Interesting Post on Character Skill Systems

[Lucius]

(i´ve put the trolls on ignore. FYI i cant read what you´re posting, mmk?)

If you're not careful, you'll have the entire forum on ignore. Considering your lack of communication skills, I'd bet you'd like that then you can simply make conversation with yourself and be content. It sure seems that's all you want anyways is a place you can post your outlandish ideas for yourself only.

[Arcanix]

The thing here is, does that seperation of strength attribute from melee damage actually add anything?

I dont have a working system, so i dont know.

because on the basic premise, removing physical strength from damage calculations with weapons that explicitly need physical strength sounds... stupid, to be frank.

iiRC, Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics uses strength as carry weight capacity checker. And a measurement for weapon requirements. The to hit and the real damage is the % in skill...in Fallout 2 you could have 200-300 and in Tactics 300. In Fallout 3 strength wasnt a factor at all. 1 had strength 1 and carried 19.200lbs when i fought the last boss. 100 max in each skill in that game.

Why i talk about Fallout alot is because thats where i came from. not from D&D though i´ve been playing DDO for a few years. There attributes work alot different, but it´s not perfect by any standards. i bet its the same with PnP D&D.

Just look at the good Captain's example there. It sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? You could, maybe, kinda, just use both for melee damage calc's but it still sounds strange.

Yeah.

Also, I'd like to ask. what kind of synergy are you talking about? I don't know about others, but to my head, that sounds either like a mixture of skills that greatly compliment each other to form a very effective gameplay style or like overlapping systems that help in the same thing, if a bit differently.

Example:

Constitution - 20 + 20 or +0
-Stamina - 5 + 5 or +10
-Endurance - 5 + 5 or 10

Lets say you add 20 points to Constitution. You gain the hitpoints and other features that attribute bring. Then stamina and endurance get a % of those 20 as a flat bonus.(percentage decided by the devs). 50% they get 10 each. 25% they get 5 each. Lets say the bonus is 25%., right.You still have 20 points to spend from level up. do you spend them on constitution and get 20 more constitution and 5 on the others? Or do you spend 10 on each stamina and endurance without getting any bonus on constitution?

For your record: You're going at it like you have a completed system.

Just stop. First someone ASSUMED i had one, for reason only god knows. Then over time due to pride reasons people have tried to tell me that i have one and then demand, sorta, that i deliver one to them.

Sorry again, but it's Nitpicking time!

That is a bad habit. I wount make it into a drama thing because we are finally talking to eachother.

you talk about how you have all kinds of perks and skills ready for it, all thought and ready. That is a system. Or at least it deceptively resembles a system, so much in fact that it's almost impossible to not regard it as one.

Fact is i have 3 lists. Attribute, perk&traits and a skill list. if people reading those make something up in their minds. Then its not my problem, to be frank. i dont mind talking about them but i do not pretend to be a developer. Some people here tries to put words in my mouth to have it look that way, it seems.

[CaptainPatch]

To warrant adding (or deleting) something in a game design, the change should noticeably enhance the game. As has been mentioned elsewhere, change for the sake of change is bogus. Show me how the change improves the gaming experience FOR THE MAJORITY of players and I will accept it as worthy of consideration.

BUT the power attribute will also have the ability to aid mental skills as a force of determanism. A fatigue regeneration factor.

Something already factored into ENDurance.

A character with a high power attribute score can inspire others to prevail where the odds are low.

Something already covered by WILlpower.

Maybe have an aura of influence for x period of time,

Something already covered by CHArisma.

... until that character gets fatigued.

Now _this_ is something worth contemplating: the effects of Fatigue on Attributes. Usually something addressed in games that REQUIRE characters to actually sleep on a regular basis or experience deteriorated performance across the board. (Hard to do well at anything if you are essentially sleepwalking.)

Power- Ability to do or act, capability of doing or accomplishing something.

Whereas _this_ is a misnomer and is misleading. Power as you describe it only allows you to attempt to accomplish something. And it's misleading because it is not in and of itself something that can accomplish the task. It is affected by pretty much EVERYTHING else. How POWerful are you if your AGiLity = 1? And/or DEXterity = 1? And/or INTelligence = 1? Right down the line of ALL of the Attributes. It's pointedly NOT an Attribute that can figuratively "stand on its own two feet".

Personally, whenever I hear "Power" I mentally hear the echo of "and Influence". As in, a person's inherent force of Will to have others follow his wishes. That would normally be covered by CHArisma. In a few rare games I've seen the Attribute called "Presence".

i bet that the old ways of interpret this was due to the lack of something. Computer power or connection speed or whatever.

