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[Answulf]

Hi all, I'm a relative noob to Dwarf Fortress.  After playing for a few days and watching/reading a ton of tutorials, one of the first things that really caught my interest was the relationship between skills and attributes, so I decided to build a spreadsheet that will auto-calculate the best skills for a dwarf based on his attributes.  It should help when doing some careful embarking planning or with migrants when deciding on their roles.  Because I am still pretty new, I'm very interested in any feedback in case I am missing some major factors I don't know about.  I'll be happy to share it once I've tweaked it a bit.  Below are the results of the first test run...

This is how it works:

First, I have to compare the flavor text of each dwarf to the wiki to determine if their attribute is above or below average.  I then assign all their attributes a number; 0 for average, +1/+2/+3/+4 for the flavor text steps above average and -1/-2/-3/-4 for the flavor text steps below average.  (This takes a minute or two per dwarf, so I'll probably automate this in the future with drop down selection boxes, but it will be a bit of an arduous process).  Then I just plug those numbers into my spreadsheet and it calculates which skills are good and bad for each dwarf, based on the attribute and skill relationships found in the wiki.  It color codes them in about 7 shades from green to yellow to red, dark green being the best and dark red being the worst.  The color codes are ranked relative to the other skills of that individual dwarf, so you can see what he is best and worst at.  However, there is also a numerical rating assigned to each skill that can be used when comparing dwarves to each other.

I started a new game and ran the stats for the seven dwarves generated - you can see the results below.  I included Strongest Skills (dark green) and Strong Skills (medium green) for everyone, and some random scores and Worst Skills for comparison on a few others.  I know it's not a perfect system by any stretch, but it does seem to provide some useful information that you can factor in to the skill selection process.  Plus, it's kinda fun to see the results. 
 
Here are the results of my first test.  It is much easier to process this information in the spreadsheet than in a text output - you can see all of the colors and numbers at a glance - but this should give you an idea of what it does.  I included a photo of the (partially visible) results for the last dwarf:


Febernam
Strength (-1)
Empathy (+2)
Willpower (+2)
Creativity (+1)
Focus (+1)
Memory (-1)
Intuition (-2)

Strongest Skills: Concentration
Strong Skills: Persuader, Negotiator, Conversationalist, Flatterer, Consoler, Pacifier, Leader, Teacher.


Nanirducim
Recuperation (+2)
Disease Resistance (+1)
Endurance (-2)
Strength (-1)
Agility (-2)
Toughness (-2)
Focus (+3)
Intuition (+3)
Social Awareness (+2)
Empathy (+1)
Willpower (+1)
Kinesthetic (-1)

Strongest Skills: Judge of Intent (20), Observer (20)
Strong Skills: Diagnostician, Persuader, Negotiator, Appraiser, Record Keeper, Conversationalist, Flatter, Consoler, Pacifier, Student, Concentration, Leader, Teacher
Worst Skills: Grower (-15), Dyer (-15), Butcher (-15), Fish Cleaner (-17)

* This dwarf has some extreme results because of extreme attributes - really poor body attributes and really strong soul attributes.


Alathel
Agility (-1)
Disease Resistance (-2)
Memory (+2)
Analytical Ability (+1)
Linguistic Ability (-1)
Patience (-1)
Social Awareness (-1)
Creativity (-2)

Strongest Skills: Diagnostician, Appraiser, Record Keeper, Student
Strong Skills: Animal Caretaker


Robererib
Agility (-1)
Strength (-1)
Recuperation (-1)
Intuition (+2)
Kinesthetic (+1)
Empathy (+1)
Linguistic Ability (+1)
Analytical Ability (-2)
Creativity (-2)

Strongest Skills: Judge of Intent (10)
Strong Skills: (7's) Animal Trainer, Persuader, Negotiator, Intimidator, Conversationalist, Flatter, Consoler, Pacifier, Observer, Leader, Teacher
Worst Skills: Building Designer (-13), Trapper (-13), Organizer (-13)

* This dwarf also has Judge of Intent as his strongest skill, but it is much weaker at it than the dwarf two above because of the lower empathy, intuition and social awareness skills.


