[crossfire] Class change summary & ideas

[Mark Wedel]

  The discussion on the previous thread has died out, so I thought I'd draw some 
conclusions and move the discussion forward.  While not a lot of responses,
the most votes seemed to come in on the idea of classes play an important roll - 
there are exclusive skills, a fighter can never be as good as a wizard as a 
straight wizard, etc.

  From a game perspective, this probably isn't a bad stepping point - it moves 
away from the current system some, but is not as radical.  And as I think about 
it, a system with strict classes could basically start with this, and then just 
remove any ability (skill scrolls, quests, whatever) which grant skills in the 
game (different discussion, but it would perhaps be interesting to have 
conditional treasure lists based on settings in the game file).

These are some ideas I have on making classes important, but still have ability 
to learn most skills in the game.  Note that I do not mean to suggest that all 
these ideas be adopted - rather I'm putting some ideas I have out there that 
could make this happen and am seeking thoughts of others, as well as other ideas.

- The characters starting skills have a good exp gain ratio (100%), and any 
learned skills have less good ratio (maybe 50%).  In this way, a fighter which 
learns wizardry is at a pretty big disadvantage.

- Put level caps on learned skills.  Maybe level 50.  For this to have much 
effect, skills must have meaning at all levels - for example, right now, the 
highest spell level is around 20, so if you could still get to level 50, you 
would have all spells.  So putting caps in would presume that skills gain 
abilities up to level 100 (I have more ideas on this below)

- Put level caps on learned skills based on starting skill.  Eg, the skill level 
that fighter has in wizardry can not exceed one half the level they have in 
their best combat skill.

- Add more abilities for all skills to higher levels.  For spell casting skills, 
this may be spells at higher levels.  For combat skills, it may mean certain 
special actions happen at higher levels (stun opponent, disarm, etc).  Some of 
these could give stat bonuses - they would clearly give bonuses in the relevant 
stats (so combat skills would raise str, con, magic skills pow, int).  Imagine 
for example a level 75 fighter getting +3 str and con from his combat skills - 
that is a pretty nice buff that makes it harder for mages to do as good.

- Change sp/grace/hp starting values.  Right now, all classes start with same 
values, except for any adjustments based on stats.  But maybe barbarians should 
get +20 hp at start and -20 sp, reverse for wizards.  This makes it more 
difficult to switch classes at low levels.

- Change hp gain values.  Right now, hp gain is based on total level - this 
means a high level wizard has just as many hp (given same con) as a fighter.  At 
one point an experiment was done where hp was based on highest combat level 
(just as sp is based on highest mana level) - that made things too difficult, 
since wizards wouldn't have a high combat level.  But one could do something 
like every combat level counts as a level for hp, but every 2 spellcasting 
levels counts as level for hp.  Thus, a pure mage will will have fewer hp (otoh, 
as I type this, this doesn't seem like a great idea, as it now gives more reason 
for the mage to pick up combat levels)

- Clean up/redo weapon skills.  Right now, all classes start with the same 
weapon skills, so that wizard can pick up that 2 handed sword at first level and 
become a fighter.  Wizards (and other classes) should get some lesser weapon 
skill that gives them fewer weapons they can use.  Even classes like clerics get 
all weapons.  A problem this creates is that spellcasting classes are good 
choices at first level (you get spellcasting skill + weapon skill).  Changes I 
made a while ago allows a list of skills to be used, so one could add a bunch of 
different weapon skills (axe, hammer, sword, simple weapons) to limit the 
weapons some classes can use at first level without adding a bunch of new 
weapons to cover this.  Another example here could be elves, which right now get 
missile weapons (every missile weapon) where as they should perhaps be limited 
to just bows.

- Related to above, coming up with a description of each class and then figuring 
bonuses/skills may be in order - a lot of skills right now are given out for 
legacy reasons (everyone used to be able to do this, so everyone can do it now). 
  An example of this would be barbarian - a savage non magic using class.  As 
such, it probably should not start with use magical items skill - coming up with 
concepts for the classes and then balancing them may result in more interesting 
classes than trying to come up with a balanced class and saying "that's good", 
but doesn't have any real flavor.

- For class/races, it would be nicer to have a list of skills which are 
disallowed than hard code values.  For example, for classes not allowed to use 
weapons, it would be better to just disallow them from ever learning the skill 
than have arbitrary values.  Related to this, maybe add skills to wear armor. 
Eg, everyone might start with a skill that lets them wear robes, but you need 
real combat skills to wear plate armor.

  Think that just about covers it.