Practical Guide to Skills and Spells
To practice a skill, your complexity in the respective area type (weapon, combat, defense, technical, mystical, or spell complexity comprehension) must be equal to or greater than the complexity of the skill. Practicing increases your learned percentage of a certain skill; the higher percentage in that skill the more frequently you will successfully use it. As you level, the skill becomes more powerful. To make the most of your practices, it’s important to think about which skills you want to use most often before practicing. Consider the goals you have for your character and what abilities you need/want the most for your character. While choosing your classes, remember that various class combinations have overlapping skills. When your character first begins a new class, some skills considered basic to your new class will already have a set learned percentage to start you off, unless you already had this skill from one of your previous classes. In this case, you will not get the benefit of a given learned percentage in these basic skills.
Also, note that non-combat skills of lower complexity ratings are easier to use successfully than high complexity fighting proficiencies and spells. So, more complex skills require a greater learned percentage to be used successfully more often. The following is a listing of skills and their value to the everyday adventurer, but keep in mind that each skill has a unique purpose and feel free to experiment by practicing those that may not be the most popular but interest you.
A skill beginning with a capitalized letter indicates that it is unique to a particular class. Stars (*), from none to 3, indicate relative degree of usefulness/application. Practicing mostly the more complex, combat-oriented skills (usually ** and *** here) is common practice. Most skills can only be practiced to 75%, those practicable to 100% are indicated by ~. The following do not include Archon skills proficiencies/spells. The final column is a list of the classes that the skill belongs to.
Spells
By evidence of the length of this page alone, magic is an important, complicated phenomenon in the Alyrian world. As you level, spell complexity comprehension increases to allow you to learn more difficult spells. All schools of spells (abjuration, alteration, chaos, conjuration, divination, elemental, enchantment, evocation, fundamental, illusion, invocation, necromancy, summoning, thought) are dependent upon your spell complexity comprehension. The spell point cost of different versions of spells may vary from class to class, but generally it is reduced as you level, increasing spell complexity comprehension, and increase knowledge.
Invocations and evocations are unique to druids. Druid invocations (targeting only their caster) and evocations, as well as spells of the school of thought unique to psionics, can be cast without spellbooks, and therefore without memorization. In addition, some Druid versions of spells are castable during combat while Psionics’ thought spells can be cast silently and without usual reagent requirements. Both thought spells and certain songs can be cast/played while silenced.
Racial abilities, such as shifting and dracon breathing weapons (fire, acid, gas, frost, lightning) along with herbalism, can be used in no-magic areas. Spells with complexities approximately equal to or less than 30% (without a spell delivery amulet) can be cast between rounds of combat with the proper timing, an important distinction in PK. Spells conferred by objects are not as powerful as higher level versions cast by players and therefore may be more easily resisted/dispelled. Note that many uniquely named spells create effects similar to others.
Special Thanks to : Molo, Aldur, Midori, Cyko, and Darkmagic for helping Northstar generate and refine these suggestions and lists. If you feel a skill or spell has been improperly evaluated, email us at nemori47@yahoo.com and we'll review it as soon as we can.