SAO Unique Skills

General discussion related to these two novel series

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eduardogranja
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SAO Unique Skills

Post by eduardogranja »

Well, this discussion started when me and my friends were discussing the anime adaptation of SAO. At some point, we began to wonder about the 10 Unique Skills that existed in SAO (not the novel, the game itself)

So far, only 2 of them appeared: Kirito's Dual Blades and Heathcliff's Holy Sword. But what about the other 8. We supposed that not all of them are combat-related (maybe 1 or 2 are related to smithing or alchemy) and "created" the sword skills we would put in the game if we created it. What about you, what do you think the other Unique Skills are like?

Some of our thoughts:
-Heavy Weaponry (combat with really huge swords. In my language, we call such swords "montantes" but I don't know the word in english)
-Weapon Throw (Using swords, maces, axes, rapiers or any other weapon as throwing equipment)
-Arcane Smithing (just like the enchanting in some RPGs, it would add stat bonus to armor and weapons)
-Whip (weapons made to cause damage really fast and also to grab enemies)
-Paladin (more like a buff. The user would be able to prevent any damage for a certain time, but would take bleeding damage later on)
-Berserk (the opposite of Paladin. The user rejects all of his defense points to increase agility and damage)
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CorbanSaezer
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by CorbanSaezer »

Two-hander would be its english term. English is a Germanic language, and their term is "zweihander," which literally means two-hander.

There wouldn't be a two-handed sword skill because there's already skills for heavy weapons. If you look at the early character designs, Agil has proficiency in two-handed battle axe. One could differentiate by having a Dual Wielding Zweihander skill, but that would overshadow Kirito's Dual Blades and break the story!

I am curious about these Paladin and Berserk buffs though. There are arguments for and against them. They have precedent in other MMOs, but would SAO accept them? Freeform combat magic, and archery, seem to be eschewed. We see some of it in teleport stones and healing crystals, but they are confined to items and must be crafted beforehand. Kayaba said he wanted players to experience fighting with their own bodies, through FullDive, as much as possible. These...certainly could only be used at the forefront of a battle!

The only time I recall a stat boost is in the side story Rondo of the Transient Sword when Asuna and Kirito ate a cake and received a luck boost.

Anyway, here is my humble contribution to the Unique Skills roster:

Blessed Water - You care for your fellow players, and it shows through the painstaking crafting of high-level restorative items. As a result, all healing items you craft have the name of your character, and their effect is improved. Nullified if you PK
eduardogranja
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by eduardogranja »

Well, the kind of sword i'm talking abot are those giant swords we see in manga and games once in a while (like Berserk's Dragonslayer). They would deal the greatest damage of all weapons, at the cost of mobility and a longer delay (the time after using a Sword Skill)

Regarding your suggestion. Wouldn't it be also cool to make the opposite too? Like, a poison making skill?
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by Zehd »

I think that you're having a misconception here: they don't say that there are 10 unique skills, but that there are 10+ extra skills

(volume 1, chapter 12)
Weapon skills that didn't have clear conditions for appearing are called extra skills. They were sometimes even called random conditions. An example would be Klein's «Katana». But «Katana» wasn't all that rare and appeared quite often as long as you kept training the Curved Sword skill.

Most of the ten-plus extra skills that had been found up until now, «Katana» included, had at least ten people who used each of them. The only exceptions were my «Dual Blades» and one other man's extra skill.

These two were most likely limited to only one person, so they should be called «Unique Skill».
We know what some of those are: Katana, Martial Arts, Dual Blades, and Holy Blade come to mind.
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by Moe_Ronn »

There are 10 Unique Skills, Kayaba said it himself.

(Volume 1, Chapter 22)
“...I had expected that you would be the player who would stand against me in the end. Out of the ten unique skills, «Dual Blades» is given to the player with the fastest reaction speed, who would then act out the hero's role against the final boss, regardless of whether he wins or loses. But you have shown me strength beyond my expectations, be it your speed or your insight. Well... I suppose that such unpredictable developments are part of the essence of online RPGs....”
Also mentioned later:

(Volume 8, Caliber Part 3)
——However, there was no «Unique Skill» in this world. The new management team had verified the enormous number of sword skills and removed some suspicious conditional skills from the system —— rumors said about ten skills were removed.
I'm fairly sure they've mentioned it at least once more somewhere else, but I can't seem to find it.
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by Type-Luna »

If there are a total of ten Unique Skills then could it be possible that their owners had yet to obtain them? Heartcliff was going to lead them until the 95th floor was it? Perhaps when Heartcliff betrayed the players was when the other 8 Unique Skills would appear to support the Hero who wielding dual blades or something along those lines. The appearance of the eight additional Unique Skills would then make up for the lost of Heartcliff. SAO did end only 75% of the way so perhaps the skills never had a chance to appear in their respective owners' skill lists.
eduardogranja
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by eduardogranja »

Type-Luna wrote:If there are a total of ten Unique Skills then could it be possible that their owners had yet to obtain them? Heartcliff was going to lead them until the 95th floor was it? Perhaps when Heartcliff betrayed the players was when the other 8 Unique Skills would appear to support the Hero who wielding dual blades or something along those lines. The appearance of the eight additional Unique Skills would then make up for the lost of Heartcliff. SAO did end only 75% of the way so perhaps the skills never had a chance to appear in their respective owners' skill lists.
'

That's exactly what i thought.

