[Crossfire-wiki] [Crossfire DokuWiki] page changed: user:mwedel:skills

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Date        : 2011/02/26 01:18
User        : mwedel
Edit Summary: add more skill notes

@@ -92,31 +92,65 @@
    * Greater level difficult for items could give much greater rewards - completely reasonable that if you are able to identify a level 20 item, you get lots of experience - there are not going to be many such items about.
  
  In many ways, this would just have it work the same as literacy and reading books - either you are sufficient level to read it, or you are not - there is no chance involved.
  
- **Smithery, Jeweler, Alchemy, Bowyer, Literacy ** are current examples of these skills.  It might be worth while adding something like leather worker or otherwise split up smithery some (armorer vs weapons)?  Otherwise, smithery covers a much larger base then any of the other skills here.  Literacy does have some other uses.
+ **Smithery, Jeweler, Alchemy, Bowyer, Thaumturgy, Literacy ** are current examples of these skills.  It might be worth while adding something like leather worker or otherwise split up smithery some (armorer vs weapons)?  Otherwise, smithery covers a much larger base then any of the other skills here.  Literacy does have some other uses.
  
- === Weapon Skills ===
+ **Woodsman** This is currently creation and identification of food, and reduced movement through forests.  I think this should also incorporate harvesting - at least in the forest - each skill that pertains to a particular area should allow harvesting in that area vs a generic harvesting skill.
+ 
+ === Combat Skills ===
  
  Weapon skills get broken down and re-arranged some.  Different classes may have a favorite (low cost one) and others are at a higher cost.
  
  For example, fighters may be able to get all of those at cost 3.  But clerics, following AD&D tradition, might be clubs/maces/hammers at cost 4 (they are still not as good as fighters), and the other weapon skills at cost 5, and perhaps some at cost 6.  Paladins might get swordsmanship at cost 3, but higher cost for all the other skills - perhaps bow being cost 6, since paladins should really meet their foes in face to face combat.  Barbarians, being traditional people who uses axes, may get Axe at 3, and other ones at a higher costs.
  
- In order to balance the system, one must think about what the advancement of the weapon skill is.  Off the top of my head, this is what I've thought of - at first level, a character does damage around 10 @ speed 0.75.  Weapon speed will peak at 2.0 - exactly when that happens could vary on a lot of factors - if the character is not wearing armor, they may get that speed much sooner, but there is clearly a disadvantage there.  Weapon damage should peak around 35 for the weapon itself (note, there are many above that) - at first level, weapons the character is likely to find should be less than 10.  A characters skill, at level 100, might give another 25 damage points, and strength 25 more.  So that is a damage value of 85 @ 2.0 speed.  That is a very big swing, but one also has to figure that at first level, the characters they are fighting have 0 armor, and at level 100, everything should have 75% armor.  So that first level character 3.75 damage/tick on the actual creature, at level 100, the character would average 21.25 DPT to the actual creature - 5 times as much - but that opponent is also going to have a lot more hitpoints (probably closer to 10 times as many), so would take longer.  Those higher level characters are also likely to have a dodge skill.  So there are lots of way to make the combat take sufficiently long time.
+ In order to balance the system, one must think about what the advancement of the weapon skill is.  Off the top of my head, this is what I've thought of - at first level, a character does damage around 10 @ speed 0.75.  Weapon speed will peak at 2.0 - exactly when that happens could vary on a lot of factors - if the character is not wearing armor, they may get that speed much sooner, but there is clearly a disadvantage there.  Weapon damage should peak around 35 for the weapon itself (note, there are many above that) - at first level, weapons the character is likely to find should be less than 10.  A characters skill, at level 100, might give another 25 damage points, and strength 25 more.  So that is a damage value of 85 @ 2.0 speed.  That is a very big swing, but one also has to figure that at first level, the characters they are fighting have 0 armor, and at level 100, everything should have 75% armor.  So that first level character 3.75 damage/tick on the actual creature, at level 100, the character would average 21.25 DPT to the actual creature - 5 times as much - but that opponent is also going to have a lot more hitpoints (probably closer to 10 times as many), so would take longer.  Those higher level characters are also likely to have a dodge skill.  So there are lots of way to make the combat take sufficiently long time.  See section below about changing HP totals.
  
- Unfortunately, doing the math, a 1000 hp creature would be brought down in 53 ticks, or a bit under 7 creatures.  IMO, such a creature should be epic (not a huge number of level 100 creatures about.  Increasing armor or hit points would increase the time, but one should not have super well defended creatures.
+ One addition to the skills beyond what they currently have is they should be able to identify weapons of the same type.  For example, if you are high level in the Axe skill, and use axes all the time, it is completely reasonable that the character should be able to tell a lot looking at an axe.  However, this identification only goes so far as weapons that use need the axe skill to use them - one could not identify swords with the axe skill.
  
