[crossfire] Also stats.

[Mark Wedel]

  In the discussion about races and classes, stats certainly play a role in that.

  If one looks at some games, like AD&D, stats are pretty fixed (just like 
crossfire, there are some items that improve them, but the natural stats are 
hard to improve or have a limited number of improvements (AD&Dv3 added 1 stat 
gain every 4 levels)

  How stats, and stat gains work, clearly plays some role for how classes work. 
  For example, if stats are really hard to improve in crossfire, then your 
starting class is basically the class you will play, simply because it may be 
difficult to get your stats good enough to be at all decent in another class.

So going on that, I see several different aspects of stats worth discussing:

1) How easy/hard is it to increase the characters natural stats.  Right now, I'd 
call crossfire 'easy', in the sense you only need to find stat gain potions, and 
that gain is linear.  I'd call AD&D hard - its possible but hard.  There is 
certainly middle ground here - if crossfire did a 1 every 5 levels, and max 
level is 110, that is 22 gains (not bad), and the 1/5 could be adjusted. 
Likewise, potions could be made to be less linear (so if your stats are already 
good, hard to make them better).

2) What the range of stats are, and the bonuses they give.  Crossfire currently 
has max stat of 30, but the bonuses are not linear (for example, on most stats, 
the bonus you get (mana, damage, ac, etc) doubles between 25 and 30. Eg, dam 
bonus at 25 is 6, dam bonus at 30 is 10 - the difference for sp is much greater. 
  Other games have a more linear bonus - high stats are always better, but not 
as much key to maximize stats (AD&Dv3 gives you 1 bonus every 2 stat points 
above 10 as an example).  So going from 18 to 20 is still good (5 vs 4), but 
going from 28 to 30 is now 10 vs 9 - still one point, but from a percentage 
point, even less a gain.

  Related here is max stat - crossfire currently has 30, and it is clearly 
advantageous for the characters to try and get as close to that as possible. 
AD&Dv3 has no real limit (can always figure out the bonus) - there is the 
practical limit in that it will be difficult for characters to get very high.

3) Max stats related to character race:  Right now, a key consideration in 
choosing race is that it determines what the maximum your natural stat can be - 
if your race has a -5 pow bonus, the max your natural stat in pow can be is 15. 
  This has some effect on class playability, but still typically the natural 
stat is high enough that one can play as whatever class.  This could be changed 
so that these maximums only pertain at first level - in a system that is hard to 
gain stats, if a troll barbarian really wanted to put all their stat gains into 
int and pow and be an OK spell caster, they perhaps could be (but will not be 
improving their str and dex).  Likewise, if the stat range is increased, some 
difference on max stats is probably needed.

  My personal thoughts here:
Make the max stat higher (50, 100, whatever), but make the stat bonus linear. 
Make increasing stats more difficult (maybe diminishing returns on potions) and 
related to the characters stat total, remove any actual race limits.

  This has a few effects:
1) Always has demand for stat gain potions - you won't have character piling 
them up in their apartment (one way I see of doing things is that chance of a 
potion increasing a stat is related to the characters stat total, so as your 
stats get better and better, less likely for potions to work).
2) By basing chance of success on total of stats, it gives some reason to focus 
your stat increases on the stats you care about - right now, characters will 
just use a potion whenever - they may not need the Wis stat, but increasing them 
doesn't do harm.  But if it makes it less likely for them to increase their Str 
later on, well maybe you don't use it.
3) The racial limit has to get removed if there is a high stat total, otherwise 
character just reach that cap, and pile up potions.