[crossfire] classes & guilds

[Mark Wedel]

  To quickly follow up on some points:

I am not adverse to all races/classes starting with all skills (save those 
intrinsic ones like Nicolas mentions), but with a fair number being really poor 
versions.

  For example, the fighter would have good versions of things like melee 
weapons, bow, perhaps smithery, and really bad versions of the wizard ones 
(pyromancy, evocation, etc).  This also does cover the place - everyone can in 
theory swim, but those with bad versions may have a very hard time to get exp in 
it, and thus can never swim very well.

  It seems that there is a fair amount of debate exactly how the different 
versions of the skills operate.  The basic division seems to be:

1) skills operate the same, just harder to get levels in ones you are not good 
at.  So a person with crappy version of evocation at level 10 casts the same 
spells just as effectively a person with a good version of the evocation skill 
at level 10.  It is just that crappy version took a lot more work to get to 
level 10.

2) Skills operate different.  A person with the good version of evocation at 
level 10 casts spells much more effectively than a person with crappy evocation 
at level 10.  I'd think that in this model, the exp gain should be the same - 
that is to say that the crappy version needs the same exp total as the good 
version to get to level 10.  The difference here is that it becomes harder with 
the bad version, because the spells don't do as much damage, so you need more of 
them, etc.  I say that level gain should be the same, or close, as otherwise you 
are really punishing those with poor versions of the skills - not only is the 
skill not as effective, but you need more exp.  You can of course do that, but 
then at some point, it is almost what is the point of offering such skills in 
the first place.

  Note also that in many cases, point #2 really looks like point #1.  For 
example, for disarm traps, you basically either disarm the trap or don't, and 
those odds are based on level, difficulty of trap, etc.  Presumably with method 
#2, the character with the bad version gets less benefit from their skill level, 
so effectively this just means that the bad version of level 10 is the same as 
the good version at level 3.  So you don't really gain much in this case, except 
for guilds that look at minimum level (but then the question comes up, should 
they also take the version of the skill into account?  A person with the poor 
version at level 10 should be treated differently than a person with the good 
version at level 10.  At some level, it almost seems that a bunch of complexity 
is being added, and internal at some level, everything is getting adjusted skill 
level, and using method #1 in that case is a lot easier.

  The original point of redoing skills/classes was the general complaint that at 
higher levels, all classes look alike, becuase all classes/races have the same 
skills at high levels.  From some of the discussions here, I'm not sure if 
everyone actually thinks that is an issue, and instead of fixing the 
classes/skills, the idea is to enforce/add differentation by guilds and special 
perks.  In that case, this could be the easiest:

3) There is no classes - every starts with same version of all the skills, and 
what they become is based on what skills they use.  A person using magic would 
be in the mages guild, a person using melee skills in the fighter, etc.  This 
becomes a pure case of you are what you practice.  Characters may look the same 
at higher level, OTOH, if the guilds do offer special benefits, maybe not.  This 
doesn't require any code changes - the real change that would be needed is some 
new way for characters to get starting equipment (as that is one of the big 
differences between classes right now - mages start with spellbooks, fighters 
with arms and armor).