The Ossiranth Chronicles

I mentioned about Knowledges in an earlier post, but I thought I would go into detail about something I've cooked up for it.

Each Knowledge represents what a character knows about a particular academic or practical subject. How much a character knows will affect how successful they are in various tradeskills and can improve their various combat and other abilities as well. Metallurgy would improve a character's blacksmithing, engineering, and mechanic professions and might give the character a chance to identify weaknesses in a target's metal armor (in PvP, if the armor isn't fully repaired), allowing extra armor pen or crit or something.

Players can increase their Knowledges with practical experience. Anytime a player does something relating to a Knowledge, there is a chance they will learn something. A player can also read books in game to temporarily learn a piece of knowledge, which will greatly increase the chance of learning that piece of knowledge through practical experience (a player's intellect will determine how long, in game time, a piece of knowledge will stay remembered if they do not go and acquire it with practical experience).

In the game, players would have a Knowledge Compendium, representing the sum total of their character's knowledge. In it, each subject would have each of its topics denoted with each piece of information (such as "A Dragon has a weak point just under it's jaw where the scales are as soft as they are on the belly" in Anatomy). As more information is gathered, the connected bits will arrange themselves into a narrative almost like a wikipedia entry on the subject. Each bit will also list the particular bonus the piece of information gives the player.

The game would also have a Knowledge Helper. While playing, if your character knows something relevant about an enemy or something in the world, an icon would pop up next to it to alert the player. In the mentioned example when fighting a dragon, if the dragon were to lunge at you to try and bite you, an icon would come up indicating a weak point and glowing when you should strike.

I'm considering having a maximum level of knowledge which could be linked to a wisdom stat. Knowledge which is gained beyond that stat will be learned, but older piece of information will become depreciated, losing some of their bonus, and then eventually being forgotten. Perhaps any time the player uses that piece of knowledge to their advantage, that bit would gain a point of XP or two, and then after so many, the knowledge becomes ingrained and doesn't count against the maximum.

I think this would make the game much more enjoyable for players who enjoy learning everything they can about their favorite games while not being annoying to anyone who doesn't, and it would provide another method of character advancement beyond just class levels.