I don’t see why this isn’t a skill on its own already but is part of the survival skill. This doesn’t make much sense since survival also encompasses thing such as looking around in bushes, knowing how to make pine needle tea and how to make stone tools. But none of these things are going to make you better at cutting up corpses. Nor will cutting up corpses magically make you better at any of these.
I would imagine this skill improving not just the amount that you harvest form a corpse but that it also decreases the amount of time you spent butchering, with lower levels mostly increasing the returns you get and the higher levels mainly decreasing the amount of time you spent butchering a corpse. It would also be need to lock certain types of butchery behind a certain amount of butchery skill since your not gone know how to quarter/skin a corpse effectively or how to field dress it without adequate experience. This skill would obviously be trained by first just hacking apart corpses and later by preforming actual butcheries on (larger?) corpses.
…And by books about butchering, anatomy (of animals) and taxidermy…
But yeah, I agree, it does look like it deserves a skill on its own.
I don’t want to derail this topic on it’s first response, but I think the skill training might have to change, so that one activity or book trains multiple skills (just as weapon handling does), as I’d assume you’d gain some knowledge about first aid from dissecting corpses and reading related books.
There was talk about splitting each skill into different masteries or whatever they called it. Survival into bushcraft, butchering, and tracking, and so on. Give it time. Only recently have they added lockpicking.
My only gripe with skills in most games is that characters will be complete idiots in most things. This is further worsened by them being adults in a modern, or freshly post-modern world, and I’d at least like a trait like ‘Educated’ or something that gives every skill 1 level.
That would be an extremely unbalanced trait (compared to all the others). Unless you just want a shortcut that has the same cost as if you would up every skill manually by one.
Also… “Ha, you noobs, I’ve learned butchering and lockpicking in school!”
I don’t see anything on the skill list that I would consider something that would be learned in a basic education, except possibly computers and driving. We could have a ‘University Educated’ trait that would allow you to chose a major and get level 3 in that skill though.
Also, I think most professions should start with level 1 driving though. Almost everyone learns to drive in their teens.
Knowledge of anatomy is only useful up to a certain point. Once you know where the major muscle groups, organs and bones are on an animal any more detailed knowledge of anatomy isn’t gone help you and things like butchering techniques and skill becomes more relevant.
The only exception to this would be dissection. Maybe base the chance that you find CBM’s in dissection based on a combination of the butcher and first aid skill?
I’d say pretty much everyone except medieval peasants and the like should have driving 1, and related professions should start with 2. 0 is level of absolute ignorance, people in modern world actually know at least an idea how the car is used, even those who didn’t drive a single mile.
That’s basically what I mean. 0 being absolute ignorance, and 3 being somewhat okay, I find it hard to believe that a modern adult will be absolutly ignorant in basically all skills. The educated trait giving all skills Level 1, at the very least for most skills, like driving due to basically everyone being told how to drive at least once in their, fabrication due to arts and crafts in kindergarten or whatever, first aid because basically everyone knows to stop bleeding and have treated their own wounds throughout their life before going to a doctor, survival because bear grills, etc for the rest of the skills, would be acceptable.
The alternative for me would be that everyone starts at lv1, and it would be a negative trait to pick something like ‘uneducated bubble person’, lowering everything to 0.
The only thing making this okay is that it’s possible for all skills except computers and speech to be leveled to 1-3 in the first few days even if you don’t find books, but that will no longer be possible and the problem much more glaring if skill leveling gets balanced to take longer or when all skills are split into their respective masteries.
Level 0 doesn’t equate completely ignorant of these things. It just means you just don’t have any skill or experience in this area. Level 0 means you only have what could be considered common knowledge about whatever this skill encompasses and can make educated guesses about how it works but that doesn’t mean you are any better at that particular skill.
Medieval peasant says hello. He also says ‘nope’. Either that perk should start with -1 in any modern technology-related skills, or 0 is absolute ignorance.
Even at level 0 you still know how to drive a car swing any weapon or make the most makeshift of tools and weapons so 0 cannot be absolute ignorance. otherwise you wouldn’t have any knowledge of society or even technology.
