quote:Original post by dwmitch I don''t see anything unrealistic about it. A young adventurer starts smashing monsters, he''s not as efficient as he could be. As he smashes the monsters, he learns better techniques, and in the case of physical attackers build muscle mass, in the case of mages they learn better use of the spells through practice.
But at what point in his monster-smashing career does he build the "muscle mass" to withstand fireballs and dragon bites and axes to the head? Why must this improvement be represented to everyone in the game as "+6 strength"? Why is it that every fifty goblins or so his strength, intelligence and speed jump up a few notches?
Surely the process can be given a more analog appearance.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Original post by dwmitch I don''t see anything unrealistic about it. A young adventurer starts smashing monsters, he''s not as efficient as he could be. As he smashes the monsters, he learns better techniques, and in the case of physical attackers build muscle mass, in the case of mages they learn better use of the spells through practice. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But at what point in his monster-smashing career does he build the "muscle mass" to withstand fireballs and dragon bites and axes to the head? Why must this improvement be represented to everyone in the game as "+6 strength"? Why is it that every fifty goblins or so his strength, intelligence and speed jump up a few notches?
Surely the process can be given a more analog appearance.
I view muscle mass and the ability to withstand damage as separate, yet semi-related concepts. +6 strenght makes sense in the context of hacking and slashing for six months (really it should be x number of specific kinds of sword movements to influence increase of strength). If I wandered around the woods beating to death everything I saw, after a small amount of time I would be a whole lot stronger, and continue to gain strength until I reached either my physical limit, or the limit that using a sword of its wheight allowed me to reach.
It would also seem that this activity should drive dexterity/speed up as well. Your upper body should be leaner as I would think that this is a farily aerobic exercise, once you reach the muscle mass you will attain from the wheight of the weapon.
Regarding the constitution of the PC, if you have constitution as the stat that you base the ability to withstand damage from, it should increment somewhat with muscle mass. But really this is the ability to withstand blunt trauma and some light slicing/cutting.
You could also use the hit box approach, where damage needs to be dependent on the area of the body struck, certain areas are "soft spots". Using this, a generic constitution stat doesn''t make very much sense. So somehow my skull is now fatter with more muscle as I age? Makes me want to have a fat head.
I think that the generic STR, CON, INT, DEX stats exist as a result of the influence of pen-n-paper RPGS on CRPGS. At this point there could be 50 statitistics that are not shown to the player but increase throughout the game. Specialized activities can improve specialized areas of strenght for example.
As for strength causing the charecter to withstand a fireball, well one fireball of an appropriate size should really be enough to kill any person, if your basing damage afflicted to the char. on real life. Fireballs just need to be less common and avoidable (not withstandable) in some manner. Or you have a magic resistance stat of some kind (or elemental resistant stats). Resistance to elements could be based on amount of exposure to the elements as well as the DNA of the person. Of course there would be certain levels that would not be resistable.
I think some of you may have misunderstood me. When I said levels are unrealistic, I meant that actual levelling-up is unrealistic, not steady progression of stats, etc. People don''t pick fifty locks and then BAM all of a sudden they can sneak 1.4x better than they did before. People don''t occasionally get +20 hitpoints instantly. Growth should be gradual rather than incremental, but yet growth should be measured (in levels perhaps).
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I''ll have to agree with Necromage on this one. While levels can be convenient, they''re hardly realistic. Let''s take a look at the standard level-scheme.
Char gets "experience" from killing things, or at least defeating them. After a certain amount of experience is gained, the character suddenly gains a trait package based on their level and class. The level system comes from tabletop rpgs, many of which were inspired by D&D. D&D started as an adaption of a war game where the focus shifted to controlling individual heros instead of military units. In the wargame context, a level system makes a certain amount of sense. The more battles a unit wins the more "elite" it becomes. In short, each battle brought the unit closer to an idealized elite status. Levels were a way of generalizing the skill developement of troops, just like hit points generalized damage. After all tracking the individual skills of every soldier in an 100 man legion is a daunting task.
The flaws crept into the system during it''s repeated adaptions. Does it make sense that a character gets better at making successful attacks the more battles they win? I''d say so. Now does it make sense that the character get''s better at ballroom dancing the more battles they win? Somehow I seriously doubt it. Though that last example may seem a bit bizarre, it does show my point. After all, why does a thief have to go out and kill things to get better at lock picking? The problem is that when a leveling system is the only way to develope skills, every skill the characters will develope has to be tied to that system. Note, gradual growth can be gained by just making more levels. If each stat goes up by 1 unit each time, the difference will be barely notable. For example, Str +2/3, Dex +1/2, ect.. This doesn''t mean the character will get fractional increases, it just means the increases are divided over multiple levels. (Ex. +1 Str at levels 2,3,5,6,8,9... and +1 Dex at levels 2,4,6,8...) However, this fix doesn''t solve the problem of increasing unused skills.
