Skill changes

Skill Changes

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Classes - Skills - Feats - Trap Summons - Familiar Reskins Spells (list) - Misc
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This page lists and explains Skills which work differently on Arelith than in Vanilla NWN.

General Notes

• NOTE: All skills can be crosstrained on Arelith, with the exception of Use Magic Device.

• Many Skills are useful in Dialogues throughout the servers, with NPCs or other objects. These can allow PCs to access services, areas and so on which are generally not available. Which Skills have uses such as these, and what they "unlock", is Find Out In Game information.

• Note: Conversation checks for Intimidate, Leadership (formerly Persuade), Perform and Bluff scale based upon character level. This does not affect PvP mechanics such as Disguise and Mimic.

• You can check your effective Climb skill and eligible Lore skill for scroll usage by double clicking their skill entries in your character sheet.
• Double clicking Bluff or Perform will display your character's current disguise skill. This readout will include Hidden Persona / Secret Identity bonuses for the current disguise, if the character has either feat.

Modified Skills

Animal Empathy

Now a cross class skill for everyone. A successful empathy check can turn animals into henchmen, allowing them to use Animal Empathy on more than one animal at one time. Additionally, neutral animals usually attack those that get too close, but Animal Empathy will be passively rolled against the animals' CR to keep them neutral in these cases.

Appraise

Only determines the price when selling an item to a merchant NPC. Instead of a random roll, an item's sell value at each merchant is determined by the following formula:

  300 + (Hard ranks * X) + (Soft ranks * (X - 1))

• X defaults to 3 and is adjusted by the following:
  • Add 1 if same/similar race OR if same nation as the merchant (Cordor, Devil's Table, etc.)
    • Subraces, such as genasi, will check both subrace and base race and use the most convenient result
  • Add 1 if you beat the merchant's appraise skill by at least 15 points
  • Subtract 1 if the merchant beats your appraise skill by at least 15 points

Certain locations are considered 'economic zones' that serve as an alternative to matching race requirements, including:

• Shadovar: Free trade zone, always true
• Dis: Free trade zone, always true
• Sibayad: Surface races
• Hub: UD races/outcasts
• Sencliff: Pirates
• Crow's nest: Pirates and surface races
• Arelith Forest: Shamans, druids, rangers, barbarians, Ancient paladins and Animal/Plant clerics/Div Champs
• Radiant Keep: Radiant Members.
• Earthkin alliance territory: Earthkin races - gnomes, hins, dwarves (excluding duergar).

Example with numbers:

• 300 + (55 * 5) + (29 * (5 - 1)) = 691
  • John Cordor has a total appraise score of 84. 55 are Hard points, 24 are Soft.
  • John Cordor the Human player trades with Jane Cordor the Human NPC merchant, meeting same race requirement (+1)
  • John Cordor beats Jane's appraise score by 15 points or more (+1)

Merchants also have a 'mood' modifier to their sell value (d10) which is rolled every reset.

In a party, each member is considered individually and the one that would reach the highest values is selected as appraiser.

Bluff

Affects the strength of a character's disguise. A full explanation is given here. If high enough, can also be used to bypass exiles and some outcast mechanics.

Climb

An Arelith custom skill. Climb is rolled in order to... Climb. A successful Climb check allows the character to traverse difficult terrain that might otherwise be inaccessible. The Lasso also figures in.

• Ability modifier: Strength AND Dexterity.
• Requires training: No.
• Fighters, rogues, rangers, assassins, arcane archers, harpers, zhents, monks and barbarians no longer receive +1 per climb per level to pass climb DC checks, but now have Climb as a class skill. All other classes are cross-class.
• Air genasi and level 12+ swashbucklers no longer automatically pass climb checks. Instead air genasi receive half of their total level as a bonus, and swashbucklers receive half of their class level.
• Allows for a Take 20 when the character is not in combat.
• Characters gain XP for completing climb checks. This XP reward scales with the climb DC. Half is granted immediately, half as Adventure XP.

Craft Armor

Has been removed along with Craft Weapon and replaced by a custom skill Craft Mastery.

Craft Mastery

An Arelith custom skill used for the custom crafting system combining the original Craft Armor and Craft Weapons.

• Every 10 (hard) ranks in Craft Mastery increases your mundane dweomercraft tier by 1.
• Each rank in Craft Mastery adds +1 crafting point to use per day
  • Only skill points received from base ranks and Craft Mastery feats add to the daily crafting points
  • Crafting feats also affect both Magic and Mundane dweomercraft rank.

