ToME WikiBurbLulls: With 2.3.0 out and all skills for the classes having equal effect, here's an idea going in the same direction. What if we put the resists of certain classes and races (eg. Warriors' resist fear at Clvl30, High-Elves resist light) on the talent screen along with Perfect Casting etc.? Maybe if we only have a few such as 'Bravery' for resist fear, 'Steady-Minded' for resist confusion and 'Sure Sighted' for resist blind. For classes/races that don't get them naturally they'd be expensive, 20+ skill points. Perhaps a few elemental resistances could be put there too, but that might be going a bit far.
Oh, and for this idea I don't beleive free action, see invisible, hold life, levitation or anything of their ilk should be included.
RavenRed: I like this idea. I also agree with you that they should be limited to existing resists, rather than going off into "Flame skinned" for fire resistance or anything. Although do we really want people to be able to purchase those kind of skills in any case, rather than having to equipment juggle?
Nobody: I don't know.. having the "real" resists as purchasable skills doesn't seem to make any sense. You can't just suddenly decide "Hey, I'll train REAL hard so I can resist acid better". Resist Fear/Confusion would make more sense, since it's possible to make yourself less likely to run in terror or get really confused, but stay away from the elemental ones and stuff like that... Resist Lite/Dark MAYBE, but that might even be going too far.
LogrusMage: Not sure how it would work with acid, but yes, you CAN train to resist other things. I personally have (real world) trained myself to resist very high temperatures (a la Fireflash), and enjoy freaking out the relatives at reunion by holding my hand in the flames or moving burning logs with my bare hands. No burns. Cold is similarly trainable, though doing so (both training it and using the training) tends to burn quite a lot of calories. Electricity's peripheral effects can be resisted similarly (muscle spasm, etc) via mental discipline, but electricity's main danger is its effects directly on the nervous system, which are likely to be much more difficult to train against thus, though i'v never tried beyond the peripheral effects, so i can't be certain. Acid would require a completely different approach than what i use for fire and cold, as it's a chemical reaction between the agent and the body, rather than an energy that can be disapated and adapted to, or a lack of energy, which can be replenished and adapted to.
BucketMan: If you were going to do this, instead of allowing this sort of thing to be purchased with skill points, why not instead allow them to be purchased one time only with "attribute points" during initial character creation. Actually...going with this line of thought...personally I think it might be interesting to completely eliminate classes from the game altogether, and design all resists, skill weighting, etc. uniquely for each character. The game seems to be moving in this direction anyway, given the equalizing of skills that recently took place. Instead of 'classes' include some default 'designs' (which more or less correspond to the existing classes) but allow players to make their own and add them to the list. The capability to do this is already there with LUA.
NeilStevens: I think this page title is supposed to be abilities, not skills. That would make more sense anyway.