Is there a way to put the lore skill (item identification) back on some sort of reality check. I’ve noticed people doing this service for next to nothing and or totally free. They seem to role-play that “Err, umm, let me see, it’s a ‘X’ that does ‘X’” They are totally missing the point that this is a specialist skill that would take time, the more magic an item has the more time it would take.

The game merchants charge an outrageous 150 gold per item, although steep being that you cant resell better than half the magic items to them, it is at least in the realms of justifying their time and effort for a specialized skill.

My thoughts are; would there be a way (script) and would it be feasible (not piss off every player) to make this skill used only X amount of times per day?

My suggestion would be based off the skill rank itself, say; X 0.5 of your skill rank rounded down, or something on this line. Maybe even add in intelligence modifier or something. This would give the player with the skill more than ample amounts of times per day yet cause a sharp increase in how freely players just give it away.

You'll note that people who ID for free too often tend to get smote by pissed Lore masters.

The server self-regulates really quite well.

Unfortunately, I believe that this needs to be done IG by character actions.

Promote the fact that money can be made by identifying objects instead of giving it away for free so others do not have to waste their skill points on such a useless skill and put them in parry instead.

Perhaps set up a guild of loremasters/merchants and create a cartel to raise up identify prices or smote the free love types as Heltec noted.

A 3rd level bard with a lore of 17 would be considered a lore-master, yet cannot compete with an adventuring (already has money so doesn’t really care), price gouging (charges free to 5 gold simply because it’s a point and click, unlimited use skill), 7th level wizard with a lore of 13. And by no means would said 3rd level bard be able to 'smite' a 7th level wizard.

On the other hand, if you were to put limits on uses per day, the said 7th level adventuring wizard would want to save his skill checks for items he finds while adventuring or at least not waist them for next to nothing. This would open the door for legitimate competition with those who have the undisputed better skill. The few checks the wizard has left after identifying his own items picked up while adventuring would be nullified by his lesser skill and remaining few times he can perform the task. This would make the lore-master a legitimate character that would add flair and role-playing to the EfU world.

The bard has enough spells to be able to pwn a wizard....not to mention the bard has access to weapons and other social skills (persuade, bluff, intimidate) that the wizard doesn't....and has a huge boost to them as well.

Besides, with Bardic Knowledge, bards should always know more about stuff than Wizards as they get a boost that wizards can't get.

Leave it be. If you want to make a career out of being a lore master make a merchant character.

RIPnogarD My suggestion would be based off the skill rank itself, say; X 0.5 of your skill rank rounded down, or something on this line. Maybe even add in intelligence modifier or something. This would give the player with the skill more than ample amounts of times per day yet cause a sharp increase in how freely players just give it away.

I'm very much against this. There are better ways to make money if you want to be a Loremaster. How? Glad you asked!

Literally pursue knowledge CONSTANTLY in game. Hire other players to perform actions for you, such as investigating things so that you can add more information to your repetoire of knowledge and telling people about your services as an information gatherer/loremaster. Write everything down in your journal, and categorize everything you write. Buy out Ebeneezra's bookstore. Compress all that information into your own book and use it as your reference tool. Charge people twenty five to a few hundred gold depending on how easy to find the information is/was.

In no time at all, you'll have PCs coming to you asking about all manners of things.

One other thing. You should remain focused on the gathering of knowledge. Trade information for even more valuable information.

What about items that even with out trying to examine the item you know exactly what it does because you've seen it (IC and OOC) so many times it is stuck in your memory (IC and OOC).

Lore isn't just identifing an item based off of examining well place magic runes or what ever, but part of it really is just knowing what an item is. But, yes perhaps we should take our time to identify items.

It is completely appropriate for some characters (who have invested the lore skill, regardless of class) to choose to IC'ly identify items for free or no real cost. "Knowledge of items" is not something I would generally consider to be something outrageously rare.

The key point I'd make though is that if you want to RP a lore-master, identifying items should only be a very minor part of that. EfU has two years of player-driven history + thousands of years of detailed, non-canon history as well as all the canon stuff for a lore master to explore. A character that actually goes through the extra effort (and not just asking NPCs) to learn about the setting, learn about current events, learn about everything and thus become a TRUE lore master is something that I think has an excellent place in EfU, and would be much more fun and rewarding than just clicking on ambient loot and telling other PCs what they do.

We have had PCs in the past who became true lore-masters in that way, and I'd be happy to see more.

First of all, some people are just more generous than others. Also, some can just eye an item, go "Oh yeah, saw one o'them back in Cormyr. Nothing special, just blah blah blah..." and hand it back for free. Also:

You'll note that people who ID for free too often tend to get smote by pissed Lore masters.

