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This thread is for discussing ideas for skills.  Feel free to suggest skills just as stand-alone aspects that we can work into a larger group later, or general concepts for a skill "cluster" or "progression" of skills.

Let's just clear up some terminology so we're all speaking the same lingo:

Preparation Time:  this is the time that must be spent before a skill is actually "executed".  Whether it's casting a spell (a few seconds), or lifting your axe for a brutal blow (a fraction of a second), all skills have some preparation time.  Whether a character can move during preparation time will be skill specific.  Some will allow this, some will not.

Flinch: if a unit takes significant amounts of damage during preparation time, he may "flinch" and fail to perform the skill.  Certain skills may be more prone to flinching than others, and various stats could also affect this.

Execution Time:  this is the time spent during the active component of the ability.  It is the characterin the process of swinging the sword.

Recovery Time:  after execution time, they is a brief recovery period where the character cannot initiate another skill.  Like preparation time, it varies from skill to skill in duration.  Some conditions may allow you to overlap recovery time of your previous skill with preparation time of your next skill (a shield bash's recovery can coincide with a sword thrust's preparation).

Cooldown Time:  this is the period after execution time (overlapping recovery time) in which you cannot use the same skill twice.  In some cases, such as a sword slash, cooldown is effectively redundant since it's the same as recovery time.  However, for other abilities it's not so simple.

Prerequisit:  most skills will have prerequisits; they require you to have specific skills before you may select them.  However, there will occasionally be "optional" prerequisits; you can pick skill A or skill B as prerequisits.  This will give players more choices, and may be useful in giving alternate paths to the same skills.

Skill Levels: all skills will have a "level" associated with them.  A skill's level is based on the highest level of its least significant prerequisit combination.  That is, if a skill requires a level 5 and a level 7 skill as prerequisits, it is a level 8 skill.  However, if a skill requires a level 5 or a level 7 skill as a prerequisit, it is a level 6 skill.  I will clarify that further if that doesn't make sense to anyone.  With the exception of training packages (level 0 skills), all skills without prerequisits are considered level 1.

Base Experience Cost:  as mentioned earlier, players will earn experience points through playing the game, and use those experience points to buy new skills for their characters.  As such, every ability has an experience cost associated with it.  However, there are certain discounts you can receive, so this will be referred to as their "base" cost.

Skill Synergies:  Some skills will have synergies with each other.  This means that they will act as discounts.  Synergies are bidirectional; that means if skill A gives skill B a 500 point discount, then skill B also gives skill A a 500 point discount.  In this way, it doesn't matter what order you purchase the skills in, the same combination will always have the same net cost.  Skill synergies mean that you can pick a variety of similar skills for versitility at a low cost.

In some cases (usually for generic skills), there is a "single-bonus" synergy.  For instance, suppose a skill gains a synergy 500 point synergy from skill A or skill B.  This means that you get the 500 point synergy when you pick one of skill A or skill B, and the second will offer no further benefit.  In the reverse case (picking the skill that takes A or B as synergy), you will receive the synergy benefit for which ever one you purchase first.  Again, the principle that the order in which you purchase skills is irrelivent applies; the net cost is the same.

The synergy business will be rather complicated, but it won't be a burden on the player.  We'll deal with the technical implementation, and all they need to care about is that there is a discount, and the order in which they purchase skills won't affect the net price.

Cost Prerequisits: a final measure (tentative; I'm open to better suggestions) to prevent players from racing up the prerequisit tree for a high level "treasure trove" skill and becoming a one trick pony.  A skill may require that a certain amount of experience be invested at a certain skill level before it can be purchased.  This would mean players will be forced to diversify at lower levels (at least to a certain degree) before pursuing high level abilities.


Now with that out of the way, on the juicy stuff:

We're going to split skills (probably 200-300 total when we're done) into three domains: combat, finesse, and spellcasting.  They respectively fit the archtypical fighter, thief, and wizard.  Within each of these domains will be 3-5 "training packages"; these level 0 skills don't do anything except act as prerequisits and some of the game's best skill synergies, providing many times their cost in discount.  The catch is that their cost is absolutely massive, so you'll need to purchase many skills in their domain to make them worthwhile investments.  Some skills may be specific to a given training package, whereas others might just be more accessible.  Each package gives better access, and sometimes exclusive access, to certain skills.  Choosing wisely is important (your first training package is free, giving you a starting point).

When designing skills, consider the following: our total number of skills will be divided roughly evenly between the three domains; that means around 65-100 skills per domain.  Each training package will have considerable overlap with the others, so don't try to divide it into different "sub-domains".  Obviously elemental magic and death magic will be clustered individually, but an elementalist will still share many abilities in common with a necromancer.

Also keep in mind that skills should probably be spread out over about 8 levels of power; there should be a progression from low-lying skills to higher level skills so players can get the feeling that they are becoming stronger as they unlock new abilities.  Again, don't try to space them evenly into each level.  The lowest and highest levels should have only a few abilities, and the majority of options should be at the mid-level region.


So, long story short: post your ideas here.  Detailed or not, we'll work them in.  I don't have my brainstorming ideas with me, but I'll post a few now and the rest later.

Some ideas:

Cleaving Attack
Combat Domain - level 2
prerequisit: any melee weapon proficiancy
cost synergies: any combat domain training package
effects: enables characters to perform a "charge up" attack.  By holding down the mouse button and increasing the preparation time, the player can increase the power of his melee attack.  This works in combination with many other skills.

