Currently, someone could pretty much cobble any profession together out of suitable skills. While this is pretty handy I’ve never found myself picking anything but shower victims or hobos for those precious points.
I think this might downplay the difference between investing years in something as opposed to picking it up as you go.
My suggestion? Professional traits. Let me explain with an example.
A good mechanic knows more than just what part goes where. He knows what corners he can cut and all the little shortcuts to get there. So maybe as a professional trait mechanics just spend less time repairing vehicles, installing parts or siphoning gas/water.
The local gunsmith might be able to cobble together better than factory mass produced rounds
Maybe the football player throws things further thanks to all that time spent with the pig skin or gets a bonus to juke/stiff arm Zeds when running by. The list goes on.
These need not all be advantageous either–consider the hobo. Maybe his condition is two-fold: Career Drunk - All those years drinking have given you a high tolerance to the detrimental effects of alcohol–but you’re also hopelessly hooked on the hooch. Can never lose this addiction. Drinks to Forget - You drown your memories at the bottom of a bottle, good and bad, old and new. Each time you drink forget a little bit of he overmap.
So essentially these would be traits that no amount of mutagen, book learning or real-world application would bestow upon the player, as sometimes your best just isn’t good enough–especially in professional fields.
This seems more like something that would be triggered either by a large addiction or a very high skill, not really trait material. Someone who is extremely skilled at reloading rounds, for example, is going to be very good at it regardless of if they learned before the cataclysm or after it. As for the things like the drunk stuff those seem like something that a addiction rework would cover, one that made it more like the real world instead of an “ultimate willpower that lets you hold it out in 3 bad days” thing.
How can we stop someone from infinitely professional without being to gamey.
It’s been mentioned in other threads about refactoring the skill system to a maximum of 10 levels. I think most recently it might have been in Keven Granades suggestion about practice. So how about this.
Skills go up to ten. A high intelligence grants you X amount of skills that can be trained up to 11. At 11 you access “Professional” bonuses. This is sort of a win/win give and take because yes, while people could become great in their chosen field on their own ((Someone had to at first after all)) that’s not likely to happen if you’re a idiot.
[quote=“Logrin, post:3, topic:5257”]Now that you mention that…it makes me think:
How can we stop someone from infinitely professional without being to gamey.
It’s been mentioned in other threads about refactoring the skill system to a maximum of 10 levels. I think most recently it might have been in Keven Granades suggestion about practice. So how about this.
Skills go up to ten. A high intelligence grants you X amount of skills that can be trained up to 11. At 11 you access “Professional” bonuses. This is sort of a win/win give and take because yes, while people could become great in their chosen field on their own ((Someone had to at first after all)) that’s not likely to happen if you’re a idiot.[/quote]
One thing I missed when updating GAME_BALANCE.txt: 10 is supposed to be highly-professional skill: pretty much the top of your field. Most people using a skill to work a pre-Cataclysm day job would be in the 4-6 range, with skilled folks hitting 7 or 8.
It’s infinitely more likely that a character would hit 11 in stuff like dodging or melee or mechanics before skills like computing or bartering, though. I’m not sure how to get around that issue. Maybe have the ‘professional’ bonus tied to the occupation you chose at the start? On the other hand, that limits the variety of a long-term character. I doubt there’s a good way to implement this without a large-scale refactoring of the skill system in general.