Skills

## Overview:

Skills are the collection of abilities the player character has at their disposal and their proficiency level in them. Higher skills make certain tasks easier, more effective, faster to perform, and cost less materials if it is a crafting or engineering skill. For example, a high skill level in

\*(section debated to be deleted) (High skills are indicative of a competent survivor, and a competent survivor is a living one. Some NPC survivors are well rounded, with a bit of knowledge in several different skills, while some are more specialized, being masters in a skill tree or two but inept when it comes to others. Having a level of over 50 in the skill means one is **proficient** in the skill.)

Attributes heavily affect skills - and most skills fall under a parent attribute that further boosts the effectiveness of skills.

Perks: different rounds to be created through Handloading, each gained from books

#### Initial skill point spending:

In the beginning of the game, the player character can choose an occupation and some traits - both of which can give the player a head start by jumping into the game with some skills already above zero. Since picking an occupation and traits are entirely optional, the player can allocate their character's starting skill points into whichever skills they want - or even use none - starting the game with all of their skills at zero, if they wish. Otherwise, once the choices are finalized, skill points not used in the beginning cannot be saved for later.

#### Raising skills:

After choices are finalized, skills can be raised by doing things such as reading books or other materials written on the skill, or receiving skill training. By far, however, skills are most dependably raised by simple experience - performing actions that require use of that skill will gain the player character skill XP. For example, the Firecraft skill is raised fastest by attempting to build fires often, just like First-Aid is raised by treating wounds or injuries often. Some skills have different nuances that can all produce different amounts skill XP - for example, time spent behind the steering wheel of a car will naturally gain the player character XP in the Driving skill, but switching vehicles often will produce even more XP.

## List of skills:

### **SIMPLIFIED LIST OF SKILLS BY TREE:**

Main skill trees(???): Combat, Utility, Crafting, Diplomacy/Social

\*Heavy weapons will now have a "type" shown on their infocard and will raise both categories of what they are. A shovel, for example will be typed "heavy blade" and raise both heavy skill and to a lesser degree, the blade skill. A sledgehammer will be typed "heavy blunt" and raise both heavy skill and to a lesser degree, the blunt skill.

\*Piercing is now removed as a class and spread out into the other classes. For example, a piercing weapon like a pitchfork is now moved into the **heavy melee** category and small piercing weapons are moved into the **micro melee** class.

#### COMBAT SKILL TREE:

Separated into two columns: Melee and Ranged. Total skills: 10

* **Melee combat:** Blunt melee, Bladed melee, Heavy melee, Micro melee, Unarmed
* **Ranged combat:** (Marksman/marksmanship?) Handguns: (Revolvers, Pistols), Long guns: (Shotguns, Rifles) Automatics: (Submachine guns, Automatic rifles, Light Machine Guns) Heavy Guns (Grenade launchers, RPGs, Miniguns, Flamethrowers but no subskills for these weapons), Archery: (Crossbows, Longbows, Compound bows)

#### UTILITY SKILL TREE:

Separated into two columns: Utility and Survival. Total skills: 11

* **Utility:** Medicine (formerly First-Aid/Curing/Healing), Scavenging/Searching, Swimming, Driving, Security, Stealth
* **Survival/Outdoors:** Firecraft, Foraging, Game harvesting (also includes subskills Hunting, Fishing, Trapping, Tracking) Farming/Agriculture, Shelters

#### CRAFTING SKILL TREE:

Separated into two columns: Crafting and Engineering. Total skills: 11

* **Crafting:** Cooking, Gunsmithing, Mechanics, Chemistry, Handloading (perhaps unnecessary and just merge with gunsmithing? handloading can just be the activity name instead and the term used for ammo crafting stations), Cooking, Tailoring, Repair (weapon repairability is also affected by weapon skill level)
* **Engineering:** Carpentry, Metalworking, Electronics

#### DIPLOMACY/SOCIAL SKILL TREE:

Total skills: 5

* **Diplomacy/Soft Skills/Social:** Bargaining, Persuasion, Intimidation, Leadership, Negotiation

#### **(SKILL TREES AND WHAT SKILLS DO)**

* **Melee combat:** Increases overall effectiveness with the melee weapon type - this includes damage, swing speed, and perhaps special techniques.
* **Ranged combat:** Increasing handgun skill increases slightly increases benefit for other guns in skill group. For example, raising handgun skill by using semi-automatic pistols increases accuracy, crit chance. aim and reload speed with those pistols, but also slightly for revolvers because the overall handgun skill is increasing. Same for other classes of ranged weapons.
* **Survival/Utility/Outdoors:** First aid affects how effective healing items are and how long they last/how much they restore. Security affects the difficulty of computer hacking and lockpicking
* **Crafting:** Chemistry affects things like explosive creation effectiveness and resource cost,
* **Engineering:**
* **Diplomacy:** Bargaining affects store buying and selling prices and barter potential. Persuasion affects pleasant speech checks. Intimidation affects coercive speech checks. Leadership affects allies' effectiveness in combat, courage, and ability to follow commands (also factors in with trust and affinity), and lowers morale decay. Negotiation affects the abilities of compromising speech checks.

### **SKILL TREES IN DETAIL:** Melee Combat, Ranged Combat, Survival, Crafting, Engineering, Diplomacy,

**\*NOTE\*: For combat skill trees, the text in the TYPES column can go under the DESCRIPTION column, and the text under that column can go on the individual pages for each of those skills.**

**\*NOTE\*: Weapon types are not complete or finalized at all, as many guns have copyrighted names. This may take a while to develop.**

**SURVIVAL**