Character Development
So I have been thinking about experience, levels and general character development. More specifically, how the leveling system is very restrictive and rather cumbersome for games that intend to offer more content later.
A typical level system has a finite number of levels, each level contains a specific set of rewards laid out for a particular class, with some rewards being generic and available to everyone. Each level breaks down into the experience gathering phase and the reward phase. The rewards come in the form of skills, stats, equipment options, new spells ect. Most of these are tied to a vendor or trainer of some sort. Sometimes the reward is simply a higher cap and the player must then grind more experience or a different kind of experience to reach it.
Often times when characters reach max level there is some kind of additional advancement technique applied to keep players engaged in developing their characters. These systems can be as simple as acquiring new gear, or can be wholly different systems that require acquiring points to purchase advanced skills.
My opinion is that the leveling system should simply be replaced by whatever alternative advancement system might be used at max level. Why create a mish-mash leveling systems that jumps from one style to the next. Just simplify things and stick with a consistent method.
Elements of Advancement
So my idea essentially breaks each element of the traditional level reward system down and allows them all to advance with a bit more player input.
So what are these elements and how would they behave?
Player Stats
The foundation of almost any character. In this system player stats would come in the 7 traditional varieties: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Agility, Intelligence, Wisdom, Charisma. These stats would all have a range of 0-100. The stats would all begin at 0, a fresh character would be given 20 stat increasing points to allocate. The points would not have to spent during character creation. A player could play a little and spend them where it helped them the most when starting out. Additional stat points would be earned through completing tasks, actions and quests. Much in the same way cert points in Planetside 2 or alternative advancement points in Everquest are earned.
So every action would add a little bit of "stat" experience towards the next point. Quests might award a number of stat allocation points. These points would start off as a 1:1 ratio for purchasing stats. However, it will start to require more stat increasing points to purchase higher level stat points. So for example, increasing strength from 0-50 will cost 50 points (1pt each), 51-60 will cost 20 points (2 pts each), 61-70 will be 30 points (3 pts each), 71-80 will be 40 points (4 pts each), 81-90 will cost 50 points (5pts each), 91-95 will cost 40 points (8 pts each), 96-99 will cost 60 points (12 pts each) and the final point to get to 100 will cost 20 stat points. This means it will require a grand total of 310 stat increasing points to cap a stat.
I figure each stat increasing point would require about 1000 experience a piece. Experience can only be obtained through successful actions. Kills, lockpicks, item crafts, persuasions of npcs, ect. The amount of experience gained would be influenced by the difficulty of the action performed. Typically actions that require more time to perform would net more exp. I figure the target for a good 4 hour play session should net on average about 8500-10000 xp. for people going along at a steady pace.
Stats would not be set in stone once purchased. A player could at any time choose to earn "respec" points that allow them to remove a single stat point and then re-apply it. These respec points would cost 450 experience each. A refunded point would return all the points associated with it's cost. So refunding the 100th point on a stat would return 20 stat increasing points.
A player will be capped at 400 actual stat points. This would create a situation where a player that put 50 points in each of the seven stats would be able to cap out much sooner than a player that went to 100 in four stats. However, a character with 50 points in every stat would only be able to go to 100 in a single stat. This greatly limits their selection of skills and abilities later on.
So a player with four level 100 stats would have to earn 1,220,000 total exp. A player with 6 stats at 57 and 1 stat at 58 would require 440000 exp. Both players have reached the stat cap but one would be heavily specialized with glaring weaknesses and the other would have no strengths whatsoever. So most players should arrive somewhere between the two extremes. This means it would take about 7 months to reach the cap in 4 stats for people playing the above mentioned 4 hour sessions most nights. And about 2 months to reach the spread out stats. I am thinking most people would wind up taking about 4-5 months to max out their stats. This does not take into consideration respeccing and the like.
Player Skills
Skills would be passive modifiers that govern certain actions. Having a good daggers skill will increase attack rates, critical chance and so on when using daggers. Skills would also influence active abilities. Casting a fireball spell and not lighting yourself on fire in the process would require a decent evocation skill. Basically a higher skill grants a higher success rate for a particular action. Skills would increase through use and there would be no limit as to how many you could master. However, a particular skills maximum level would be determined by a base stat. Skills would have a range from 0-100. If a skill had strength as it's base stat, then having a strength of 98 would afford a maximum skill level of 98. If a stat were to be reduced the skill would be capped at the new reduced level. Any skill points lost in this manner would have to be relearned, at half of the original rate. So gaining a skill back would take half the time.
As a last piece, skills would have to be trained from a master before they could be increased further. Also, there would be thresholds placed on how high a skill could go until a player received proper training. Once the first point of a skill had been trained, a player could increase that skill to 50 without further aid. However a Master would have to be found in order to train to level 51. Once this is achieved the player can then train to level 90 without any additional help. Finding a Grand Master to train to 91 would unlock progression until level 100. At each tier, skills would increase much more slowly.
Some skills would require a combination of stats to determine their cap. This combination skills will be much more advanced. If a skill has two base stats, the skill cap will be the average of the two stats. So in order to advance a combination skill to level 100, both stats will have to be at 100. There may even be some rare advanced skills that are based on three different stats.
Equipment
Each piece of equipment would have a governing skill that determined either the success rate of using that equipment with an action or the benefit gained from wearing it. Anyone could wear anything... however there are serious trade offs to consider. First, with weapons, each weapon interacts with various Abilities and spells differently. Some don't work at all. Finding weapon and ability combos that work well would be one consideration.