Craft Trap

Has been removed along with Set Trap and replaced with the custom skill Use Trap.

Craft Weapon

Has been removed along with Craft Armor and replaced by a custom skill Craft Mastery.

Disable Trap

Characters without Rogue levels can now detect and disarm traps above a DC of 35. Traps have undergone extensive changes on Arelith. See Trap for details.

Intimidate

You project an intimidating presence, causing all enemies to make a concentration roll against your intimidate roll. If they fail the check they lose 1 AC for 5 rounds. If they fail by more than 20, they lose 2 AC instead. Applications of this skill does not stack with itself.

Additionally, Intimidate can be used to suppress voters in elections. You can decrease the amount of votes all of your opponents receive by 1dX, where X is your hard Intimidate score divided by 10. This does not stack with the Leadership bonus to votes, and you will use the higher of the two. If they are the same value, it will default to using Leadership. (Mathematically, opponents losing votes is exactly the same as you gaining votes.)

Leadership

An Arelith custom skill replacing Persuade. Leadership applies bonuses to Henchmen with a base (Hard) INT greater than 9, and to PC party members when the character is assigned as party leader and the party members are within 20 meters of the leader. These bonuses do not apply to the Leader.

There are also NPCs that can be hired if your leadership skill is high enough. Levels required to hire the NPC are visible by examining the NPC. Some NPCs will have high leadership requirements to take them on as henchmen.

Merits of the Leadership Skill

1. Bonuses:

Soft skill totals - Modifiers count

Bonuses are cumulative across skill points

Skill Rank	Henchmen	Party Members
5	+1 all saves vs. fear	---
10	+1 AB	+1 all saves vs. fear
15	+1 universal save	+1 vs. mind-affecting
20	+1 AC	+5% movement speed increase
30	+1 universal save	+1 fortitude save
40	+1 APR	---
50	+1 universal save	+1 AB
Add.	+(Leadership/10) Temp HP	+1 all saves vs. fear for every 5 ranks above 50

2. Bounty Collection:

Value of bounties is increased capped at 100% per base (Hard) Leadership skill rank relative to your level, pay outs cap at 1600. Unique Enemies (with yellow names) drop a Bounty head with a value proportional to their difficulty. The Formula is as follows

Epic: (Hard Ranks / (Character level + 3))

Pre-Epic:(Hard Ranks / (Character Level + 3)) - ((20-Character Level)/100)

3. Common Touch:

When standing in an election, you gain bonus votes for yourself for every 10 base (Hard) ranks in Leadership:

10 ranks: 1 extra vote

20 ranks: 1d2 extra votes

30 ranks: 1d3 extra votes

This represents your character inspiring NPCs to vote for you. It does not confer any bonus unless you are the one standing in an election.

Note: Conversation leadership (previously persuade) checks remain.

Lore

1. Scrolls:

1) No amount of Use Magic Device enables the use of scrolls, instead scrolls use effective lore ranks to be used, restricted by:

A) It's a scroll with no restriction, like Raise Dead or Restoration.

B) It's a scroll that belongs to one of the character's class spell lists, and they have access to a spell level that's at least half, rounded up, of the spell level at which the spell on the scroll appears in their spell list, and the relevant primary casting ability modifier for that class matches or exceeds that spell level.

C) They have enough Lore to beat a check based on the spell's innate level that allows them to circumvent any limitations.

D) If the character is a specialist wizard, they can't use scrolls from their opposed school.

Sources of Lore which contribute to the Lore value used for scroll usage:

Skill Ranks, Intelligence modifier, + Lore on equipment, the Dwarven bonus to Lore, Courteous Magocracy , Skill Focus: Lore and Epic Skill Focus: Lore, 1/2 of the Bardic Knowledge Lore bonus, Loremaster's knowledge.

It does NOT include the spells Identify or Legend Lore, or the skill bonus from Bard Song.

innate Spell Level	Lore Req for Scroll
0	5
1	5
2	10
3	15
4	20
5	25
6	35
7	50
8	65
9	80

2. Languages:

Lore contribution to language understanding, effectively giving a 1% chance of understanding any given utterance for every 2 Lore points (which stack the same as they did before), capping at 25%. Language recognition scales at a rate of 10% per 2 Lore points, capping at 100%.