Also, something that we discussed later on was about the requirements for these skills. Kirito was meant to be The Hero, the one special player among everyone else. For that reason, maybe the other Unique Skills would be obtainable by quests (a really big "questline") as Kirito would not choose other able players, but get those he trusted to become strong. I even wrote a possible questline, but for that to make sense i created an entire dungeon :roll:
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by gn_x00 »

eduardogranja wrote:
Type-Luna wrote:If there are a total of ten Unique Skills then could it be possible that their owners had yet to obtain them? Heartcliff was going to lead them until the 95th floor was it? Perhaps when Heartcliff betrayed the players was when the other 8 Unique Skills would appear to support the Hero who wielding dual blades or something along those lines. The appearance of the eight additional Unique Skills would then make up for the lost of Heartcliff. SAO did end only 75% of the way so perhaps the skills never had a chance to appear in their respective owners' skill lists.
'

That's exactly what i thought.

Also, something that we discussed later on was about the requirements for these skills. Kirito was meant to be The Hero, the one special player among everyone else. For that reason, maybe the other Unique Skills would be obtainable by quests (a really big "questline") as Kirito would not choose other able players, but get those he trusted to become strong. I even wrote a possible questline, but for that to make sense i created an entire dungeon :roll:
didn't Heathcliff's unique also counted as one of the 10 unique?
and didn't Kirito was meant to be The Hero because he got the dual blade unique skill? and the requirement is something about fastest reaction time among all players?
and some may be from quests (with killing a certain difficult monster/boss in the quest)
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by Cryum »

Moe_Ronn wrote:There are 10 Unique Skills, Kayaba said it himself.

(Volume 1, Chapter 22)
“...I had expected that you would be the player who would stand against me in the end. Out of the ten unique skills, «Dual Blades» is given to the player with the fastest reaction speed, who would then act out the hero's role against the final boss, regardless of whether he wins or loses. But you have shown me strength beyond my expectations, be it your speed or your insight. Well... I suppose that such unpredictable developments are part of the essence of online RPGs....”
I don't think it would involve a quest. The conditions for the unique skills sound more like proving that one is the very best in a certain skill. This could come in the form of a quest, but it seems more like a system is in place watching out for extreme displays of skill. The only special quest we know that Kirito did was Nicholas the Apostate(the frontline at the time was 49th floor, so there couldn't be a lot of time for another quest before getting Dual-Blades), and I sincerely doubt that that quest was specifically to search for the user of Dual-Blades. I think there's a subsystem in Cardinal monitoring certain quests or high level enemies, and evaluating the person or party who beat it. If they exceed a certain minimum requirement, like evasion(not getting hit at all by the boss),it would give them the skill.

As for what the skills could be.....I can agree with the gigantic sword one, but I think another one would be "step" skills, skills that move you in a set pattern, but at speeds and acceleration beyond human ability.
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eduardogranja
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by eduardogranja »

well, the problem is that i can't think about satisfying requirements. Maybe some advanced equation regarding player stats (STR, AGi...) and game stats (Damage Taken, Evansion...) could do, but then the requirements would be based on the way the player plays, not on natural ability :?
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by Tap »

If you're talking about unique skills, the chance of them unlocking a new tree of weapons is extremely unlikely.
It would make one weapon type useless for everyone aside from that particular player with the skill.

So you can only go with skills that uses normal weapons in unconventional ways.
Like shield bashing, weapon throwing, maybe even some supportive ones like AoE buffs (like a bard).
You could even make it unrelated to weapons. Like invisibility, taunting, superarmour (no-flinch), etc.
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by eduardogranja »

Tap wrote:If you're talking about unique skills, the chance of them unlocking a new tree of weapons is extremely unlikely.
It would make one weapon type useless for everyone aside from that particular player with the skill.

So you can only go with skills that uses normal weapons in unconventional ways.
Like shield bashing, weapon throwing, maybe even some supportive ones like AoE buffs (like a bard).
You could even make it unrelated to weapons. Like invisibility, taunting, superarmour (no-flinch), etc.
We already have invisibility in SAO, but i like your idea of Shield Bashing. This would be a great way to give tanks some attack power. Regarding the "superarmour" idea, we thought about Paladin as a way to make such defense skill without unbalancing the game. I mean, the user can use it on the beginning of the fight, but then he will be a lot less useful during the rest of if.
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by Moe_Ronn »

Tap wrote:If you're talking about unique skills, the chance of them unlocking a new tree of weapons is extremely unlikely.
It would make one weapon type useless for everyone aside from that particular player with the skill.

So you can only go with skills that uses normal weapons in unconventional ways.
Like shield bashing, weapon throwing, maybe even some supportive ones like AoE buffs (like a bard).
You could even make it unrelated to weapons. Like invisibility, taunting, superarmour (no-flinch), etc.
I'd always thought that Heathcliff's Holy Sword gave him the unique cross-shaped equipment for his skills.

Though in the thoughts of using existing weapon sets, I'd imagine something like a Hiten Mitsurugi-ryu-style being a Unique Skill based on Katanas.
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by Tap »

Technically his equipment would probably be classified as "one-handed straight sword" and "shield" (ME2 does state them as a set, though).
But Heathcliff is generally total hax one way or another.
Those equipment were probably made just for him...

Oh, and unique skills based off ignoring equipment restrictions.
Like being able to equip regardless of stats requirement (AGI type swinging heavy axes around), equipping a 2H weapon along with a shield, or maybe one that gives intermediate proficiency at all weapon types.
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Re: SAO Unique Skills

Post by eduardogranja »

Another idea: a skill that would boost the power of pets such as Pina, increasing damage, defense, general stats and also the body itself. Using Pina as an example again, it would turn into a "real" dragon (not a really big one, about the size of a wolf). It's damage would be about half of the owner's, or it would have a special leveling system :D
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