Burned skill?

Unchartered Poster Joined: Jun 23, 2008 Posts: 5

I'm new to the game and don't understand what that means. I see many people use that phrase but can someone explain it please?

Also, is it better to train skills or attributes first? or a combination?

Thanks,

Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 2:39 pm

You can get skills from training stats at certain numbers. To burn a skill is to train a stat that gives a skill prior to learning all 20 skills through skill training.

Go here for more research on what stats give what skills:

http://www.terrablood.com/

You can't learn back 'burnt' skills until Primus, but at least that option is there. I'm not one to give advice on what the best scenarios are to burn skills or not, but I usually do not. Usually. There have been circumstances where I have, but under normal circumstances I don't. I will however train up stats on numbers that won't burn a skill, especially if I'm looking to improve physicals (damge, hit points, carry capacity, endurance).

ArchMaster Poster Joined: Apr 15, 2004 Posts: 2959

I agree with Flagg. Aside from a ST train or a CN train early on to help with physicals or become well suited to a weapon (in the case of ST), I have almost all of my warriors learn skills. Generally speaking, I think that is the most efficient way to develop a warrior.

Posted: Mon Jun 23, 2008 8:42 pm

Since coming back almost 3 years ago I have designed a few warriors to burn skills.
Examples:
Slasher 8-9-9-16-16-10-16 burned too 9-9-9-17-17-10-17
Slasher 12-4-14-16-16-9-13 burned too 12-4-14-17-17-9-13
Lunger 10-9-16-16-16-7-10 burned too 11-9-16-17-17-7-11

I made them because they couldn't reach a 17 Wit when designed and I wanted too see how bad they would get hosed in skill bases. They didn't get any major bonuses or get hosed in any skill area like I thought they might and they all had a winning record.

So it comes down this, if it is a warrior you are likely to not run in ADM or tourney, then I wouldn't worry if you burn skills. Otherwise avoid burning skills.

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 4:31 am

To give you another example of warriors who were "burned" and those who exclusively trained skills, take a look at the DM 47 or DM 11 newsletters.

Consortium some of his recent graduates and he identified those he "burned" and those he did not. It will give you an idea of the options that are out there. For the most part, I believe that managers will tell you that training skills is the way to go in developing a solid warrior. However, as with everything, there are exceptions to every rule.

Most TPs, especially scum, are built with the idea of burning skills initially.
It may be better to give you a single example of a scum and how the burns work here:

Taking a 9-19-10-5-19-9-13 warrior and making it a TP scum, burning it to 11-21-10-7-21-11-15 would be norm (in my stables anyway). By design, a warrior can learn 20 skills in each area (Init, Rip, Att, Par, Def, Dec). By raising stats on this warrior, I have "burned" skills at the following points:

9 to 11 Strength--No skills present, so no burns

19 to 21 Con--No skills in Con, so no burns

5 to 7 Wit--No skills in 6 Wit, but I burned 1 skill in each of these areas Att, Ini, Rip, Def, and Dec.

19 to 21 Will--No skills in 20, but I burned 2 Att, 2 Par, 2 Def, and 1 Dec.

9 to 11 Speed--At 10 I burned 1 Dec, and at 11 I burned 1 Rip.

13 to 15 Deft--I burned 1 Rip at 14, and 2 Init, 1 Att, 1 Par, and 1 Def by training it to 15.

After you have raised all of those stats, you then begin to train skills. Since I bumped my stats to numbers that had skills in them, it deducts from the original 20 skills I could initially learn. So instead of learning 20 Parry skills, I now can only learn 17 because I burned 3 Parry skills by raising stats. The same would be true in the other areas too. I can only learn x number of skills in any given area (20 - burns = learns).

Check out the link Flagg gave you and look in the charts section. I may be mistaken in this assumption, but I believe that most managers use the Bagman II chart. With the exception of Terrablood's, all the other charts are outdated.

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 12:48 pm

can only add - GREAT advice by Darque.

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 7:03 pm

To answer your second question, it is almost always better to train skills over stats, unless you are fixing a glaring hole/hosing in your physicals, or have set up to be a burner(in which case you'll get 20+ skills in your first 4 trains).

Unchartered Poster Joined: Jun 23, 2008 Posts: 5

Wow! Thank you all for the great information. I checked out the site - terrablood - and my head hearts from trying to absorb everything. Confused

One more quick question: the negative numbers on the style modifications? Are those "base" numbers or how does that exactly work?

Ben

Posted: Tue Jun 24, 2008 8:08 pm

Yes those are skill modifiers for the styles at creation.