[FireDog]

I want to try to clear up some of the issues you bring up with my application before I edit it.

- Blacksmithing (Apprentice)
Smithing takes years and years of countless hard work to get anything decent out of it. Additionally, she has no way of learning how to smith, as she comes from a nomad culture. A nomad culture would not have the access to a forge, which are stationary placements, and take use of it. She has no reason to have this skill as she wouldn't have been able to learn it in a nomad culture.

Forges don't have to be massive places. It's basically a very controlled fire pit and some other tools and I think a water basin. I've watched videos where complete beginners were taught how to smith simple things like nails and fences in two weeks or so, the nails were done on the first day. While their smithy wasn't about forging weapons, it was still functional enough to smith day to day tools and equipment of the likes that I listed there. Nails, knives, machetes, horseshoes, etc. It wasn't professional, but it did it's job - albeit crudely, it did the trick. Though thinking on it now, if my next question is answered depending on that answer I'll change it to Novice.

Hopefully this clears up that part.

Her skill levels with most things are to be functional. With every one of her skills she can do something useful with it in her day to day life. It won't be pretty, but it works. Ie Construction. What I read Apprentice and Novice seem very similar, but Apprentice says you can do complete tasks and what not at that level, which implies that Novices can't.

So by that logic if I set many of those skills to "novice" it would be flat out useless to her. She wouldn't be able to build an ugly- albeit usable and functional - shelter, or her ugly clothing, patch jobs, and repairs, and her awful shooting with archery save for crossbowman ship - which is notably much easier to learn.

So, if you could correct me if I'm wrong then I'll be able to easily switch all those things around. I know from experience that it does not take 3-4 years to be able to be able to do a skill to any usable level, and other skills from what I've heard from family, the internet (reality shows occasionally about blacksmithing o.o), etc. I think it's fairly unfair to blanket every skill as is done in Mesalia, and the wording seems to be a bit confusing as well. There's no black and white with learning skills, just many shades of grey.

Taking it all into account, there are real problems still left over.

The point of enacting the skill guide is to avoid characters from being over powered and letting meta and power gaming happen; It's to give characters balance.

Someone who is novice in a skill is not entirely useless, but fairly untrained in a skill. This would be the level of a younger child who started learning the skill.

The problem comes from having too many skills. More importantly, too many job skills. A character who knows a large amount of skills would, realistically, not have the time and tutelage to learn all of them and retain the skills. Someone who spends time black smiting simply won't have the knowledge to fight with many different forms of weaponry. Black smiths have to work at the forge all day to learn the skill, and keep at it for years and years to retain knowledge and to hone the skill.

So to give response to the question, changing your skill levels to novice will still be a problem. The best way to go about the skill set for your character is to do something like this, assuming the age of most characters that come into the setting, around 22-28:

Competent (Main Job Skill): The main job skill. Someone who knows this skill is able to do it in a well constructed manor and skillfully. This is most often, the profession of the character.

Novice/Apprentice (Secondary Job Skill): A secondary skill, assuming they are learning something else on the side for novice. Or the secondary skill relates to the character's primary skill for something like apprentice.

[Level of ability to grasp a language]: This is the language skill. Not too much unless it's a foreign language. You're good on here demo.

Other skills: Usually very small skills of which carry less importance or are not as grueling of tasks. These can be higher up, usually.

Finally, just want to point out that a I don't see a novice blacksmith making tools even. Not by his or herself. Especially larger ones like a machete or more complex ones like horseshoes. Blacksmiths take on an apprentice, usually a child of theirs, to become an apprentice. The smith's apprentice is otherwise known as a Blacksmith's Striker. The striker, usually a novice as they are young, would not know how to craft such tools yet, but would do the labor and learn over many years.

Hope this clears some things up for how skills work. Once again, please revise the skills so that we may continue with the application. I'm not going to argue the skill situation any further. You should change the skills to how standards work.