You'd probably lose that bet. Do you _really_ think that adding a POWer Attribute would have overloaded a computer's capabilities? Having known quite a few RPG designers, going all the way back to E. Gary Gygax (AD&D), the general consensus would be that the various elements that you are trying to assign to POWer are already covered by the other, already existing Attributes. Adding it doesn't "bring anything to the table".

If you want to improve the existing system i´m willing to try. If not then forget it, no problem.

To expand on what I said earlier, change for the change is counterproductive. It takes what is familiar and makes experienced players learn something new. Unless there is some obvious _gain_, all you succeed in doing is annoying people and make them ask, "Why the hell did they change that? Haven't they ever heard, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it!'?"

[DethRaid]

I rather like the idea, proposed earlier, of having certain skills improve with use and certain other skills improve with skill points. Combat skills, as well as commonly used skills such as speech or picklock, could be use-based, whereas less-common skills, such as Toaster Repair, would be based on skill points.

I think it could also be interesting to consider a system such as that found in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. There is a "Base Attack Bonus" which improves with your character level and is added in to combat-related rolls, such as swinging a sword or trying to throw someone off a ledge. Your skills, which don't include anything to do with combat, are advanced through the allocation of skill points, which of course you get as you level up. Such a system solves the problem of "Do I put all my skill points in combat skills or other skills:, but it has the disadvantage of not allowing for someone to RP a non-combat character. Just a thought.

[BubbaBrown]

I think it could also be interesting to consider a system such as that found in Dungeons and Dragons 3.5. There is a "Base Attack Bonus" which improves with your character level and is added in to combat-related rolls, such as swinging a sword or trying to throw someone off a ledge. Your skills, which don't include anything to do with combat, are advanced through the allocation of skill points, which of course you get as you level up. Such a system solves the problem of "Do I put all my skill points in combat skills or other skills:, but it has the disadvantage of not allowing for someone to RP a non-combat character. Just a thought.

The issue with the Base Attack Bonus mechanic is that it works well enough with a class orientated character system, but Wasteland didn't work in character classes. In a class based system, you can fairly accurately control the distribution of character improvement between the different aspects of a character, hence you are able to adjust Base Attack Bonus improvements accordingly. It might be wonky to have such a mechanic in a class-less system, because... How do you decide how much of an improvement a character gets per level when they don't have an obvious specialization?

Also, another issue with the Base Attack Bonus is it is a constant character power increase in an area that typically equates to effective character potential. Such a mechanism can cause a "power war" of sorts between characters and the world. Constant character power increases often lead to situations where the characters become gods walking among men and you have to throw other worldly horrors just to present an effective challenge. After being in a number long running DnD campaigns, that becomes quite the problem around level 12 and higher. It also effects RP, too. I mean you can only take down so many pit fiends before you have to ask yourself, "Why am I going out of my way to pester these bastards?"

[Arcanix]

BUT the power attribute will also have the ability to aid mental skills as a force of determanism. A fatigue regeneration factor.

Something already factored into ENDurance..

Both power and endurance are factors for fatigue regeneration. Imo.

A character with a high power attribute score can inspire others to prevail where the odds are low.

Something already covered by WILlpower..

Both power and willpower are individual focused attributes. But both aid the leaderhip attribute (primary attribute in this case) when it comes to squad influence.

Maybe have an aura of influence for x period of time,

Something already covered by CHArisma.

Charisma and wisdom should aid leadership in this.

To expand on what I said earlier, change for the change is counterproductive. It takes what is familiar and makes experienced players learn something new. Unless there is some obvious _gain_, all you succeed in doing is annoying people and make them ask, "Why the hell did they change that? Haven't they ever heard, 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it!'?".

Sooner or later change is inevitable, wether its needed or not. Pride is counterproductive by default and will be the undoing for anyone too addicted.

[CaptainPatch]

Sooner or later change is inevitable, wether its needed or not. Pride is counterproductive by default and will be the undoing for anyone too addicted.

You really can't take rejection to any degree, can you? Naturally, if an idea of yours is rejected by the audience, there must be something with them, is that it?

Your idea adds complication to a system without gaining or changing any results. As the system stands, there is cause (the impact of an Attribute on a situation) and effect (the results of that impact). All your proposal does is to take the the cause and split it into two components, the current Attribute and Power. The results remain the same. You've added a complication for NO benefit.

Now, for the love of God and all that's holy, DROP IT and move on! Your persistence on this subject is almost to the point where people will be petitioning to have you removed from these forums. Is that what you want? [If you are wise, you won't answer that.]

[Drool]

Both power and endurance are factors for fatigue regeneration. Imo.