Otilushat
Strength (+1)
Toughness (-2)
Empathy (+2)
Patience (-1)
Creativity (-1)
Social Awareness (-1)

Strongest Skills: Animal Caretaker, Wound Dresser
Strong Skills: Brewer, Persuader, Negotiator, Judge of Intent, Conversationalist, Flatter, Consoler, Pacifier, Leader, Teacher


Ilashatis
Toughness (+1)
Creativity (+2)
Willpower (+1)
Memory (-1)
Spatial Sense (-2)
Social Awareness (-2)

Strongest Skills: Cook (5), Comedian (5)
Strong Skills: (4's and 3's) Wood Burner, Cheese Maker, Soaper, Lye Maker, Potash Maker, Armor User, Pump Operator, Concentration
Worst Skills: (-7's) Persuader, Negotiator, Teacher, Leader.

* This dwarf is very average, with almost all skills falling in the yellow color code and low scores, both positive and negative.


Arelerith
Endurance (+2)
Recuperation (+1)
Willpower (+3)
Kinesthetic (+3)
Creativity (-2)

Strongest Skills: Tanner (15), Fish Dissector (15), Animal Dissector (15), Fish Cleaner (17), Armor User (16), Pump Operator (16), Crutch-Walker (16)
Strong Skills: (All 13's) Miner, Woodcutter, Wood Burner, Miller, Thresher, Grower, Dyer, Butcher, Milker, Soaper, Lye Maker, Potash Maker, Wrestler, Biter, Dodger, Swimmer
Worst Skills: Building Designer (-7), Liar (-7), Organizer (-7)

* With a strong endurance and really strong kinesthetic attribute, this dwarf excels at physical activities.

[anqxyr]

Good work. But I doubt it is very useful. Attributes is too unstable. If you play vanilla, everybody's attributes will be very low after a couple of years because of messed up attribute decay rates. If you mod out attribute decay, attributes will eventually be high enough to not worry about them. When choosing profession for starting seven, I usually lean on their traits. E.g. the one with fertile imagination will be engraver, and the one who like to help others will be medic. With immigrants I don't even bother with that. They will do what I told them to, or go defend the entrance with copper sword and no armor.

[Girlinhat]

Just put someone on a screw pump and you get any manual worker amazing pretty quick   Attributes train as they perform action, so a very poor farmer will get strength and endurance and farmer skill and become amazing.

[Psieye]

Excellent work, but personally I view the attributes to be of secondary importance when determining my embark skillset: preferences matter more to me as I want the quality bonuses and some personality traits also influence my choices.

[Girlinhat]

I'm still holding out for a utility that reads preferences...

[Aramco]

Sounds interesting, but I would never use it. I assign skills to my dwarves before embark based on what order in the list they're on, and after that based on what order they show up in on Dwarf Therapist.

[ThrowerOfStones]

This is really neat, but as noted, probably of limited usefullness.

The most I ever do at the start is make sure my expedition leader when he inevitably becomes the mayor doesn't demand something ridiculous, and that my military dwarf won't pop out any babies.

[beorn080]

The best thing to do is just check likes and dislikes. At least in previous versions, working on a liked material or item gave them a small skill boost. So if you had a dwarf who specifically liked steel, he made a great armorsmith, regardless of stats, since he would work better when making steel armor.

It may have changed though. I never did much testing with it.

[Girlinhat]

It's still true, I believe, and it helps determine who will make a good baron, and who will demand slade crowns.

[Answulf]

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.  I don't mind the limited usefulness as it was fun to make and I learned a lot about the game in the process!

[parlor_tricks]

Pretty interesting, and possibly useful in a later arc - at some point I think the current attribute and ability growth rates could be toned down, at which point having this sheet would be very useful.

From the looks of it mid ranged dwarves get to be useful in the useful professions (brewing, cooking, armoring etc.) while intelligent and creative dwarves aren't of much use except for socializing. Am i reading this right?

[Carnes]

Very Dwarfy