Character Progression Trees

[takataka]

As always, apologies if this has been suggested. Didn't see it with a quick search of the list.

I don't know how viable this is within the game's system, but one way to personalize a character's ascent to greatness could be to implement a sort of "skill tree" system. My idea works akin to perks in Skyrim. As characters reach certain levels of growth, you can choose a new perk for them. My immediate idea is that every five steps in a given skill, you can purchase a new perk. More useful perks would require previous perks in that tree to already be purchased.

For example, and this is completely theoretical...

- A character gets to 5 in Melee Attack.
- You purchase a perk called, say... Relentless Assault. It increases his attack rate by a small amount.
- Character gets to 10 in Melee Attack.
- You can purchase another perk of the same "tier" as Relentless Assault, or you can choose from two branching tier 2 perks that both require Relentless Assault:
-- Dancing Blade occasionally attacks another adjacent enemy immediately after landing an attack on your target.
-- Bristling Step automatically attacks enemies in range, with sacrificed accuracy, while you're moving.

It might be a bit much of to implement, but I thought I'd suggest it for the heck of it.

[hbrown]

If you read and look at the current system of Kenshi, that will not be implemented, you only earn what you train, so you won t be seing any skills as a sort of regular mmos ( i think i said right ones), i believe there stuff at the FaQ because of that, not sure, and i am also kinda against it, if the game is to be kept at that line of reallity/"fantasy", i wouldn t like to see skills which magicly increase your stats and real skill.

[takataka]

If you read and look at the current system of Kenshi, that will not be implemented, you only earn what you train, so you won t be seing any skills as a sort of regular mmos ( i think i said right ones), i believe there stuff at the FaQ because of that, not sure, and i am also kinda against it, if the game is to be kept at that line of reallity/"fantasy", i wouldn t like to see skills which magicly increase your stats and real skill.

Well, I wasn't thinking along the lines of MMOs as much as I was... How do I put it...? I guess Total War: Shogun 2 might be a decent comparison, the way generals and agents earn abilities of your choosing as they increase in rank. Rather than "spells" or "endowments" or the like, these perks would serve within the fourth wall of the game to symbolize specializations in training. Like saying, "Okay, so as this guy improved his skills with the sword, he picked up this particular technique or he started to favor this method of fighting."

In a game mechanic context, it would just serve to endear the player to his squad members a little more. Giving the player the ability to have a direct hand in how his squad members grow might strengthen that emotional connection to them, and I do love having control over how my characters grow in these squad-based games. Still, I'm certainly not unhappy with the progression system as it is, and you do have some small degree of control over your squad members' growth. So it won't be the end of the world if they don't implement a system like this.

[hbrown]

Well that then depend on the "skill" effects and affect, because if is a boost need to be from something, like, "Berserker", focus attack drops defense, "Tank" focus defense drops attack, This are said exemples btw, is nothing i am sugesting, because "Agressive" and "Block" can be ALMOST catagorized in this ones. As you can see i am a fan of balance, if goes up a place drops other xD, becasue to see as you said,

-- Dancing Blade occasionally attacks another adjacent enemy immediately after landing an attack on your target.
-- Bristling Step automatically attacks enemies in range, with sacrificed accuracy, while you're moving.

That sounsd a rather luck and/or magic? don t know what to call it, skills, which that for me goes out of context, if you gona have skills make it on skill and not luck , the first one i am still a bit iunclear on waht you intended with it tho.

[DeanL1990]

This may be a little off subject and sorry if this is covered elsewhere I'm quite new to the site/game so far its awesome
but how about the ability to break swords/armour based on your strength and weapon skill and dodge attacks (for those with smaller lighter weapons) based on dex (and weapon skill? that would probably go in to blocking)
here's what i had in mind negative impact on your own sword and thiers leading to breaking (in half would be cool fighting with half the reach) and weapon dulling, would add a little immersion to the game where if you come across someone that is capable of fighting your whole squad at once during a prolonged fight their weapon breaks and you get the upper hand (or they start breaking your inferior rusted weapons) also if they try to steal your weapons at the risk of opening themselves up (say chance to take weapon, you get away from them and deal minor damage or major damage) based on strength speed and that weapons skill and the option just to pick one up off a corpse nearby
as for damage to armour perhaps certain pieces of them can fall off leading to less coverage
as for repairing have them use their weapon/armour smith skills (maybe add in whetstones and armour patches or just use the material they were made out of?) plus certain stores offering the service
of course have the quality of the weapon improve its durability but i wouldn't have it make it do more weapon damage
on a side note it would be cool if limbs could become unsavable or maybe have them cut off in combat perhaps have the 2 fighting modes where characters go for the kill and where they try to disable their opponent without killing them
[the unarmed master swordsman laughs at the hungry bandit that thought him defenceless]

[hbrown]

Welcome to the Kenshi forums Dean.

The dodge skill is a feature, if you look in game it s there at a darker colour, meaning is planned, and would be interesting in a way to see weapons with a durability, tho might be problematic in others, in theory is easy yeah but idk pratical and others xD.

Certain weapons would have easier effects against some, like bludgeon weapons would have larger damage over plated armor (correct me if wrong), or even heavy weapons aganst light ones. This could lead in to a broken armor, as you said with openings reducing coverage til be fixed, or even be made useless and unreparable, same would apply to weapons, tho i guess would change from item to item, didn t saw something sugested like this, not saying wasn t,i just didn t saw before.

[Clawdius Talonious]

With the way Kenshi works currently a perk system could be slightly problematic. Initially Chris was in favor of such a system, but eventually went with our current setup. He may go with some sort of perk system, say, one where you unlock an apprentice perk when you attain 25 skill, a journeyman perk at 50 skill, and a master perk at 75 skill for the various skills. That could be useful, but at the same time, it would give your characters too broad a brush to paint with.

Perhaps there could be a specialization system, where you picked a few skills that you wanted that character to gain perks in, a minor, a moderate, and a major skill where you could attain the first, first two, and all three of each skill respectively. That sort of system could potentially fit into the Kenshi universe, and eventually once we're able to create squad makeups and save them to outfit new squads with, there would only be six perks to choose from for each "class" of character you created, and those would automatically be allocated once they reached the skill level requirement. This would keep the feature from being micromanagement heavy.

Of course, any such feature if it is to be introduced won't be added any time soon. There are a lot of features that are slated for development before the game gets to the point where a perk system might be a priority, if indeed something of that nature is planned. Chris has a tendency not to talk a whole lot about things that may change or be scrapped before they are implemented, so only he knows for sure.

[islesofurth]

i like the idea of rewards or perks of having achieved a certain skill level but atm the combat system is like wasps fighting *CENSORED*. *CENSORED* line up in as many lines as is wasps, only to get their head chomped off by the speedy wasp time and time again.
If perks like this were implemented we would just be like those wasps, battles need to be made so at-least everyone around will have a swing at you if they can safely do so (like real war)

[ZanathKariashi]

It's pretty accurate, actually. As Musashi said, only 4 people can realistically attack a single target safety at once with swords (as they are currently), at maximum...so if one man can defeat four, he can defeat 4000.

[DeanL1990]

until he gets riddled with arrows when they come in anyway