well,
I'm not the big Roleplayer, sorry ... I started roleplaying with Planeshift and I'm still learning.
But ... after reading this complete thread ... something comes right out of my head.
Tolol's story:
I decided to become a crafter ... I wanted to be the one who the weapon crafters would like to meet to buy their needed "ingredients"
That was the goal ....
To reach it I had to kill thousends of rats - trained "knives and daggers" and "light armor" - killed thousands of Rogues - trained "knives and daggers" and "light armor" - killed the Brigand a thousand times - trained "knives and daggers" and "light armor" ........ (not to forget all the Trepors and Tefusang ...)
I stopped fighting, when I reached Lvl 50 on "knives and daggers" and "light armor", because I had PP and money enough to reach my crafter goal ....
What for, you will ask ?
To get the PP for my mining - metallurgy - blacksmith ......
your turn now .... am I a powerleveller ?
By the way ... last week I found myself on the way to the Brigand ... I was out of PP
That actually refelcts more the current problem with game mechanics than it does with this argument. As soon as the leveling system is fixed in terms of pp you will be able to gain equal experience from fighting as you would from crafting, mining, etc. Then you wouldn't need the weapon stats to be a crafter.
Because of the leveling system problems I couldn't argue with your choice of first gaining the stats so you could actually become what you plan to rp (crafter). My only problem would have been if you not only decided to be a crafter but decided to be an extremely strong warrior and a list of serveral other things...
In the end think about it this way. Is it unrealisitc for you to learn how to kill monsters first and gain some skill using weapons and armors? Of course not. Is it impossible for you to become a crafter after gaining skills with weaponry? No. However would it be needed to
max those weapon skills, or come close to maxing them, to kill monsters in order to gain pp for training? Once again no. You can just as easily gain pp on a lower level of weapon skill and armor skill. Do you have to rp your high level skills in weponry just because you have them? Again no, infact you shouldn't. If you only gained them for the OOC fact that we can't gain enough experience by doing anything other than killing monsters then the skills themselves are OOC. If it was a character choice to first learn how to fight then go for his/her goals then its not OOC yet I'd say you should limit yourself to the amount of levels you can gain. In other words don't make your character become a warrior who can kill trepors in a second just because you want to be able to gain the pp for training quick because its OOC.
Fact is all those weapon skills could easily be proven to be OOC since you got them as a player, not because your character wanted to learn to fight. If he/her wanted to learn to fight but his/her ultimate goal was crafting then I'd expect the character to get to a decent rank but not a high one. If you as a player gets them to a high rank for the sake of easier training its okay but when rping you'd have to note this ranks as OOC for it was player done.
For an example I have a character who I'm rping to have little skill when using weapons. Yet at the begining stages its easier to train with weapons. Will I decide however to rp my character having high weapon skills just because it will make it easier both ways? No, that takes away my characters flaw/weakness. Instead I may get him the needed weapon skills to make training easier but these skills will be regarded OOCly for me. I will never rp my character to have them. At the same time once my character doesn't need the weapon skills I won't use them period for the fact that they were only there to make things easier for me as a player.
I'm not saying this is the way to do things but I think it sensible if you can understand what I'm trying to say
