Sounds interesting. These clicking orgies don't happen that often tho.
How about some sort of pre set Skill-Package like in NWN / NWN 2?
Let's say one has to talk to some NPC (that's placed next to the newbie helpers) after char creation and first login.
There the PC can select a skill package and his selection is stored in DB. If the DB contains a list of prioritized skills for each package the SP can be checked every now and then (or check is triggered by some command like //autoskill) and skills will be added according to the selected package while SP are reduced for the correct amount. (Including the factors that SP requirements are multiplied with if it comes to skills from other classes)
2nd option should be to disable the "autoskill" selection.
If skills are acquired manually by visiting a trainer, the prioritized list is not affected. If the PC learns a skill that's not a element of the sel. package and autoskilling wasn't active, then there will be less SP for autoskill feature. If any element of the package is learned before autoskilling took place - irrelevant. Can't be learned twice anyways.
But w/o predefined packages and manual selection of those the PC behaviour must be recorded and skills are added according to probability. I.e. a mage dealing more dam with weapons would be allocated fighter skills. That requires as well that there's a slow change of stats towards those of a fighter. Similar for fighters who decide to be casters.
After the most basic stuff has been learned all further weapon and spell skills should be assigned by taking into account what type of weapon were used (sword/dagger/pole...)or, for spells, what element (air, water, fire, etc. pp.) was the dominant one.
That's some really big pile of tedious work and debugging I think...
So I'll check this topic again in 2 days and get me the
working patch for Server
and DB.
...
*runs and hides*