[crossfire] Skills (again), was Re: Spell brainstorming

[Mark Wedel]

  Changing topic, as this is more about skills than spells...

Nicolas Weeger wrote:
>>   IMO, it is probably reasonable for skill scrolls to get removed from
>> random treasure, and used sparingly even for quests.  But that really
>> doesn't fix the problem - even if the sorcery skill is buried in some high
>> level quest, people would probably give you scrolls if you asked for it. 
>> And then there is the question of what is the point of being able to learn
>> sorcery skill if you're character is level 80?
> 
> I'd say skills should be acquired through some initiation quest - want to 
> learn stealing? Go to a thief guild and follow the training :)

  Maybe, but finding the right balance can be hard.

  If you can go to various guilds at relatively low levels and learn new skills, 
then the starting skills are not very important.

  OTOH, if you need to be high level before you can learn new skills, that 
probably isn't very useful either (going to the case above where a high level 
fighter learns sorcery).


>>
>>   In some sense, if you choose to be a fighter at first level, you will be
>> a fighter for the entire game.
> 
> With some limits - a fighter needs some magic, though of course not as skilled 
> as a high level mage.

  Is that really true?  In what context? Do scrolls, potions, wands, and rods 
not cover the needs?  Is it a case that maybe more useful shop items should be 
generated (the method right now basically generates the same junk you find in 
the dungeons - which is probably one reason players don't buy stuff from shops 
very often) - should it be tailored to the spells that non spell casters 
need/want, like word of  recall, town portal, etc?

> 
>>   where this sort of breaks down is the melee skills - mages still need to
>> be able to use weapons, so if that green mage gets the magic skill +
>> weapons, then characters that want to be fighters can still take that
>> class, but optimize the stats for fighters, but still have the option for
>> spell casting.
> 
> *nods*
> Maybe increase encumbrance penalty, make fighters take more casting time / 
> miss more often?

  that may come down to different versions of the skills - an basic skill vs 
advanced.  Whether it is done by adjusting the exp gain (which I think is 
simpler) or actual skill effect, doesn't make a huge difference.  The problem is 
at low levels, this distinction may not be much - if you're overall level is 5, 
being level 3 vs 2 in melee weapons probably doesn't amount to much.  Another 
adjustment here could be that this 'bad' version of melee weapons perhaps 
includes effectively a penalty (like a WC 1 worse than that of the good version) 
  - with the changes in AC, a 1 WC difference actually means something at low 
levels.

  The spell encumbrance could be increased - but it sort of depends on how the 
character is being played.  For someone that is largely playing as a fighter but 
only occasionally casts spells, that doesn't make much difference (strip off 
armor, then cast the spell).  It does make it harder for those characters that 
are playing as wizards but need to fight once in a while (out of spell points) - 
in those case, only thing they are likely to be using is a weapon, so hard to 
change it that much.

  But going back to having worse skills, that is likely the way to handle it.

> 
>>   Another idea mentioned was different versions of the skills, that have
>> different exp gain rates.  Skills that characters start with would
>> generally be the best, and ones you pick up off of scrolls (or talismans)
>> would be mediocre - this sort of matches one of your ideas.
> 
> *nods*
> Maybe it could be slightly more tuned - a fighter could have eg an exp gain 
> ratio of 100% for his "main" skill (one handed weapon), ~70% for some 
> weapon-related skills (two handed weapon), ~50 for others (missile weapon), 
> and ~30 or less for magic.

  I'm not sure there is a problem with exp gain for fighters in all the weapon 
type skills - in general, they are going to specialize in one form, which will 
basically result in them having a pretty big split in levels.

  With some of the changes of combat, that becomes more important - in the past, 
wc was pretty irrelevant, so you could go and whack most things - when that gets 
adjusted right, if the skill is quite a bit different (level 50 one handed, 
level 30 two handed), that two handed skill is much less effective at those 
higher level monsters.

> In the same way a red mage would have 100% for red-related spells, ~70% for 
> other magic, and low for weapons.

  Exact numbers hard to deal with, but yeah, for starting skills, exp gain like 
that may be reasonable.

> And if we also add some caps - fighter can't get over level 50 magic? or 
> spells are 2 times less effective? or can't learn some spells?), it should be 
> interesting.

  Can't learn some spells get tricky, as it becomes more difficult to tag it. 
It would certainly be reasonable that basic versions of skills have some maximum 
achievable level, and if that is say level 50 for spells, and we have level 51+ 
spells, that effectively means they can't learn them.

  As I stated before, I think it only really makes sense to either tune how 
fast/easy it is to gain levels or the effect of the skill for different levels. 
  Tuning both would seem to start getting tricky (if a spell is only half as 
effectively, that may mean that due to various ways the spells work out, it 
doesn't work at all).  One could increase the spell point costs.  Or for people 
like barbarians, it could be that all spell paths are repelled.

> Note that we can't really prevent someone playing a lot to reach high levels 
> everywhere - we can only make it less powerful.

  Actually we can.  In the most basic, if a fighter can't learn magic, he can't 
every get high level in that.  If a mage is stuck only with punching (or we have 
different versions of melee weapons, say simple and advanced with different 
skills, such that mages only get simple version and fighters get both), it means 
that mages won't be as good fighters, especially if most of the artifacts 
require/need the advanced version.

  Many games have the idea of fairly immutable classes - what your character 
starts with is what he is stuck with - if you start with a fighter, you're not 
going to cast magic.  If you start with a wizard, your not going to wear plate 
armor and swing a battle axe, etc.  Crossfire is pretty much the extreme 
opposite - what skills you start with is pretty much irrelevant, as you can 
change your class.

  Certain races are more immutable, simply because a fireborn will never be able 
to use a weapon, etc.