- However, a lot of this is also based on character hit points - a high level character could have ~750 hit points if they really tried.  I'd personally like to even out the con bonus so it is for all levels, not just the first 10 (a level 10 character with 30 con could conceivably have 500+ hp - how can one balance that when a more typical character is probably at ~120?).
+ **Axe**, **Sword**, **Hammer/Mace/Club**, **Spear**: These break apart the one handed/two handed weapon skills.  However, they also incorporate the throw skill - eg, the Axe skill will let you throw throwing axes, the sword skill lets you throw knives, etc.  Throwing of misc objects (non weapons) becomes an ability - anyone can throw a flask and one does not need a specific skill for that (plus, I don't think such a skill would generally be valuable enough for most people to bother improving).  Note that the logic/ability to throw items probably needs to be streamlined some with a better interface on the client to make it easier to do, but that is a different issue.
  
-  So if hit points is changed so that each level (all the way up to 100), they get a die roll of 1-10.  So with lots of improvement potions, character now has 1000 hp from that.  With maximum con, give them another 500 (5/level), for 1500 total.  If one says it is reasonable for really tough (eg, epic boss creatures) to double character hit points, that give that creature 3000 hit points - now that is 140 ticks, or about 18 seconds, assuming creature has no regeneration, that character can constantly keep on the creature - not bad.
+ **Missile Weapons**:  This is really bow and crossbow, and is unchanged.  Improvement in this skill means faster firing rate and more damage when firing.
  
-  One effect of evening out the hit points for characters is that it improves balance.  The level 10 creature is likely to always have 130 hp or so (characters start with 30) - a high con will give them a few more vs low con, but not nearly so drastic as it is now.
+ **Unarmed Combat**: This merges punching, flame touch, karate, clawing, wraith feed all into one skill.  Certain races may be special abilities with this skill or it has other effects - eg, it does flame damage, it drains hp, etc.  I don´t see a real need for these to all be separate - I just can not picture a dragon is going to be getting up and doing karate in any case.  Note that for normal humans, this skill should generally be a bit weaker than the weapon skills above - there is a reason people pick up a sword to hit the other person with vs hand to hand - the sword is more effective.  Probably simplest way to do this is that unarmed combat damage goes up just like the skills improve weapon damage - however, in this case, you don't have a weapon to increase the damage with.  But for special characters, like dragons, they may have a symbolic dragon claw weapon which does go up in damage.
  
- This is starting to get off topic from skills - main point was to try to determine a maximum damage rate for that maximum character with melee weapons - from there, one can then start to figure out what reasonable value for other spells are - for example, with an 21.25 DPT for melee weapon, one can also figure that a spell should do 21.25 DPT also at maximum level.
+ === Magic Skills ===
  
- A note on balance here (again) - if we assume the character has 1500 hit points, and that the DPT for unarmored is 75 (you go into an arena, or other person just attacks you), that is still 20 ticks (2.5 seconds) before you are dead - not a lot of time, but perhaps enough to do something.
+ These are largely unchanged - **air magic, fire magic, water magic, earth magic** work as they do now.  Increasing level increases the potency of the spells, the spells you can cast, as well as the pool of sp.  These also replace the summoning, pyromancy, evocation, and sorcery skills.
  
