4.16 SKILLS
Much of your life in Aetolia 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 or AB will list which ones you have, and typing HELP <skill name>
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'. 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 guild or house. You may read more about guilds,
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 <skill name>
will let you see them. After that, typing AB <skill name> <ability name>
will give you help, generally speaking, on that individual ability.
If you wish to see what rank you receive a skill at in a skillset, you
can type AB <skillset> RANKS.