Next, armor would have many limiting factors. Generally the more protection a piece of armor confers, the more restrictive it is. Armor would be able to deflect or absorb physical damage and resist or negate magical damage. Deflect increases the chances of a glancing blow, Absorb would reduce the effects of a hit and reduce the chance of a critical hit. Resist would simply reduce the effects of a magical hit while negate would essential cause a fizzle. Rare magical artifacts might even be able to reflect spells. Heavy armor would reduce mobility and prevent some acrobatic abilities. Being able to move at all in heavy armor would require a decent heavy armor skill. This skill would require lots of strength. As for casters Heavy armor would reduce spell ranges dramatically. To the point where a caster might only be able to target themselves or the items they wear.
Equipment would not contain any stats. Each piece would have it's intrinsic qualities and not much else. You would select a sword for it's weight and balance and edge. Attack speed would be determined by your stats, the weapon skill, the balance and the weight. Weapon Damage would be determined by your stats, the weapon weight and any edge modifiers. A skilled swordsman would skill be able to kill his foes armed with a rusty blade. A novice with an enchanted long sword would probably still end up dead.
Abilities & Spells
This is where everything comes together.
These would be the actions taken by a player. Their success rate would be determined by a skill. Their effectiveness would be based on a stat. Their behavior would be based on a type of equipment. So take a common physical attack skill like cleave. It allows a melee character to attack multiple enemies at the same time. It's effectiveness would be based primarily on strength and some on dexterity and lastly some on agility, this effectiveness would come in the form of a modifier, i.e. 110% of weapon damage. The speed that the skill was performed at would be determined by weapon speed. The skill would require a bladed weapon like a sword, axe, halbred ect. and it's range would be determined by the equipped weapon. Lastly the weapon skill of the equiped weapon would determine the rate of success. Did it strike a glancing blow? A normal hit? A critical? A miss?
Or take a fireball, it's effectiveness would primarily be determined by intelligence, and dexterity. It would need a free hand, or a focus of some kind, (wand, staff, enchanted blade). The staff would increase the range and damage, but also the cast time and cost. The wand would reduce range damage, cast time and cost, and allow the spell to be used in quick succession. An enchanted blade would turn the fireball into a point blank attack that dealt tremendous damage to a single target. And a free hand would cast it as normal. The skill of evocation would determine if it was a critical hit, normal hit, fizzle or critical failure. Trying to cast a fireball without the necessary skill level might end up in engulfing the caster in flames.
Abilities would have a minimum skill level, being the first moment a player could attempt to use an ability and a recommended skill level, or the skill level at which this ability no longer receives a penalty. Acquiring new abilities would require finding a trainer who teaches that ability. Many abilities will be closely guarded secrets requiring the player to earn the respect, trust or fear of the party who is to teach them. Some abilities might be rediscovered from long lost texts or inscriptions and would have to be pieced together via questing. Players could act as teacher to a limited number of pupils at any one time once they gain a high enough proficiency. (Master level or higher generally)
And lastly, there would be a limited number of spells a player could have ready at a single time. This number could be influenced by stats, skills or even equipment. But it would require an amount of time for a player to change their spell load out.
Abilities would be constrained by equipment choice. On average there would probably be no more than 10 abilities for a single weapon type with several of those abilities being shared among similar types. Acrobatic abilities would be constrained by armor choice. Your character might know 50 different weapon abilities but there would be no possible combination of equipment that would allow them to access them all simultaneously.
Combining spells and abilities would be very possible, however, the material that weapons and equipment would be constructed out of would determine their suitability for use with physical attacks or spells. Generally the desired traits for one form of attack would be the opposite of the traits for the other. A mage could still be proficient in using staves, but his crystal staff would be made to channel energy. A monks iron staff would be made to beat people to a pulp. Hybrid characters would have to figure out where the best balance for their play style would fall.
Synopses
So basic premise is this...
Stat increasing points are awarded with every 1000 exp. gained.
Experience is earned from successful actions.
Stats determine potential skill caps.
Most skills must be learned from a trainer before they can be improved.
Skils are capped by a governing stat, but have thresholds that must be removed by finding a master and then grandmaster of that skill.
Skills gain some exp each time they are used to determine an outcome
Skills determine success rates (hit rate)
Equipment establishes base rates for damage, attack speed, and defensive stats. These are then modified by skills and abilities
Equipment modifies ability behavior. (damage, speed, range, cost)
Equipment does not contain stat modifiers.
Abilities and spells rely on everything else to determine how an action behaves, how effective it is, and what it's chance of success is.
"Classes"
So looking at this you see no classes. And you would be right. However, I still believe there is a way to maintain a sense of class differentiation with a skill based system. And that is through factions and titles. A player joins a particular group and is given a title, this title confers some bonus ranks to certain skills that reflect the nature of the title. Higher ranked and more prestigious titles confer bigger bonuses. Also, access to trainers which have better and rarer abilities would be limited to those of the appropriate title. Most major promotions within a faction could require certain tasks or quests to be completed. This would make achieving a high rank or title feel prestigious and memorable.
So stats and equipment would be left up to the players discretion entirely. Skills , abilities and spells would reflect on where the player has decided to place their allegiance.
Anyways if you read all this... holy crap, you must be as bored as I am.
