The tree of attainable skills encourages specialization but allows branching out to all points.
- A skill may have from 0 to 2 (inclusive) prerequisites.
- A skill has two fields, how much of it has been “learned” by “studying” and how much of it has been “practiced” by “practicing.” Both are expressed as percentages.
- A skill may only be practiced to the percentage at which it is learned. Practicing occurs by attempting to use a skill (a la SMAUG)
- Learning occurs by explicitly choosing to study a skill. Earned experiece points divide amongst the skills being studied and raise the “learned” percentage.
- A skill initially has 0% leanred and 0% practiced. Studying a skill can only be initiated from a teacher or a book/library, and instantly raises “learned” to 20%.
- A skill can only be studied if all its prerequisites have been studied at some point.
- A skill can be studied to 95%. Once a skill is practiced to 95% the PC is considered “adept” of that skill.
- Assume the following:
- Skills A and X are base skills and have no prerequisites.
- B and C have only A as a prerequisite. Y has only X as a prerequisite.
- D has both B and C as prerequisites.
- B is learned to n%, C is learned to m%, X is learned to p%
- If X is not adept, Y can be learned to p + p / 100 * (100 - p). If p is 20%, Y can be learned to 36% This is not considered adept. If X is not adept but Y is practiced to 95% as allowed by this formula, Y is considered to be adept.
- If B and C are not both adept, D can be learned to min(n,m) + n/100 * m/100 *(100-min(n,m)). If n is 20% and m is 25%, D can be learned to 24%. Note that Y's case, is a special case of D's case with one percentage set to 100%.
- Specialization
- A “family” is a group of related skills, arbitrarily decided upon by the programmer. The “family” relationship is transitive.
- Assume that A, B, C, and D are from the same family. Assume that X and Y are from the same family. Assume these two families are distinct.
- Assume that B, C, and Y are being studied.
- Since A's family has the majority of skills being studied, skills from this family will have a bonus and skills outside will have a penalty (no majority = no bonus/penalty)
- The specialization bonus is to award 5 parts of experience. The penalty is to award 3 parts of experience. Therefore, both B and C will each receive 5/13 of a PC's experience. Y will receive 3/13. (fixme: this should add up to more than 100% to actually encourage specialization. I'll get around to it later)
- Disuse
- A skill which has not been practiced or studied for a significant time is said to be “fading.” A skill is not “fading” if it is the prerequisite for a skill being studied or for a skill “learned” over 20%.
- A skill which is fading will slowly decrease “learned” points. If “practice” points ever exceed “learned” points, they will be set to the value of “learned” points.
- A skill cannot fall below the minimum learned (20%).
- As a consequence of the above, once a skill falls to 20% learned, it will stop fading and its prerequisites will begin fading (provided that those prerequisites are not also prerequisites to other qualifying skills as above).
- To close a minor loophole, a skill may not be studied if one of its prerequisites is learned to exactly 20%. This ensures that studying resumes from the most recently faded points upward.