Skills in Dungeons

adran07

So, while the Foundry is down, I'm going to start another brain storming post like my Traps post.

This post will be for creating events in dungeons that are triggered by skills. The obvious ones that can be thought of off the top of pretty much everyone's head are hidden passages for Dungeoneering, and traps for Rogues. But what else can you all think of for each of the skills?

ghanncallide

In my first foundry quest, I made an optional Control Wizard only encounter that resulted from botching a curse removal.

cyguard1

Purification of the dead, item, or structure for a cleric. Arcane knowledge for ancient text, runes, and inscriptions. Those two just popped in my head, but sure there could be more.

zahinder

I have a ghost encounter only for Religion, and the final objective for my first mission relies on class skill.

adran07

these are some awesome ideas. keep 'em coming.

zahinder

Other uses:
Dungeoneering to generally determine the nature of architecture, history, and 'provenance' of various objects, composition, craft-like stuff.

Arcana to use 'magic vision' to sense the nature of magical workings, particularly those created by other arcanists.
Religion to use 'divine sense' to detect the supernatural -- whispers in the dark. Also a general ability to channel divine energy for various game things.

Thievery for general alertness and tracking, with some spillover with nature (not that anyone uses nature yet).

famkin

Arcana:
Dispel magic to remove barriers, an enemies "buffs" etc
Perform an Arcane Ritual to...open a gate to the elemental plane of fire or something
Create a golem follower.

Dungeoneering:
Create a rope bridge
Recognize dangerous area
Tinker with mechanisms that do mysterious things

Nature (future):
Hmm, maybe turn off sparkle path for a tracking objective and only those with nature can see footprints and other clues.
Handle animals for a follower or avoid encounter.
Maybe communicate with animals.

Religion:
Turn Undead!
Knowledge of the gods
Ceremonies

Thievery:
Create a trap for a patrol to "wander" into
Sleight of hand to pick an NPC's pocket for a useful item

neomys99

I use skills pretty heavily in my Foundry missions. They're also useful for assuming class features (someone with Religion would have healing spells, for example), though that might be less true as more classes are released. Here's some of the things I've used them for:

• Arcana: Ritual knowledge; identifying magic items; interacting with portals; dispelling magic barriers; knowledge of the Shadowfell & its denizens, certain historical events, the Weave/Shadow Weave;
  
• Dungeoneering: Identifying secret passages; appraising stonework - its origin, age of the work, and quality; knowledge of certain monsters; figuring out if tunnels/excavations/etc. are sturdy/safe; identifying weapons and their origin
  
• Nature: (implemented for forward compatibility, even if there's no Nature-using classes yet) Identifying the race that skeletons/corpses belonged to and how long ago or how they died; compounding a healing salve; identifying plants and figuring whether they're indigenous; knowledge of druidic circles
  
• Religion: Knowledge of the gods, certain rituals, holy symbols, and paraphernalia; identifying undead; performing funeral rites, blessings, and consecrations
  
• Thievery: Picking locks; lifting items during dialogues (usually by setting "Appear/On Dialogue Prompt" options); disabling devices (magical barriers, trapped doors, etc.); appraising the value of gems, art, and so on, as well background information on their style. I also use it for bluffing and subterfuge, since D&D rogues have been pretty big on Bluff/Sense Motive and such.

cyguard1

Dungeoneering could also work well if you wanted some artificer type objectives, i.e. activating a golem or using some sort of archaic machinery system.

Famkin's idea for the Nature set and speaking to animals would be a good one for a quest contact, or chain of them. Save the Trees, help Smokey the Bear that sort of thing

adran07

Got any tips for making secret passages? What about practical applications for using Religion and Arcana aside from breaking barriers? Like how Dungeoneering and Thievery can have major impacts through opening passages or disabling traps.

neomys99

Secret passages for just dungeoneers are pretty simple. Just make a passage and block it off with a wall/whatever. Drop an "invisible clicky sphere" that's only visible to people with a certain skill, give it a dialogue describing the search, and give the sphere and the "secret door" a "Disappear when dialogue prompt reached" condition.

Religion could consecrate an area to prevent undead spawns. Arcana could prevent the enemy from using gate spells, or prevent an enemy from teleporting away. Alternatively, Arcana could activate a teleporter for the player to bypass things. Arcana could be used to activate/usurp control of a golem and make it it an ally.

Either could be used to evoke environmental effects. Religion can consecrate an area and have it turn off the spooky environmental effects, or turn on some God rays. Foundry Spellplague cracks aren't much of a threat, but an Arcana check could remove some from a room, removing a source of increasing difficulty for, say, a boss fight.

