Secret skills

[Wayfarer]

Hintbooks and strategy guides mention the secret skills for each class and the rank each character has at them. How do I know when/how a secret class skill raises? I know that by gaining a class skill, some of its respective secret skills have been raised, but how can I see which ones and how much they've been raised? Furthermore, if there is a way to know that, how can I do it for RTC version of the game? Thanks in advance.

[Gambit37]

Hi, welcome to the forums. I can't answer the first part of your question, but regarding the RTC question: nothing you read in a hint book about skill increases will apply to RTC -- it's a clone that was coded from scratch and so it's completely different internally and doesn't work the same way as the original games. I don't think it even has the same secret skills.

[Rasmus]

There are acually 20 skills in dungeon master.. Only the four first are visible as fighter, ninja, priest, wizard.. The other 16 skills are hidden and "attached" to the first four. A action you do increases xp in one skill, if the skill effected are one of the hidden skill it also increases xp in one of the four main skills.
That you all of a sudden can do the "melee" action means that a hidden skill has increased in level, but this isn't noticable in any other way..
I'm not that good in knowing what the editors has to offer, but I would guess that most editors that can change a savegame file also can show the characters stats.
Maybe someone else have a better solution on this problem without cheating

[Wayfarer]

@Gambit37: When I say "RTC", I'm not referring to the the game Dungeon Master: Return to Chaos, but the original game version included in the RTC bundle (i.e. DM: RTC, DM: Original Version, CSB and DMII). Does the original version of DM included in RTC have its own mechanics, too?

@Rasmus: Yeah, I thought you might somehow be able to see that by means of using an editor, but I was wondering if there was a more "natural" way, as I'm not that good with using hacking tools.

[Gambit37]

@Wayfarer: RTC is a DM "engine" clone programmed by a fan, George Gilbert, someone completely separate from the original FTL team. The games provided (DM, CSB, DM2 and DM:RTC) are a new format of data file that are parsed and processed by the engine to output a playable dungeon. The internal programming of RTC shares NOTHING with the original games, it's entirely new programming from scratch. While George made every effort to make the game look and play similar to the original, it's not remotely related to the original code written 20 odd years ago.

So hint books that discuss internal mechanisms therefore don't apply to RTC, or indeed any of the other modern clones that you'll see discussed here.

[Wayfarer]

I see. Thanks for the helpful info, Gambit37! I'll make sure to keep that in mind in my future playthroughs of the games. But, in any case, regarding the original DMII game, I'd still like to know whether there's a way of monitoring the secret skills advancement. Hope there even is one!

[Rasmus]

I don't know if the skills work in the same way in DM2 as in DM1/CSB but if they does:
Check out these links:
http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/690
http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/195
If you have a pen and paper you could always make notes on what actions you can/can't do and in this way figure out which level some of your hidden skills are.. The only downside here is that you can't figure out inside the game on how much higher your hidden skills are than the max skill action shown in the links above..

To figure out what your skills are by using magic are a bit more complicated because your characters always has a chance to cast a spell even if the skill hasn't reached the requied level, the chances dependes on how high your wisdom are...