- **Dodge**
+ **Divine Casting**: I don't really like the name of praying, but that is basically what skill this replaces.  Anyone should be able to pray (innate ability), but characters with high divine casting get more favor.  Given the proliferation of of cleric spells, it may also make sense to have more god specific spells - perhaps going so far as having god specific prayerbooks.  There would still be various common spells - healing is only available via this divine spellcasting.  This could be renamed better, but since what the characters are doing most of the time is casting priest spells, a skill that better describes that makes sense.
+ 
+ === Thief/Bard Skills ===
+ 
+ These are perhaps not well balanced now, but my thoughts:
+ 
+ ** Traps (find, remove, create)** This combines the find trap, remove trap, and set trap.  As a general principal, it is easiest to find, harder to disarm, and harder still to make a trap.  In terms of balance, a character should have a 50% chance to find a trap of the same level of the skill, a 25% chance to disarm, and 10% chance to make.  Note that failure to disarm does not mean that trap goes off - it may be a 25% disarm, 50% no effect, 25% trap goes off.  Note that because one can repeated search for traps, having it be a chance may not make a lot of sense - I know right now I just search 10 times, figuring I'll find it or a trap doesn't exist, so perhaps a straight level check is in order instead - I'm not really sure on that.  The different facets of this skill could be done by the granted abilities, eg, having this skill gets you the find trap, disarm trap, and set trap abilities (I don't think that last was ever implemented, but if it was...).
+ 
+ ** Thievery ** This combines hiding, lockpicking, and stealing.  I think as individual skills, once again, I think they may be too broad/general to be worth advancing.  Hiding should grant a sneak attack ability, which if the character is successfully hidden, does extra damage on the creature.  A character should have perhaps a 75% chance of hiding against a creature of the same level, with various modifiers - bright light decreases this, as does armor and movement.  An attack may decrease this chance 100%.  It should take several ticks to start hiding - this gives a chance for monsters to spot the player - this time may decrease as the skill improves.  Note, it is probably completely reasonable that a level 100 character in hide could sneak attack a level 10 monster and that level 10 monster still have no idea what happened, but a 0% chance to do that on a level 100 creature (he can get the sneak attack off, but the monster will spot the player).  For lockpicking, chests should be given a level, and a 50/50 chance to unlock a chest/door of the same level.  In order for there to be some penalty, there should be a chance of lock picks perhaps breaking - any case where a character can repeated try something with no ill consequence, there is no reason to have a check.   Stealing should allow characters to steal items, even from shops, but it should be hard - but this one really does have consequences.
+ 
+ **Singing/Oratory**: I suggest these two get combined into one skill - maybe just called singing - I think this being 2 unique skills just makes them too dilute.  A character can calm (make non hostile) up to their level, and charm (make friendly) monsters up to 1/2 their level.  There should be some time delay to start singing, and a character can not sing if in combat (eg, taking damage).
+ 
+ **Acrobatics**: This combines jumping and climbing.  As it stands, even this combined skill may be too weak for anyone to bother improving - maybe it also gives some minor dodge bonus also.
+ 
+ **Bargaining**: As it is now, character gets better prices with higher skill.  Really high skill may start to offset shop specialization (eg, you can sell spellbooks to the armorer for good prices).  I'm not sure if that by itself would make it a good enough skill, so possibly including the ability to detect magic and cursed items as well as identify items (at a lower proficiency than the item skills themselves) may be reasonable - eg, if one is going to be buying/selling stuff all the time, they need to know what they are selling.
+ 
+ === Misc Skills ===
+ 
+ **Literacy** Literacy would be as it is now - reading of various items.  It should also incorporate inscription - once again, I think that as a unique skill would make it not useful enough - perhaps inscription at half the level of the literacy skill - for example, a level 10 literacy skill could inscribe level 5 scrolls.
+ 
+ === Skills that Become Abilities ===
+ 
+ These are skills which never really improve, and thus are really abilities:
+ 
+ **Detect Magic, Detect Curse** - while there is some level check, pretty much it hits everything.  These should be given as innate abilities for classes/races which warrant it, and should be 100% success rate.  Detect magic is a first level spell in any case, so really not giving much away to let some particular race/class use it all the time.
+ 
+ **Meditation** - monk specific ability which never scales - give it as an ability to them
+ 
+ **Levitation** - like meditation, this is given for certain races, but it never changes, so is really just an ability.
+ 
+ **Use Magic Item** - all races/classes can use magic items, so this really is not necessary.  If one really wanted to put checks in the ability to use wands, then that check should be in the thaumaturgy skill.  The only reason this skill really exists is that a skill bucket was needed to put exp gained by using wands, etc.
+ 
+ ====Dodge====
  
  == AC/WC ==
  
  Originally, I had mentioned the idea of getting rid of WC/AC, as these are to hard to balance.  The basic reason is that AC for players can vary wildly - a character that is lucky and finds a few +2 items, such that their AC increases by 6 points is a major gain.  On a d20 system, one might think that is 30%.  But if one starts on the basis that maybe the monster hits the average AC creature 50% of the time, the improved AC creature gets hits 20% of the time, which is a 60% reduction.
@@ -185,8 +219,17 @@
    * Perhaps remove the fact that potion is tied to different stat, eg, if you drink a stat improvement potion, you can improve any stat you want through some mechanism.
    * Since there are now many more stat points, quests or rare treasures could also increase stats - these would have to be non repeatable, but one could imagine a strength training type quest which will increase the characters strength.
    * Perhaps also allow spending of AP points to increase attributes (10 AP/point?)
    * In general, it is harder to increase attributes than skills.  One thought behind this is that for some attribute, many skills use it.  Eg, a character with a high strength gets an advantage with all the weapon skills, where as if he increases swordsmanship, he is only better in that one skill.
+ 
+ 
+ === Hit/Sp/Grace Points ===
+ 
+ Much of balancing this depends on hit points.  1d10 hp + Con bonus/level seems good, with no 10 level cap on that.  Just making it 10 hp/level actually makes things much simpler - a characters hit points is then level * (10 + Con Bonus).  If Con bonus peaks at 5/level, that means at level 100, a character has 1500 hit points.
+ 
+ I suggest similar mechanism be done for SP and Grace.  Maybe not 10/level, but some fixed amount, but it scales all the way up to level 100.  A problem with current system is that the stat bonus is very heavily loaded at low levels (potentially 25 points/level for the first 10) - this means that a level 10 character can have wildly different values based on attributes - as low as ~50 (minor penalty, poor roles) to 350 (max hp via improvement potions, 25/level).  It is impossible to have balanced encounters for such a wide range.  Now I realize that is very non typical, but a difference of 100 may not be that uncommon, since the bonuses go up dramatically as one gets up to 30.
+ 
+ Not that SP/Grace would be bsed on skill level, while HP would be on overall level.
  
  === Loose Ends ===
  
  The examples here really just focused on the 3 main character archetypes (fighter, cleric, mage).  Crossfire has many more than that, and I think this also helps them out.


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