Is it smote or smitten? Because I know smitten can also refer to having a crush on someone. I would appreciate clarification.

I'm an advocate of "smoten," regardless of what Secutor suggests about my Midwestern Drawl.

<totally off topic>

Midwest drawl only really sucks when you're originally from the West Coast ... because there's just certain things you can't say without sounding like you have a serious speech impediment ... even after 16 years >.<

<back to topic>

Smited or Smote.

Back on topic… Let me put this in laymen terms. A Lore-master would be more like an archeologist, specializing in artifacts and histories. He is not a wizard, not a librarian and certainly not any type of salesman. Although these others may be able to identify items to a certain degree, the lore-master would be the most skillful of the group. unlimitted point and click for the lore skill makes archeologist types pointless in any NwN game, not just here.

Lore is a NwN specific skill that replaces a D&D spellcraft ability that requires a DC check to be made on each and every item, where the DC is based on how powerful the magic stored inside each any every item is. In any NwN game you will never roll a lore check to identify an item, unless somebody (like a server DM) asks you to for some reason. The lore system is completely unique in NwN and is based on the value (price) of the item in question vs the characters lore skill, not DC checks, (no dice are rolled to identify items).

So I guess I was correct in assuming this idea would piss people off. My bad, I’ll shut up and sit down now.

RIPnogarD unlimitted point and click for the lore skill makes archeologist types pointless in any NwN game, not just here.

Of course, the archaeologist could always investigate some of the ancient ruins scattered around the server, or the history of Dunwarren itself. Having a high lore skill isn't the same as being a Lore Master that actually knows a lot of things to back up the high lore skill.

Just to throw that out there before this ends.

Certainly no one is pissed off, and the suggestion is welcome, I guess we're just trying to make the point that we're a role-playing server, not a roll-playing server.

So if you want to be a lore-master, rather than just saying, "That is a svirfneblin doo-hickey that lets you cast confusion twice," it would be more fun/more impressive to actually through IC methods developed extensive IC knowledge about our very complex setting.

I'll point out that NWN is based on D&D (3.0), it is not D&D. There are aspects of the game we can't change and aspects we don't want to change. In EfU, Lore, in addition to being used to identify items as per standard NWN, is a substitute for the various Knowledge skills. Since that is how Lore works in NWN (and because I don't think we can change it nor have any desire to), there's no way for us to prevent characters with ranks in Lore (which happens to be a universal class skill) from identifying items. So, to stand out, a lore-master will necessarily have to not just identify stuff.

Howland Certainly no one is pissed off, and the suggestion is welcome, I guess we're just trying to make the point that we're a role-playing server, not a roll-playing server.

So if you want to be a lore-master, rather than just saying, "That is a svirfneblin doo-hickey that lets you cast confusion twice," it would be more fun/more impressive to actually through IC methods developed extensive IC knowledge about our very complex setting.

I am suggesting that something, anything, not necessarily my original post idea, be done to stop this rolL-playing issue. My suggestion was an attempt to curb it somehow, and force better rolE-playing, instead of letting it run amuck.

RIPnogarD

Howland Certainly no one is pissed off, and the suggestion is welcome, I guess we're just trying to make the point that we're a role-playing server, not a roll-playing server.

So if you want to be a lore-master, rather than just saying, "That is a svirfneblin doo-hickey that lets you cast confusion twice," it would be more fun/more impressive to actually through IC methods developed extensive IC knowledge about our very complex setting.

This is my point exactly. There are people (players) doing exactly this, "That is a svirfneblin doo-hickey that lets you cast confusion twice,” Watch, you’ll see, take an unidentified item to the Stand and say you need it identified and see what happens…

I am suggesting that something, anything, not necessarily my original post idea, be done to stop this rolL-playing issue. My suggestion was an attempt to curb it somehow, and force better rolE-playing, instead of letting it run amuck.

I believe you are under the wrongfull impression that this is a problem. It is not.

For most characters out there with points in Lore, it's quite well enough and fine just to state what an item is and does without digging into it's entire life and history. Most other characters aren't interested in it, either. If you want to know more about an item, there's other ways to find out. Obviously, it might be more fun if someone now and then took time and bothered to invent a story for items and give some character to them when identifying - but that should hardly be demanded in every instance, or at all, since it's usually not interesting for anyone involved - character OR player.

Personally, I have much more interesting things to do than stand around and invent stories or "roleplay" the identifying every single little Slimy Ring I found on my latest quest. The only effect a forced curb of this "problem" I see would be is a lot of unidentified items going directly to the garbage can.

And a lot of dead loremasters.