If you like using puzzles, both are very "knowledge-y" skills. You can use them to provide the player a hint (offer interpretations of a cryptic religious passage, for example), or maybe even short circuit a puzzle entirely. Similar, Arcana or Religion might be used as a "detect [magic/undead/whatever]" effect, maybe hinting the right way to go through a maze, or giving some warning about what's down a multiple-choice path.

adran07

neomys99 wrote: »

Secret passages for just dungeoneers are pretty simple. Just make a passage and block it off with a wall/whatever. Drop an "invisible clicky sphere" that's only visible to people with a certain skill, give it a dialogue describing the search, and give the sphere and the "secret door" a "Disappear when dialogue prompt reached" condition.

Religion could consecrate an area to prevent undead spawns. Arcana could prevent the enemy from using gate spells, or prevent an enemy from teleporting away. Alternatively, Arcana could activate a teleporter for the player to bypass things. Arcana could be used to activate/usurp control of a golem and make it it an ally.

Either could be used to evoke environmental effects. Religion can consecrate an area and have it turn off the spooky environmental effects, or turn on some God rays. Foundry Spellplague cracks aren't much of a threat, but an Arcana check could remove some from a room, removing a source of increasing difficulty for, say, a boss fight.

If you like using puzzles, both are very "knowledge-y" skills. You can use them to provide the player a hint (offer interpretations of a cryptic religious passage, for example), or maybe even short circuit a puzzle entirely. Similar, Arcana or Religion might be used as a "detect [magic/undead/whatever]" effect, maybe hinting the right way to go through a maze, or giving some warning about what's down a multiple-choice path.

Exactly how would you be able to let the player prevent undead spawns? Cause, that would really matter for my quest, considering I mainly have undead spawns, including some really hard areas with them. Allowing a Religion character to reduce some of that difficulty might be useful.

Same question for "blocking gate spells", as I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that either.

neomys99

"Gate" is a high-end spell in D&D that lets you call in other creatures to help you, or more generically, any spell/power that pulls in reinforcements. Whether you call it a gate, summon monster, create undead, or otherwise, it's all just set dressing for spawning more encounters.

The exact implementation would vary based on what you're trying to do. The simplest way is to just have the appropriate encounters set to disappear when you reach a dialogue prompt attached to whatever objects you set for the interaction. For example, put a clicky at the door to a room with the encounters, give it a dialogue about how you see undead in the next room. Add a Religion-required dialogue prompt to "turn undead", and have the following prompt describe how your holy power destroys the weaker undead in the room. Mechanically, you have have an encounter set to disappear when the dialogue prompt with the fluff's reached. You could also add some holy-looking FX details (like the holy sparkle, or the crystal explosion) to appear at the same time.

If you have a situation where you want the boss to have more adds that spawn with him after talking to him, you could use two sets of dialogues to do it. Dialogue A can have a "do nothing" option (Path A) and a "close the portal/bless the dead/whatever" option (Path , and Dialogue B is with your villain. You can set an encounter to spawn after reaching the "do nothing" prompt in Dialogue A AND the final prompt in Dialogue B. A player that takes Path A (do nothing) in Dialogue A and then does Dialogue B will hit both spawn conditions, causing the reinforcements to show up. A player that takes Path B in Dialogue A and then does Dialogue B won't hit both conditions, so the extra encounter won't spawn.

That has other logistics to consider, though. Both dialogues would need to be mandatory (quest objectives, a physical barrier that won't go away until completed, or whatever), for example, else you run into logic problems - a player that skipped Dialogue A entirely would also not cause the encounter to spawn, as taking no path means you don't take Path A, either. The spawned monsters would also need to be kept at bay until Dialogue B is done, else they could interrupt the conversation. You could use an invisible tube as a cage for that (which is set to disappear when the fight's ready to start), have the villain retreat to a boss room before the fight, use one of the timer hacks to have them spawn later, have them spawn a distance away and path in, or so on.

kerlaa

Religion: Sanctifying the area and reducing the undead spawn amount.
Arcane: Dispelling spells preventing elemental/demons from porting/summoning in more.
Nature: Gaining animal companions to help in combat heavy areas.
Dungeoneering: Caving in parts of a mine/cave to prevent more Drow from attacking
Thievery: Traps along enemy patrol routes, sabotaging devices/equipment. Bribing someone to look the other way or join your side.

adran07

Exactly how would you make traps for enemies?

thehuntress

adran07 wrote: »

Exactly how would you be able to let the player prevent undead spawns? Cause, that would really matter for my quest, considering I mainly have undead spawns, including some really hard areas with them. Allowing a Religion character to reduce some of that difficulty might be useful.

Same question for "blocking gate spells", as I'm not entirely sure what you mean by that either.

There could be another way but the only way I can see how to prevent any type of spawn is have the mob disappear on an action. So, if a PC has a skill to recognize that zombies are about and uses the clicky for the action it would "stop" the spawning. In truth it would be set that the spawn would appear when ever the PC passes this but then they would disappear when the interaction was used.

thehuntress

Have skills recognize the work of another. If a rogue NPC is a head of the rogue PC and has setup traps the PC rogue could identify the particular rogue or wizards could identify particular runes used by others...

adran07

Okay, guess that's the end of the list of ideas for this (at least for now), so thanks for the help everyone!