[CF-Devel] New Skill System

[Yann Chachkoff]

(This is my own proposal for a renewed experience system. I don't pretend it 
is the way to go - it is just a proposal. I announced this two weeks ago on 
IRC, but since luckily my whole life isn't Crossfire-aimed, I was only able to 
post it today)

 
Crossfire Alternate Skill rules proposal 
========================================
 
I. Summary 
---------- 
The aim of this proposal is to provide a better skill/experience points 
system. The system should stay simple enough to be understandable without 
reading the manual, and should promote selective character progression in a 
relatively natural way, without preventing generalist characters to exist.
 
II. Basic principles 
-------------------- 
Here are some very basical rules, 'axioms' over which the new proposal is 
built.
 
1. Any earned experience points falls into a given Skill Group (the one
   containing the skill used to get the points). 
2. A player can distribute the Skill Group experience points to Skills related
   to that Group whenever (s)he wants, in the way (s)he wants. 
3. Attempting to learn a skill consumes experience points in the related Skill
   Group. 
4. Once experience points are allocated to a given Skill, you cannot put them
   back in the Skill Group 'reserve'.
 
5. There's a maximum amount of experience points you can globally earn.
 
III. Deep dive 
-------------- 
Now, let's explain in more details what those axioms mean and why I suggested 
them.
 
- Skill Groups are quite equivalent of today's experience categories. They're 
simply several skills grouped together. A Skill Group has an associated 
experience score (again, just like it is now).
 
- Skills are a little different. In my system, each skill has a level and an 
amount of experience points. Each skill is included in one and only one Skill 
Group.
 
Skill Group experience influences all dependent skills; to compute the level 
in 
a given skill, a formula like this one could be used:
 
LVL = Skill Group Exp * F1 + Skill Exp * F2
 
With (F2 >> F1); it means that, although Skill Group experience is more 
'general' (it has an influence on several skills at once), it isn't as 
'efficient' as exp. put in a specific skill. The player thus gets the 
opportunity to be a powerful specialist, or just a less powerful 'generalist'. 
The question of 'How much should be F1 and F2' can only be determined by 
playtesting; that's why I'll not suggest any value for them here.
 
What rule Nr. 1 means is that by default, all experience points are assigned 
to 
a Skill Group, and not to the specific Skill used. This is roughly what the 
current system does.
 
Rule Nr. 2 simply tells that the player can allocate Skill Group points to 
related skills without constraints. The Skill Group experience can be seen as 
a 
'reserve' of points to distribute in the various skills. Note that you're not 
forced to distribute them. There's no supplementary cost for that 
distribution.
 
Rule Nr. 4 says that once you distributed points to skills, you cannot put 
them 
back as Skill Group points. Experience distribution is thus an one-way 
process: 
you can always do Group->Skill transfers, but never Skill->Group transfers. 
This 
forces the player to think about what they want to do with their characters 
before distributing points.
 
Rule Nr. 3 is related to learning new skills. The way you can learn skills is 
not relevant here - it could be the standard Skill Scrolls, a teacher, or 
whatever you may think about. The point is: there's always a price to pay to 
learn new skills. To try to learn a new skill, you have to pay Skill Group 
experience points (from the related group). If you don't have enough points, 
you cannot learn the skill. If you've enough points, then you can *attempt* to 
learn it. Note that you cannot be sure you'll succeed - learning could cost 
you 
more than what you expected.
 
Probably the difficulty factor and experience cost should be related to the 
way 
you attempt to learn the skill - a teacher could cost you less exp. points 
than 
a Skill Scroll and could also be less risky to fail. You could also imagine 
spells increasing your chances of success, but a cost of more experience 
points. 
All of this is mostly a playbalance problem and isn't directly related to the 
rule itself. Again, only playtesting would be able to properly set amounts of 
experience required and failure % for each skill and each teaching method.
 
Rule Nr. 5 is there to make it harder (if not impossible) for players to be 
"perfect in everything". The rule says that the total amount of earned exp. 
cannot go above a definite limit.
 
Note that the word 'earn' is important here. The total amount not only takes 
into account the current amount of experience in each Skill and Skill Group, 
but also the experience points used to learn new skills. Only the 'depleted' 
experience (remember the Grim Reapers ?) points are not counting in the total. 
It means that a player will have to choose in which fields (s)he wants to put 
experience in, and how much in each of them. It also imposes a tradeoff 
between 
the number of skills and the mastering level in them.
 
IV. Optional rule 
----------------- 
An optional rule could maybe be interesting:
 
6. Skills may require other skills (not) to be known to be learned.
 
Rule Nr. 6 puts dependencies between some skills. For example, you cannot 
learn 
Death Magic if you already have Life Magic. Or you would need Missile Weapons 
before learning Bowyer (Those are just examples). Probably interesting, but 
could also be harder to implement for limited results - that's why I put it 
under 'optional'.
 
V. Notes 
-------- 
1. As I underlined above, there are no quantification in my proposal for the 
various parameters. I have my own idea about those, but IMHO, they should be 
discussed with players and tested; playbalance is always difficult to achieve, 
and I see no better way than the good old 'try and ask' method to preserve it. 
Besides that, they're just parameters - whatever they're, the base rules are 
always the same.
 
2. I haven't told anything about how the skills themselves should be redone. 
This was not the main topic of this document. Basically, I'd use the current 
groups as a workbasis, just splitting the wizardry skill into the various 
magical paths. Skill reorganization is independent of the rules themselves, 
that's why I said nothing about it here.
 
3. I don't pretend this system is perfect. This is just a proposal, nothing 
else. If you don't like it, rip it apart, shred it into small pieces, and give 
them to feed your favourite Demon Lord. The purpose wasn't to start another 
flame war, but just to provide another viewpoint to the actual discussion.

Y. Chachkoff
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