Resource Gatherer Combat
Under the current system, resource gatherers who use a tool (ie, miners, lumberjacks, and so forth) can also be fighters if they add the relevant combat skills (weapons, tactics, resists, etc.). Most of the tools have "weapon" classifications, so that the tool itself can be used as weapon (ie, axes are considered swords weapons), assuming the resource gatherer has the appropriate skill. This was a good first-stab effort at allowing resource gatherers to defend themselves, but it was never optimal, and subsequent changes to the Ultima Online universe have further exposed the weaknesses in the model.
This has been the source of much difficulty throughout UO history. For example, in the bad-old-days miners were the frequent subject of PK attacks, since the PK always had 100 more points (at least) to devote to combat skills than the miner. While there is some argument to be made that this is an appropriate design, the fact is that very few people like to roleplay the victim, especially when it takes hours of work to build up some ingots only to have some idiot swoop down and take them all in two minutes. Making it so that miners were better capable of defending themselves would have alleviated much of the stress and difficulty that forced the worlds to split. Meanwhile, characters have also been forced to specialize more than should be needed, which inhibts the amount of latent roleplaying found in more communal game worlds. For example, nobody will take their miner on a dragon hunt, even though that would be perfectly reasonable and even expected behavior in a roleplay world.
To their credit, the UO team did try to address some of this when they made lumberjacking give extra damage bonus, but that solution did not actually improve the situation for resource gatherers (they still needed all of the secondary skills), and in fact introduced several new problems to the combat system (fighters with lumberjacking points were able to deal out massive damage, over all other combat styles).
I propose revamping this model so that resource gatherers have some inherent defensive capabilities, essentially by allowing resource-gathering skills and tools to be used as weakened combat substitutes. More broadly:
- Gatherer skills should be (weak) substitutes for combat skills: Skills related to resource gathering should be eligible as combat skill whenever a combat check is used. For example, a lumberjack should be able to use an axe for combat purposes without also requiring swordsmanship skill, but the lumberjack should not be as proficient as a dedicated swordsman. Similarly, a miner should be able to use his mining skill for macing skill substitute, and so forth.
- Gatherer tools should be viable combat tools:
As stated above, the current model requires the gatherer to have the weapon
skill associated with the tool, but I would like to turn this arounds, so that
the gatherer skill is viable for using the tool as a weapon. There are actually
a couple of different ways to implement this. For one, there could be new attributes
added to each tool, such as having a "Miner Weapon" attribute that
is similar to the existing "Mage Weapon" attribute. This would mean
that everyday tools could not be used, but instead a specific tool with the
correct attributes would need to be carried and equipped. This approach gets
to reuse the existing logic and modelling, but it also requires resource gatherers
to obtain special tools, which I do not like.
The other option would be to simply apply a flat percentage to the combat formula, such as (eg) saying that a related skill type has 80% effectiveness as a combat skill. For example, a lumberjack with 100 skill might only have an effective 80 swords whenever an axe weapon were equipped. It may not even be necessary to apply this kind of formula, given that powerscrolls allow swords to go up to 120 while there are no powerscrolls for any of the resource-gatherer skills (this consideration really only applies to PVP however, and most gatherers are going to be engaging in PVM, so some kind of additional formula may be needed to provide sufficient penalty). - Gatherer skills should be expanded: UO only has
three defined types of resource gatherers, which are lumberjacks, miners, and
fishermen. All other resources can be gathered without any kind of skill required,
and this should be normalized to produce better gameplay consistency and world
diversity. A couple of the possibilities here are:
- The tanner: used to gather wool and hides, and possibly used to produce the trophy items (taxidermy, essentially). The tool should be a pair of two-handed shears, which should be equippable, and should fall under the fencing class. Scissors should no longer work for this (note that almost all of the other resource-gatherer tools are two-handed and this rule needs to be followed here) although they should still work for cutting up cloth and such.
- The farmer: used to grow fruits and vegetables, and also to nurture advanced resources like spell reagents.The tool for this already exists in the form of a pitchfork.
- The butcher/rancher: used to produce all kinds of meat (not just raw ribs, but also sausages and other advanced meats) as well as basic leather hides, by "growing" certain kinds of farm animals and harvesting them at maturity. The UO team should drop the herding skill, which was arguably intended for this purpose, but has never been developed. One approach for this might be that farm grow on basic plots of land, where every X number of grass tiles are required for different kinds of animals (chickens can share a tile, a cow might require 2 tiles, etc). Note that the current "butcher knife" is one-handed and it may be that this tool should still remain in use, I haven't really considered a replacement.
Following the above design, it would be viable for a resource gatherer to go into dangerous places and defend themselves with the same kind of 7x template that a warrior uses, except that they would be using a gatherer skill instead of an explicit combat skill. It would also make gatherers more viable as everyday characters, instead of forcing them into being mules. Overall it would make the game world richer.
This concept is also being developed for crafting skills (blacksmith, tailor, etc), as opposed to gatherer skills, with similar kinds of modelling being used.