3. Bookshelves:

Lore allows for an additional chance of finding documents of interest (books, scrolls, notes) when investigating bookshelves. This chance is based on total Lore skill.

Parry

Parried attacks have +5 AB and damage bonus equal to half the parry skill up to 20 ranks, and 1/4 beyond 20 ranks. Skill bonus from items count. Parry is a toggled mode, like the modified (Improved) Expertise.

Note: A character may only parry a number of attacks per round equal to the number of attacks per round available to that character. This is further capped at a maximum of one parry per attack flurry and there are 3 attack flurries per round.

• Parry Shield AC: +1 Shield AC Bonus per five hard parry skill points, scaled by character BAB, will be granted to wielder
  • When you are:
    • Fighting with a one handed weapon in the main hand and nothing in the off-hand.
  • And are not:
    • Using a weapon on which you can use -twohand.
    • A monk.
    • Using a ranged weapon.
    • Special parry items benefit from the parry ac bonus when dual wielded. The bonus is however halved in that specific case, they are:
      • Swordbreaker
      • Main Gaunche

Base Attack Bonus Required	Hard Parry Skill Required	Shield AC Bonus	Notes
5	5	+1	Possible at level 5
10	10	+2	Possible at level 10
15	15	+3	Possible at level 15
20	20	+4	Possible at level 20
21	25	+5	Possible at level 22
21	30	+6	Possible at level 27

Perform

Affects the strength of a character's disguise. A full explanation is given here. If high enough, can also be used to bypass exiles and some outcast mechanics.

Persuade

Has been removed and replaced with the custom skill Leadership.

Pickpocketing

Has been removed and replaced with the custom skill Sleight of Hand.

Sleight of Hand

An Arelith custom skill replacing Pickpocket. Specific rules about Theft apply to Sleight of Hand. These are explained in separate article about Sleight of Hand. Also; pickpocketing hostile mobs using Sleight of Hand will reward a 50% of the mob's experience up to two times per mob. Also allows cheating at some games.

Ride

Used for Riding and the Underdark Wyvern transportation system.

• Equipping Longbow or Heavy Crossbow while mounted will receive a -8 AB penalty (Nothing reduces this penalty).
• Riding AC no longer depends on Tumble and Tumble no longer applies any AC whilst riding.
• Formula for AC while riding is:

• Mounted Combat feat is needed to benefit from the Ride AC bonus.
• (Total Ranks of (Hard) Ride + Cavalier Level) / 7 capping at 4 maximum
• Example: A character with 10 levels of cavalier and 10 dex will need 18 hard ranks of ride to get 4 (AC Other Modifier) while riding. Or in other words (28 - X Cavalier Levels) = Amount of (Hard) Ride Ranks Required for a Max Ride AC of 4.

Note: This is an untyped AC bonus

Sail

An Arelith custom skill. See the Sailing page for details.

Search

Search adds a chance of discovering up to two extra items when looting a corpse (max 100% at 100 Search). In a party, the largest Search bonus is used when looting. Search is also used alongside Lore in investigating bloodstains. A full explanation is given here.
For chests, each party member will roll to get extra treasure, up to six party members. Each successful roll is made with a higher unknown DC than the previous. The order of roll is made on least to most skilled player.

Set Trap

Has been removed along with Craft Trap and replaced with the custom skill Use Trap.

Spot

In addition to standard detection of Hide and pickpocketing attempts, Spot is used for Inspecting and recognition of disguised characters.

Use Magic Device

UMD requirements, across the board, have been bumped up by 5 starting from 200gp in value except for equipment which has set UMD requirements and Wands. Many items (specially racial items made through Crafting) have an increased UMD requirement to be wielded or worn.

Please note every time a character logs in, or transitions to another server, the game will do a UMD gear check, which can cause items to get unequipped if spells or effects to raise UMD where to used to wear them.

No amount of UMD enables the use of scrolls.

For wands, the UMD value has been adjusted to increase according to the innate level, starting at 1 and ending at 15.

innate Spell Level	UMD Req For Wand
0	1
1	1
2	5
3	10
4	15

Use Trap

An Arelith custom skill replacing Craft Trap AND Set Trap, combining both skills into a single skill. Traps have undergone extensive changes on Arelith. See Trap for details.

Some skills cannot be added to items through enchanting.