Affinities

[Rias]

I've been bouncing the "affinities" idea around for a while now. It's pretty much a by-practice meter for uh ... sub-skills and the like. As one affinity in a category rises, the others lower. The more related skill one has, the more one's affinities can rise without lowering others.

Example: Affinities under the Melee Combat skill would be things like Swords, Daggers, Hafted Weapons, etc. So two people of equal Melee skill could still have different specialties - one with swords, one with hafted weapons. Either could decide they want to try out a different weapon type, but they'd have to build up affinity for that weapon type through use (so probably go to a lower-skill area than they normally do), and as they work up that new weapon affinity, their old one goes back down.

Similar could be said for the Arcana skill. Under that you have affinities for Sorcery, Druidry, Sonomancy, Photomancy, and so on. Someone with low Photomancy affinity might use the Shroud spell to warp light around themselves and get a small bonus to their stealth skill, while also suffering a penalty to their perception (from the light being all warped around them). Someone with a greater Photomancy affinity would use the same Shroud spell and get a greater stealth bonus, while suffering a lesser perception penalty. And someone with extreme Photomancy affinity uses the Shroud spell and gets the added benefit of disappearing completely on initial cast of the spell, being effectively invisible as long as they don't move at all.

Stuff like that. So affinities are more fluid than skills, since they both increase and decrease through use. Raising one affinity in a category will lower the other affinities in that same category.

I might also have an option to intentionally stunt an affinity, so it doesn't accidentally raise and cause decreases of the ones you want to keep higher.

[Candelori]

Very interesting. I appreciate the opportunity to specialize while having a means to shift specialization when desired.