Lunge
Finesse Domain - level 1
effects: enables characters to perform a lunge.  These lunges will give a tremendous burst of speed, and can be triggered even in the middle of preparation, execution, or recovery time of a skill (so long as that skill does not prevent regular movement!).  However, the character will be unable to move for a moment after the lunge, and cannot steer himself during the lunge (although he can turn to face a different direction).  The recovery time after a lunge is increased by heavy armour.  Backwards and lateral lunges have reduced effectiveness.

Roll
Finesse Domain - level 2
prerequisits: lunge
effects: if a character is attacked during a lunge, and they are not actively in the execution time of a skill, they may automatically perform a roll.  This roll may allow them to evade the attack.  Rolls are more often successful if the rolling character is lightly armoured, the attacking character is using a heavy weapon, and if the rolling character is at the edge of the distance of the attack (at this point, I'd like to bring up that implicitly *all* skills are dependant on different stats).  Preparation time of any skill is put on hold until the roll is complete.

Elemental Biasing
Spellcasting Domain - level 1
prerequisit: none
cost synergies: elementalist training package, elemental biasing*
effects: whenever you cast any magic spell, any generic magic damage you may deal is replaced by the element of your choice.  This will also add the properties of that element (fire causes burns, etc), and may cause other changes to elemental spells.
* elemental biasing must be selected once for each element (fire, earth, water, air), but because it's its own synergy, each progressive purchase becomes less expensive.

Gale
Spellcasting Domain - level 2
prerequisit: elemental biasing (air)
Produces a powerful gust of energy that pushes back enemies and projectiles while it's being cast.  Hold down the mouse button in order to continue using this spell, and release when you want to end it.  Inherently this spell causes no damage, but it can cause loose objects to become projectiles.  Although an air elemental spell by default, gale is actually elementally neutral; it takes on the properties of any elemental bias you may be using (air element grants a mana cost reduction rather than any unique effects, since it is the default state).

Whirlwind
Spellcasting Domain - level 3
prerequisit: Gale
A more advanced version of the gale spell, the whirlwind instead produces a continuous current of forces that circles around the spellcaster.  While casting, the whirlwind builds up strength, increasing in area of effect and potency (up to a certain maximum).  Once you stop casting, it will slowly decrease in power until it goes away altogether.  You can cast it again at any time in order to charge it up once more.  Like gale, whirlwind is an air spell by default, but technically elementally neutral.  This means you can use elemental biasing to change its effects.

In my project people has skills related to proffesions, for example engineering skill, mechanical skill, soldiering skill, etc. Maybe rather than a cost, the user could choose one skill or two at the beggining, and then the character will be more best at some skills than others.
Well, I'm not sure if this is a real help, but hope it does something. I also hope this skill system could be code-modified for personal use.

The skill system needs to be flexible; I agree there.  It should be easily modifiable code, and it should be open to easy modding so creating your own customized skill tree is a piece of cake.  We'll want people to be able to create custom skills for their own custom modules, for instance.


As for the skill system itself, I'm taking an unconventional approach.  Skills will not inherently improve; your character is either capable of doing them, or he isn't.  To improve a skill's effect, you as a player must learn how to use it better.  In this sense, the skill will improve because you as a player are using it better.


I'm not sure how useful engineering skills might be, and certainly when we begin we'll want to focus on combat-oriented skills (since we need to have that working before we can start building a more complicated roleplaying game) before we work on auxiliary skills such as these.

Well, what do I mean is that the skills are the same for all characters, but they "upgrade" them with the work they do at their profession. I mean something that is not like a Diablo style, it is more like "you have those skills, you don't buy 'em, but you can improve them, and be better tho".
There is no tree, they are all different one from another and the player can see them in the unit's panel.
This is what I will use for my project.
So, yes, hope it is FULLY modifiable.

That's another interesting way to build a skill system.  I do think that our skill system (whatever its final representation is) should be modifiable so that it can be turned into something like that.  We should keep that in mind when coding the system.

This thread is more about designing the default skills for the game will make.  The discussion of the system itself was in another thread.  This is how the system works:

- a player "purchases" skills by spending experience points, that they earned by fighting and completing quests
- skills cannot be upgraded; a character either has the skill, or he does not.  Certain characters may be better with certain skills due to their statistics, however
- in order to improve, the player must learn how to use his abilities well.  The skills will improve because the player has learned how to use them better

By the way, this thread is STILL open.  We have lots of room for skill ideas, even if they are just raw ideas with no context in a larger skill tree.

For instance, one of the themes I want to pursue in the combat domain is a passive "ki" effect, which is basically pseudo-magic.  Your passive magical aura will have effects depending on which ki skills you have purchased.  An offensive example would be creating a shockwave around your weapon (increasing its effective size and damage).  A defensive example would be partially deflecting attacks and otherwise pushing away harmful effects.

One aspect I want to have for spellcasts are contingeancies.  They're based off of sequencer spells in the Baldur's Gate series (D&D).  Essentially a spellcaster saves several of his spells, which are then released in rapid succession when needed.  This allows critical defensive spells to be unloaded simultaneously and instantly rather than taking precious time to prepare.  Similarly, our contingeancies allow a wizard to prepare a spell and then save it for later.  This spell takes some concentration to maintain, but it allows him to suddenly release a spell effect without having prepare it.  As well, it would be a useful "blitz" ability for suddenly unloading several prepared spells at the start of the battle as a shock effect. 

What game would be complete, however, without some telekenesis-like abilities to throw objects around?  Send objects flying, possibly sending enemies flying into each other.  The fun and mayhem is nearly limitless!

I also want to see stealth abilities in the finesse domain, allowing for passive abilities like disappearing completely from an enemy's vision when you get behind them, and possibly remaining unseen under other conditions.

Short, long, detailed, vague, whatever, this is brainstorming.  Post whatever you want to that effect!