So... having both is redundant and unnecessary.

Sooner or later change is inevitable, wether its needed or not. Pride is counterproductive by default and will be the undoing for anyone too addicted.

You're starting to sound like a fortune cookie with all these platitudes.

[Hertzila]

Sooner or later change is inevitable, wether its needed or not. Pride is counterproductive by default and will be the undoing for anyone too addicted.

Just to note, guess why Wasteland 2 was kickstarted? Because the publishers agreed with that statement.

And while this is more or less conjencture, guess why we still pledged our money for this project? Because we didn't agree with that. We wanted to help Brian Fargo and rest of inXile prove them wrong and finally bring us a game without all the needless changes the publishers would have demanded.
So, you're more or less bringing up your ideas in the precisely wrong forum. Nothing good has come out and probably won't come out of that.

[Arcanix]

Sooner or later change is inevitable, wether its needed or not. Pride is counterproductive by default and will be the undoing for anyone too addicted.

Just to note, guess why Wasteland 2 was kickstarted? Because the publishers agreed with that statement.

And while this is more or less conjencture, guess why we still pledged our money for this project? Because we didn't agree with that. We wanted to help Brian Fargo and rest of inXile prove them wrong and finally bring us a game without all the needless changes the publishers would have demanded.
So, you're more or less bringing up your ideas in the precisely wrong forum. Nothing good has come out and probably won't come out of that.

If you put it that way, yeah. Could´ve said so from the start.

See, i´m trying to support Brian and this project because i feel the same way you guys do about corporate interference. I don´t like what happened to Interplay and the reasons for it.

So, we´re in the same boat speaking different langauges...how about that.

[DarkTwinkie]

Two thoughts...

Are additional skill points gained through leveling going to be purely calculated based on Intelligence? It seems to be a common method, but after some experimentation in personal projects I found it to be off putting and biased. Once you broaden the skill gamut, Intelligence based skill point derivation starts to feel less feasible and makes intelligence a bit too powerful of an attribute. There are a few interesting solutions that could be used, but it really depends on the structure, organization, and complexity of the skill system at hand.

Has the discussion of making trinkets be difficulty reducers rather than straight skill bonuses been had by the design team? Another curious thought really.

We're still working on the details of how skill points are gained in relation to Intelligence, but do feel that the original was limiting in relation to the Intelligence attribute gating what skills you can get. There needs to be some trade off, but I'm not sure it should be so restrictive based on how you roll your character before you get into the world.

On the trinkets, what do you mean by difficulty reducers?

[DarkTwinkie]

I doubt they'll have anything less than a comprehensive save-anywhere system with quicksaving and quickloading.

Correct. Permadeath will work in a similar way to X-Com. If one of your PC's die in combat, they're gone. We are keeping the same UNC -> Death status effects. It's such a cool system that I haven't seen used as much as I think it should be. At death, they're gone though.

You'll be able to save under most circumstances. Some instances, like when you're in a dialog make it hard due to our conversation system but generally you can save when you want.

[Woolfe]

I doubt they'll have anything less than a comprehensive save-anywhere system with quicksaving and quickloading.

Correct. Permadeath will work in a similar way to X-Com. If one of your PC's die in combat, they're gone. We are keeping the same UNC -> Death status effects. It's such a cool system that I haven't seen used as much as I think it should be. At death, they're gone though.

You'll be able to save under most circumstances. Some instances, like when you're in a dialog make it hard due to our conversation system but generally you can save when you want.

I'm really glad to hear that, I always thought that the UNC -> Death system was great, gave a real sense of pressure when you had one guy injured and his category would change.

[BubbaBrown]

We're still working on the details of how skill points are gained in relation to Intelligence, but do feel that the original was limiting in relation to the Intelligence attribute gating what skills you can get. There needs to be some trade off, but I'm not sure it should be so restrictive based on how you roll your character before you get into the world.

It depends on the skill system, but here's a summary of what I've used in a Homebrew PnP RPG System to combat the problem of over-reliance on "Intelligence to skill points." Using a branching skill tree system with common root skills, the common root skills gain their initial proficiency from attributes. Out of three contributing attributes, two are given double weight by the player's choice. When a player buys skill points for a character, they choose one section of skills indicated by the common root skill, add the scores of the two chosen attributes for that common root skill, and these points can be allocated anywhere in that section of skills. This means that players with high physical attributes will get more skill points when improving physical skills, but will have some trouble trying to quickly improving mental skills with forsaken mental attributes... and vice versus. And a character with more moderate attributes will improve most skills moderately, too. Don't know if such would work elsewhere, but I think it proved to be interesting and quite function from what I've seen in playtesting.

