4.14 SKILLS

(See also HELP SKILL SYSTEM, HELP LESSONS, HELP LESSON GAIN, and HELP LEARNING)

Much of your life in Achaea will revolve around your skills. Skills are either
sets of abilities or a single ability representing how well you do something
(like dodge arrows and sword blows, for instance). Typing SKILLS will list
which ones you have, and typing HELP <skillname> will give you some more
information on each skill. Furthermore, many skills have anywhere from 20 to
50 abilities within the skill. An ability could be an individual spell, or
something like a particular type of kick or swordstroke.

You'll notice, when you type SKILLS that next to the name of each skill will
be a word, like Inept. This word indicates your general proficiency in that
skill. As your proficiency in that skill increases, you will gain more
abilities, in the case of skills which have abilities in them, or you will
grow better at whatever that skill represents. For instance, as you increase
your Philosophy, you will take less and less damage from attacks on your mind
(psionic attacks). The word next to your skill will also change, indicating
your increased mastery of that skill. To see a list of skill ranks, type HELP
SKILLRANKS.

You will notice that when you type SKILLS, mention is made of both skills and
'miniskills' (after level 10). Miniskills differ from skills only in that they
take far fewer lessons to master (see HELP LESSONS).

Though the general skills that you start off with are useful, it is the
class-specific skills that make up the core of your character. To gain these
sets of skills, all of which will have many abilities in them, you will need
to join a class. You may read more about houses and classes in section 8.

In order to see what abilities you have in a skill (if there are, indeed, any
abilities in that particular skill), typing AB <skillname> will let you see
them. After that, typing AB <skillname> <ability name> will give you help,
generally speaking, on that individual ability.


(See also HELP SKILL SYSTEM, HELP LESSONS, HELP LESSON GAIN, and HELP LEARNING)