[MUD-Dev] Re: Levels versus Skills, who uses them and when.

[Mik Clarke]

Adam Wiggins wrote:
> 
> On Wed, 13 Jan 1999, Koster, Raph wrote:
> > BTW, one factor that is overlooked here is the "mule" phenomenon--it's
> > rampant on UO, perhaps because of this very design concept.
>
> Anyone else have any good examples/ideas of how to make skills which
> work this way without making muling rampant?  I've yet to think of a
> good way to make a object-repair skill work this way, for example.

Well, you could make the skills more level based.  If a character has to
be able to wield a weapon before they can repair it (and you have level
restrictions on item usage) or if the effectiveness of spells increases
with the casters level, mules become somewhat less attractive.  For the
mule to be able to continue to assist the real character, the mule has
to go up levels along with the real character.  This means that the
player will have to spend almost as long running each mule as they will
the real player (although the might be able to use the real player to
assist the mule somwhat).  I also suspect that getting the mule to 20th
level will be somewhat harder than getting lunk-brain the warrior to
20th level.

Mik
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