I really think we need to look at some other models, or at least build in other ways to improve skills.
Use-based training is a common alternative. Just track each time a skill is used and level up after a certain number of uses. This isn''t really a difficult system to implement. I''ve seen examples as early as Final Fanatsy 2(japanese version) and the Quest for Glory series. These systems have been used in games that are over 10 years old. I believe Ultima Online also uses this kind of system.
If you want something a little closer to levels & classes, try setting up a "combat style" system. Assume each style contains a list of traits, with a pointer starting at the first trait. When the character gains enough combat experience, that first trait is purchased and the pointer moves on to the next one. When the end of the list is reached, it cycles back around to the first item. You could even put in a list item that changes each time it''s passed. This would spread the effects of a single cycle/level over multiple encounters. Note that only combat traits should be gained from a combat style, which should in turn only be developed through combat or similiar training. If that thief character want''s to learn lock picking, they''ll have to do it outside of battle. This system works best if you have a distinct "feel" you want to create for a certain character type.
Btw, muscle doesn''t neccesarily make you tougher. In fact, people with heavy muscle developement can actually bruise more easily, as they have less fat protecting all those muscles. On the other hand, mass does seem to help soak up blunt trauma. I guess the point is that while the muscle mass will absorb the force, it can get bruised in doing so. Fat is actually a more effective form of protection. However, obesity tends to reduce overall health, thus making it harder to recover from trauma.
All skills begin at an initial value of 0 representing the character is untrained in that skill or ability, the heights possible level in a skill is 10 representing mastery of that discipline. Before a skill can be improved it must first be learned either from another character or skill book. These provide a basic introduction into the skill increasing it from 0 to 1. Most skills also have a limiter stat, in which the maximum level the skill can be increased to equal to the limiter stat. In the event the stat decreases below that of the skills current level, the skill is considered impaired and decreases to the stats current level. However it can be relearned at half the original cost the impairment is lifted if the stat is returned to its original level.
In order to improve a skill the player must practice the skill or receive training in it. Each skill has a practice requirement this is the number of practice points the character needs to acquire in order for the skill to advance to the next level. The amount of practice points need to advance the skill depends on the skills current level and the amount of skills levels the character has. When a characters'' skill level increases then the required practice points for all non similar skills increases by 10% thus making it harder for the character to acquire high levels in a large verity of skills. Also the amount of practice points amassed in a given skill decreases slightly over time if the skill is not used.
Practice points are acquired whenever a skill is used or when a character receives training in that skill from an instructor. Also all similar skill receive a small percentage of the practice points that the skill has acquired. Thus making it advantageous for the player to learn skills of a similar nature. When ever skill level increase the amount of practice points acquired resets to 0. Thus in order to increase a skill from 1 to 10 would require 22000 practice points. The amount of practice points acquired depends on the task being attempted the skill growth stats also provides a bonus to practice points received. When attempting the task the player receives a small increase for a failed attempt, and a Bonus for the first time a task is accomplished. Further task repetition is penalized by decreasing the amount of practice points received for each subsequent successes at the same task to a minimum 1 practice point .
Example:
Character opens a tumbler lock for the first time and receives 20 PP + 20 PP for the first success completion.
However the next time the character opens tumbler lock they receive 19 PP the next time 18 and so on.
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I think X-Com did the whole experience thing pretty well.
Characters there didn''t have levels, instead they had just a count of stats which increased with use. If your character had 21 strength, and yeh packed a ton of heavy stuff on that character for a mission, that character wouldn''t be able to move very far or do very much. On the other paw, if yeh repeatedly did that for 10 missions, that character would gain strength and would sooner or later be able ot carry all that stuff fairly well. Simularely a character that got hurt much but survived would result in having more health, a character that ran much would gain increased stamina and time units, and a character that was often left the last standing member of the team might sooner or later get braver.
There was no "experience" counter anywhere. Instead the characters got better at whot they did as they did it, which makes a fair bit of sense. The PC RPG Revenant used a simular method, though it indeed did use levels, so it might not be the best example to use. Still, in Revenant yeh didn''t get much better at lockpicking by hacking 500 spiders to death. Actually picking locks -did- improve your skill at it though. So your character got better at the things he did. With the result that if yeh never used some skills or abilities, yeh''d still be awful at them in the end of the game.
The problem with systems like that means that yeh have to present the player with an ability to train those feats he/she wants. With Revenant (again) one problem with the lockpicking skill was the inherent lack of things that yeh could/needed to pick; it was very difficult to get better since yeh had a hard time finding more things to practice on. And simularely, gaining health by being damaged might not be the best idea ever, as if yeh manage to avoid damage early then your charcter might end up being too frail later.
Still, for level-less attribute/skill improvement, I think X-Com has the best method I know of.