In my opinion, the thing is to match the skills of the character to our real skills from real life. Since the beginning of my interest in bushcraft, I have aquaired some knowledge of tailoring, fabrication, survival. Making sheaths and other items from cloth or leather, natural cordage, knots, firemaking with charred cloth, carving, using sling etc. But you would be surprised by the fact how many people do not know how to start a fire in their parents’ wood stove. Not to mention butchering. I have been living in a small village for 26 years and the only real experience with butchering that I have is connected with rabbits and pigs. I have no idea how to process a dear or a bear. That is why I think that butchering should be it’s own skill
Splitting too many skills up makes certain skills effectively useless for things other than RP. If they actually implement the proficiency system with multiple activities under a single heading, then that’s much less of a problem as it reflects different capabilities in specific areas. If you hunt, you might not have picked up much information about trapping and snares, but you will most likely know how to butcher a carcass unless you only hunt for trophies. A person who renders carcasses at a slaughterhouse they work at will probably know a LOT about rendering meat, more than a hunter, but won’t automatically know how to hunt or survive in the wilderness. Both of these scenarios are fairly painless under a hypothetical proficiency system, but are intensely painful under separate skills. See Cooking VS Chemistry - while I agree with Chemistry being a separate skill, it knocked the utility of Cooking down a lot outside of RP.
No. That’s what I and wojtek are trying to explain. You are not expected to know everything, that’s what 0 skill level should be about. Or -1 should be introduced.
Survival currently covers many things that don’t make a lot of sense to put together. From butchering to foraging (good separate skill candidate) and some crafting and cooking. Survival right now because it covers so many activities is kind of broken because it makes it extremely easy to find food and it is very easy to level up just by butchering abundant zombie copses. You can essentially become able to live of the land easily within the first week just by butchering corpses. This feel kind of cheap to me and could almost be called an exploit.
Maybe “almost every American”, which would make that statement fine, since this is about an American state. But no, I’m 28 and never drove a vehicle (yes, I don’t have a driving license) other than a bicycle (and I know a lot of others my age that also never drove a car).
About 16 % of all Swiss adults don’t own a driving license (Source, in German, optionally available in French and Italian).
That’s what books to learn from are about. You don’t get to be a master bowman from “Archery for kids”, but it levels you a bit in skill. As with almost all skills, you mostly learn by doing that stuff.
I think that’s already the case?
Also, you usually can’t miss the bionic if you cut up every centimeter/inch of the body, so you probably should either get a burned out bionic or a “you destroyed that thing for good” and get plastic-/electronic-/metal pieces. I think it’s weird to see that stuff just “disappear”.
So your argument is basically it makes the game too easy. That’s understandable. There’s lots of ways to make the game easy, and if that’s not your fun I can respect that. But being able to become viable to live like a nomad in 2 - 3 game days is hardly an exploit, any more than starting out in the Evac Shelter is an exploit because you have access to food, water, and raw materials. Or using firearms is an exploit because according to ‘realism’ melee and unarmed combat is manifestly inferior. Or Dodge is an exploit because it avoids damage unlike armor which can mitigate it but still allows bleed through damage (meaning less than powered armor, you’re not tanking). That grade of challenge is something that can be controlled by the player, and doesn’t need additional nerfs or tweaks in game. For instance, if you feel the skill progression is too fast, increase the training time in the Options menu. Or disable it so you can only learn from NPCs or books. Innawoods start, Survivor with zero Survival skill, there you go.
As for lack of realism, total realism does not make a viable game. You need to compromise sooner or later. Too many niche skills means some will be useless, others will be used once, and a tiny handful will be focused on to the exclusion of others. You’ll still be gaming the system regardless, but now you have even MORE clutter. If you made Survival function like Melee, and Butchering was a sub skill under it like Stabbing and Bashing are under Melee, that would be OK. But as it’s own skill out there in the void, it’s useless.
I call it an exploit or at the very least broken because the survival skill itself is very useful. it allows you very easy access to food at very little risk (foraging) or it allows you a lot of food for little risk (hunting/fishing combined with butchering). This in and of itself is not unbalanced or even unreasonable. What is unreasonable is how easy it is to level this skill just by cutting up zombie corpses. This makes levelling up this skill very easy even compared to other skills since you don’t even need to find skill books or crafting materials and recipies to level this skill.