ToME WikiBucketMan: Rather a than totally random selection of skill choice reward for the Lost Sword Quest, how about one random skill from each skill category? Choice "a" will always be a Combat skill. Combat, Barehanded, Weaponmastery. Choice "b" will always be a Sneaky skill. Stealth, Disarming, etc. Choice "c" will always be a Magic skill. Conveyance, Magic-Device, etc. Choice "d" will always be a religious skill. Prayer, Spirituality, Mindcraft. Then, add a fifth choice, "e" which will always be a Monster skill. Symbiosis, Monster-Lore, etc.
This shouldn't be unbalancing at all, but it might go a long way to relieve some of the frustration when looking for certain skills. It seems rather common to get four choices, all of which aren't useful to your particular build. Antimagic, Conveyance, Archery and Weaponmastery on a Sorceror, for example. It's also frustrating to have a character build that really requires a certain skill, and to never see it. I like to play Dragon-body possesors, for example. A build that in my mind is totally dependant on both Barehanded and Mindcraft. Maybe you can do without Mindcraft, but certainly not barehanded, and I've played a few who have made it a fair way into Mordor without ever once having seen either of those choices.
Another possibility to consider...at present the odds of a Quest being a Lost Sword quest are one in three, but that's 33% per quest, so you might actually receive anything, and in my DiTL notes I've seen quite a few characters who actually get closer to one in ten than one in three. Perhaps "33% each time" could be changed to "one third of all quests are Lost Sword quests?"
NeilStevens: You NEVER 'require' a certain skill from random quests, though, so this really isn't an issue.
Depending on them is a mistake, because they are indeed random, and I don't see changing the game to account for mistakes.
GreyCat: Unless I'm misreading the code in birth.c, it's 1/4 that are hero quests, not 1/3.