From Tyr. A player starts as simply that—a player. He has no specific designation or affiliation with any type of character stereotype. Based upon his actions, specialization opportunities arise with experience. A player who spends their time hacking and slashing with his sword may be given the opportunity to become a warrior; one who picks pockets may become a rogue; a player spending his time in a church may become a cleric; the process continues. I would estimate that this first level of specialization comes quickly, perhaps on moving from level 0 to level 1, one of these may become available. Specialization is offered to those players meeting a certain set of prerequisites, but meeting those prerequisites in no way forces one to specialize. The player could easily be given the opportunity to become a warrior when attaining level 1, and hold off. Spending level 1 pick pocketing, he could be given the opportunity to specialize as a rogue. He may spend level 2 going to church, repenting his ways, and at level 3, he may be given the opportunity to become a cleric. The character tree makes each new branch exclusive. First off, only one level of depth can ever be available for specialization at one time. So if a cleric is allowed to specialize as a priest in the future, that is not available for a generic player to specialize in. They must first specialize as a cleric, and then spend at least X levels before they may specialize further, even if they currently meet all of the requirements to become a priest. Upon specializing as a cleric, they have made an irrevocable change to the state of their character. They no longer may specialize as a rogue or a warrior; those paths are forever unavailable. Specialization grants the player several benefits. They may gain experience in certain areas or for certain acts faster than a non-specialized character. They may be given benefits when using certain skills (ex: the traditional +1 to combat for a swordsman) that would not be available to general characters. They will be given access to guilds built around their specializations. They will be able to attain special skills that non-specialized characters will never have access to. Specialization is balanced in several ways. As mentioned earlier, once a path is chosen, it can never be taken back. While some attributes may increase quicker, others may slow down (ex: swordsman increase strength twice as fast as normal, but increase intelligence only ½ as fast as normal). Specializing may result in certain generic skills becoming disallowed, that may remain for general characters (ex: an evil rogue may not be allowed in a goodly church). So while specialization makes certain areas of your character more powerful, it also makes him less versatile—similar to reality. Ideally, specialization would go roughly 3-4 levels deep from the root node. Any player choosing to specialize should be given at least 3 opportunities to do so, no matter what path they choose. Some possible paths can be seen here. This image shows a quick idea but it is only 2 levels deep. Your thoughts? The Tyr project is here.

Hmmm...Somewhat conflicting, somewhat misleading.

For the most part, other skills will be available and learnable. It is a balancing act though to add this type of variety. Specialized characters become more proficient when doing something in their specialty, and less proficient when doing a polar opposite. For example: most programmers pick up new programming idioms/techniques/languages much faster than a non programmer would. This is also linked to a logical aptitude. Now, this very aptitude for logical learning may limit your ability to think more abstractly /emotionally (hopefully you understand what I am getting at and we don''t start talking about data abstraction ). So for you to learn how to draw people''s faces may take you longer than the average person. I want to represent this in game; A wizard will gain skills required for wizardry at a greater rate than a fighter, while gaining skills for fighting at a slower rate than a generic player.

As for not being able to do certain things; this is more of a balance issue than a reality issue, as well as a design issue. From a design perspective, by making the specialization irrevocable, you add more importance and gravity to the act, and hence heighten the suspense for the player while also establishing a greater player/character bond. As for balance, if you give a wizard the ooportunity to get the "Ultimate Kill Everyone for a mile Fireball from Satan" spell, there should be some tradeoffs. This may be as simple as saying wizards can''t use edged weapons that have a length greater than 1 foot. This also makes everyone aware of potential weaknesses in their character, which should affect their general strategies of playing. I am a firm believer that no character should ever be completely invincible. Difficult--even near impossible--to kill is good for powerful and advanced characters; at the same time, unless someone is made a demi-god, they should be mortal.

Now, there is nothing wrong with specializing a character, reaching a point that you are happy with your skills/attributes, and then attempting to improve upon the skills that were shorted during your initial training. But a slower raising of these skills is still justified, as age can be detrimental and you need to offset how quickly you imporved your specialized skills in comparison to a generic character. With enough work anything is possible, but it should require work.

So Friar Tuck is not impossible, but nor is he commonplace. A hero of magnitude and ability to switch roles so quickly and effectively should be difficult to come by (and is this not why there is 1 friar Tuck, and why he in fact is a hero?).

The Tyr project is here.

quote:Ah, touché! Armed with this new understanding, I find it much easier to approve of your system.

smiling evilly

Exxxxxxxcellant.

One other point to add, that I bypassed completely. A player can stay generic and get a smattering of all primary skills at a normal rate for as long as he wishes; specializing just increases the rate for some skills while also unlocking some uber-skills to further entice one to specialize.

I''ve planned of usingsuch a system for my turn-based strategy games units.. They can evolve different path as they wish, and the choices they get are influenced by their evilness/goodness.

The problem will lie in play balancing those, and keeping them really different after 4-5 levels....

Not to mention i plan 8-12 races, oh well.....

Yeah, it starts to get almost out of hand from a balancing POV when you start multiplying all of the numbers together. I am thinking that originally I will have 4-5 races, and not exclude them from any character specializations; race will affect attributes completely seperately. Specializations 3-4 levels deep, with a minimum of 5 first tier spcializaions, and 3 second tier, and 2 third/fourth tier. So it definitely adds up, but I think the benefit is worth the expense if it is abstractly designed well enough from the get go.

Yeah, since its a strategy game with many abstracted units, it dont have to be as precise as your system, but I do intend to provide basic classes possibility for each race, and make half some special classes for the race...


OO ahoy