On the trinkets, what do you mean by difficulty reducers?

Instead of an item granting a magical bonus to the ability of a character to perform a task, you instead reduce the difficulty of the task at hand. It really depends on the system used, but here's a example. Assumptions: Percentile, roll-under system. You have a character with a 50% lockpick skill. With standard, simple locks, you could consider the difficulty penalty to be at the zero point or "0". This means that if a character rolls under 50%, they will unlock the lock if it is of standard difficulty. Now, a much more complicated and difficult lock could call for a 30% difficulty penalty. Overall, that penalty effectively reduces your character's lockpick ability to 20%. (50 (Skill)- 30(Difficulty) = 20).

Items could at this point could give a flat bonus. The trouble is items that grant a flat bonus can artificially bolster character ability well past their normal in a manner that doesn't make sense. Just because a character has a medkit, doesn't mean they automatically become better at first aid and similarly with a lockpick set and the lockpick skill. I've seen skilled masters work with nothing to produce amazing work consistently, and I've seen complete rookies with the best tools around produce sheer garbage consistently. So, to implement that idea of function... Instead of items bolstering ability, they instead reduce difficulty of tasks at hand.

So visiting the last example, the character with a lockpick skill of 50% working with a really tough lock (30% difficulty) could make use of a lockpick set to reduce the difficulty of the lock by a certain factor. So a basic lockpick set could negate up to 25% difficulty. When applied to the tough lock example, the 30% difficulty penalty is reduced to 5%. This means that the character now as a 45% chance to unlock the tough lock. (50% Skill - (30% Difficulty - 25% Item Negatiion) = 45% Effective Skill).

The nice thing is that while the item aids the character, it no longer grants artificial bonuses to their skill. This means they don't suddenly become masters by buying the bests tools around despite an average skill. It allows you to better balance out challenges knowing characters aren't going to magically boost their skill rankings to completely overpower everything. It also encourages players to specialize characters despite having tools and items, since they will still need character skill ability. Even with the best tools, the character mentioned will only have at the best a 50% chance with a standard lock.

Hope that clears it up.

[CaptainPatch]

I doubt they'll have anything less than a comprehensive save-anywhere system with quicksaving and quickloading.

Correct. Permadeath will work in a similar way to X-Com. If one of your PC's die in combat, they're gone. We are keeping the same UNC -> Death status effects. It's such a cool system that I haven't seen used as much as I think it should be. At death, they're gone though.

I'm sort of seeing two mutually exclusive things here: 1) You will be able to Save nearly anywhere. And therefore is things go awry and someone dies, you _should_ be able to Load a Save from prior to that character's demise, now you've got him back. 2) If a character dies, it's permanent. He's gone, you can NEVER have that character back. That suggests that Death overrides any Saves you may have.

This makes me wonder, given the way things have been stated. When you say, "You can Save nearly anywhere, does that mean that the player can have multiple Saves, or that every time you Save it overwrites the last Save? If it's the latter case, I am going to be _pissed_. If I get into the mid-game only to discover that at some point I should have gone left instead of going right, but the only way to correct that mistake is to go all the way back and start a completely fresh game, I will have to worry about the effect of blazing epithets on my monitor screen. [I remember a time or two in WL where the party got hammered and barely survived. Save. _Then_ I discover that the battered survivors had been surrounded and could not avoid being slaughtered by the _next_ set of monsters. I really HATED that aspect of WL.]

****
My thoughts on HOW Skill Points and their in-game effects should work:
Creating Skills -- Use whatever formulas you want to calculate the pool of initial Skill Points. I suggest NOT making them INT = Skill Points. Intelligence affects mental Skills, but AGL and DEX have a _lot_ more influence on gross body movement and manipulation. Also there are END and LCK influences for certain Skills, and so it should NOT be just INT that determines how many Skill Points are available. Soooo, after initial creation, with every promotion comes some addition "Adventure Points" (I believe they were called). Skill the step of putting them into INT and then into a Skill. Just use the APs directly, either into Attributes, or into Skill improvement. Keep the Skill level costs as the 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 progression. And just to keep everyone from becoming Superman with 30+ Attributes, make those cost 1,2,3,4,5,etc. for Attribute increases. And the Attribute increase costs start at whatever value the character started at. That is, if PC 1 has a STR of 18 at creation, and PC 2 has only 12, for either of them to add 2 points to STR will cost 3 APs (1 + 2). This, I believe, will reflect the "I was a wimpy kid, but with a LOT of work I raised my STR to 19!" Whereas, "I was always pretty buff, but I started to do a few more reps while exercising and I nudged my STR up to 19." If you start out weak in an Attribute, it takes more effort (APs) to get to higher numbers than it does for someone that already started out pretty high.

