Skills

Olympia: The Age of Gods PBEM (Oct 4 2000)

## 3.3: Skills

        No profit grows where is no pleasure taken;
        In brief, sir, study what you most affect.

                         William Shakespeare

Skills represent knowledge that Olympian nobles may know. Shipbuilding, thievery, kidnaping, training soldiers, castle building, mixing potions, and forging magical artifacts are just a few of the possible actions which skills allow a noble to perform.

Skills are organized into categories. Before a noble can learn any of the skills in a category he must first learn the category skill. The category skills are:

      num  name                       time to learn
      ---  ----                       -------------
      1000  Shipcraft                  one week
      1100  Combat                     one week
      1200  Stealth                    two weeks
      1300  Persuasion                 two weeks
      1400  Construction               one week
      1500  Alchemy                    two weeks
      1600  Forestry                   one week
      1700  Mining                     one week
      1800  Trading                    one week
      1900  Ranger                     one week

There are also six schools of magic and eight religions. For more details on learning and casting magical spells, see Magical Arts. For more details on religion skills, see Religion. Note that magicians cannot learn religion skills, and priests and their followers cannot learn magic skills.

Most skills are invoked with the ```use` skill`' order. Specific information about arguments to `use` and and requirements or limitations for using all Olympia skills may be found in Appendix - Skill Dictionary.

To begin study of a skill requires the following:

- A source of instruction (possibly).
- Payment of a fee for necessary materials.
- Payment of Noble Points to learn advanced skills (possibly).

The following sections describe the process of learning new skills in more detail.

- Skill Types
- Studying
- Instruction
- Diminishing returns
- Learning Bonuses
- Costs
- Experience and Practice
- Unrated skills
- Guild Skills
- Study Points
- Summary of study
- Religion
- Magical Arts