eg. Joe Blow has a 15 Strength, and trains it to 16. Strength affects a character's Attack and Parry rating, so there is a chance that this stat raise will increase his Att rating by 5, and another, independant chance that his Par rating will be increased by 5. It is probable that this also occurs during character generation, and may be the luck factor in a character's initial skill ratings. I hope that this has been informative to everyone interested in Duelmasters, and I expect that at least the last part of it will stir up some discussion on the net. Unfortunately, I probably won't be able to participate in it (at least in so far as any of you will see) since I have been having problems with my news server distributing posts beyond Acadia. If something really draws my attention, I will ask John to post my response for me. more likely, i will repond to the poster by e-mail. ______________________________________________________________________ | Take 'Er Easy | | | | DEMON | | Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket! | . . | | | | | | What do I look like, the Amazing Kreskin?| \___/ | | | | | The check is in the mail, | GERALD CAMERON | | I'll respect you in the morning, | 900667C@ACE.ACADIAU.CA | | I like the Montreal Canadians :) | (902) 542-9961 | |====================================================================| | Manager of Scotian D-Team (DM52), The Highlanders (DM42) | | and The Highlanders of the WeHL | | | | Also collector of comics, player of RPGs, Rush fan | | (blah, blah, blah) | ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^_________ ___ {and ends here} -- Craig: So, John, meeting many women at Caltech? John: Women? At Caltech? I think not! So Craig, meet many stoners at Santa Cruz? -- Craig: So, John, meeting many women at Caltech? John: Women? At Caltech? I think not! So Craig, meet many stoners at Santa Cruz? Referenced By Up