Task Modification -- It's all about Die Roll Modifiers. Skill level translates to a percentage; roll that number or less to succeed. For every Skill level in the pertinent Skill, subtract X from the die roll. If there is some complicating factor such as lock complexity, there will be some appropriate number added to the die roll. THE BASE SUCCESS CHANCE NUMBER NEVER CHANGES. For example: Base chance for anyone to pick any lock is say 25%. The lock is crude, not particularly difficult, so no complication factor. The PC picking the lock has Picklock 1, which gives him a %5 better chance. Die is rolled = 35, -5 for the Picklock Skill = 30 = failure. PC tries again with a set of Simple lockpicks (-10%). Die is rolled = 39, -5 (Skill), -10 (tool) = 24 = success.

[Woolfe]

We're still working on the details of how skill points are gained in relation to Intelligence, but do feel that the original was limiting in relation to the Intelligence attribute gating what skills you can get. There needs to be some trade off, but I'm not sure it should be so restrictive based on how you roll your character before you get into the world.

It depends on the skill system, but here's a summary of what I've used in a Homebrew PnP RPG System to combat the problem of over-reliance on "Intelligence to skill points." Using a branching skill tree system with common root skills, the common root skills gain their initial proficiency from attributes. Out of three contributing attributes, two are given double weight by the player's choice. When a player buys skill points for a character, they choose one section of skills indicated by the common root skill, add the scores of the two chosen attributes for that common root skill, and these points can be allocated anywhere in that section of skills. This means that players with high physical attributes will get more skill points when improving physical skills, but will have some trouble trying to quickly improving mental skills with forsaken mental attributes... and vice versus. And a character with more moderate attributes will improve most skills moderately, too. Don't know if such would work elsewhere, but I think it proved to be interesting and quite function from what I've seen in playtesting.

I was thinking something similar. Altho it hadn't culminated in anything solid, I was trying to tie the skill growth with the attributes more directly. So you are saying have a common root skill. So Gun skill for example, and then all other guns skills are related to it and thus have the same attribute association? Is that correct?

I am guessing you may have been working with a large array of skills(and in p&p), but is there any reason each skill didn't have a direct association with specific attributes, rather than a root skill tying them all together?

On the trinkets, what do you mean by difficulty reducers?

<Good explanation snipped>

Hope that clears it up.

Did for me

[Ronin73]

We are keeping the same UNC -> Death status effects. It's such a cool system that I haven't seen used as much as I think it should be. At death, they're gone though.

Really glad that this is making a return. It was one of the things that made Wasteland unique to anything that I had played at that time.

I also like the fact that instant death from a large damage hit in combat is reduced with this system and you usually get a pretty good chance to save your characters, provided your medical skills are in order.

I'm also calling out DarkTwinkie for making back to back posts. Shame on you!

[Drool]

I'm sort of seeing two mutually exclusive things here: 1) You will be able to Save nearly anywhere. And therefore is things go awry and someone dies, you _should_ be able to Load a Save from prior to that character's demise, now you've got him back. 2) If a character dies, it's permanent. He's gone, you can NEVER have that character back. That suggests that Death overrides any Saves you may have.

Or, it means there's no magical resurrection and that if a character dies you can either reload or have a dead character. Character death was described as permanent in the original's manual, but you could still reload provided the game hadn't saved since the death.

[CaptainPatch]

I'm sort of seeing two mutually exclusive things here: 1) You will be able to Save nearly anywhere. And therefore is things go awry and someone dies, you _should_ be able to Load a Save from prior to that character's demise, now you've got him back. 2) If a character dies, it's permanent. He's gone, you can NEVER have that character back. That suggests that Death overrides any Saves you may have.

Or, it means there's no magical resurrection and that if a character dies you can either reload or have a dead character. Character death was described as permanent in the original's manual, but you could still reload provided the game hadn't saved since the death.

I couldn't. My version of the game had only ONE Save slot. And I seem to recall that at the conclusion of combat, the game auto-Saved, so if someone just died, he was gone. The ONLY way to avoid PC death was to Alt-Ctrl-Del _before_ combat concluded.

[Drool]

Not sure what version you were using; none of mine operated like that. It saved when you radioed, when you manually saved, and when you switched maps. The C64 version would load up a "your party died" screen when the entire party died which would save with a dead party, but you could always quit out otherwise and still have people alive (assuming they were alive the last time you saved). The IBM version would exit to DOS on a party-wipe and would boot from the last save. When I played through with a single PC and had a party wipe I was able to reload with everyone alive.