[CF-Devel] New Skill System (Draft)

[Mark Wedel]

  Some quick notes:

  I think balancing any new system is going to be tricky.  If you have differing 
costs for differing things, I think this will be very difficult.  Clever players 
will quickly realize that while slashing may be better than bludgeoning, for the 
extra cost, it isn't - better to be master in bludgeoning vs expert in slashing 
for example.

  I'd much prefer to just use expmul - that provides a much higher granularity 
than just three skill competencies.  It is also much simpler.

  At some level, the KISS approach probably applies.  This is after all just a 
game - the point is to have fun, and not mimic real life or make things so 
convoluted that people need to spend hours trying to min/max the points they get 
for their character to the best advantage.

  In some sense, that is why I think a very forgiving skill system is good - it 
lets players correct 'mistakes' they may have made in making their character. 
One of the things that annoys me the most about some games is that you play it 
for a while only to realize the decision you made 20 hours of game play ago was 
wrong, and you need to start over.

  I know one of the points mentioned that all high level characters look the 
same and that isn't desired.  IMO, that is more a player issue - I have a 
feeling that with a point system, all the high level characters may not be 
expert in all the skills, but those that know how to play/abuse the system will 
probably end up having the same set of skills, so all high level characters now 
look the same in that approach.

  It is up to the players to to decide how they want to play the game.  Right 
now, there are several special races that are significantly different to play, 
as well as different religions.

  I'm not sure what my point is here.  Maybe just to try and keep things in 
perspective - we should try to make it so things are more fun.  Having 
complicated systems tend not to be fun.

  As for spells - I wouldn't mind seeing perhaps some more subdivisions, but 
these divisions should be balanced.  IMO, splitting each spell path into a skill 
just isn't going to work, so now you start combining multiple paths into the 
skill, and doing other oddities.

  One thing to keep in mind is how to award exp for these different 
spells/skills.  Basically, the spells provided need to be able to kill things - 
things like protection spells will never really be able to give the player exp.

There is already a flag in the spellist.h file that says cleric/wizardry.  It 
wouldn't be hard to make that into a bitmask - you could then add another 
category or two - could add something like a 'nature' path (with the bigger 
outdoor map, this may be more useful - could include some summon animal spells, 
as well as daylight/nightfall, and maybe some more of the outdoorsy like spells).

  For another, you could perhaps add a 'elemental spell category - this would 
include the summon fire/earth/water/air, as well as some of the protection to 
those things.

  I don't think in any case you can realistically get more than 4 or 5 viable 
split spell categories (just go down the list and see how many damage spells 
there are) - having more functional divisions instead of fire/protection/cold 
makes more sense to me.

  It would also IMO help with the problem of the growing number of spells - move 
some of the useful spells to nature or summoning, and now players have to think 
if they want to pick up (and improve) those skills or not.  Could perhaps limit 
players to some number of spellcasting skills (3 out of the 4 or something) so 
they can't be an expert in everything, but what they are missing, they can 
probably pick up in scrolls, potions, or wands.  Would put those back into more 
use again.

  RE exp for wands, scrolls, and other magic - while it can be said it is the 
magic of the item that is doing the killing, you could start to make the same 
argument in lot of other places (it is the fact that I had a resist fire potion 
that I was able to kill that big dragon, etc).   The fact is the player knew to 
use the item in the right circumstance - that should be worth something just 
like knowing to use potions lets you defeat some otherwise really tought 
monsters or whatnot.  Also, giving exp for these things might actually inspire 
people to use them.  Maybe they shouldn't get full exp, and it probably should 
just go into a misc (overall total) category, but saying they should get nothing 
for using magic items to kill creatures is a bit extreme I think.