It just makes sense that your character would be better at something the more he uses it, in an rpg. The impact doesn't have to be huge, it should flow with the progression of the game. You can let players spec and limit the amount of skills/mods a player can use at any one time, but allow them to change those specs if they so choose, or make a second character where they can. That's why games like Ultima online were so great. Lots of roles, and multiple "competitive" templates so anyone could beat anyone else based on player skill directly. Battles were like conducting an orchestra, smashing keys using multiple items, healing, disrupting, doing combos and whoever slipped up first would likely pay the consequence while the winner gloated in glee at all his new possessions.

I tie the many modifiers effectiveness to the attributes/stats, player can raise mage attributes to further intensify their skill/item mods, warrior raises str/dex/agility to increase effectiveness of their weapon and multiple warrior skills.

Then can control armor similarly where "ranger" type armor value uses archery+dex/agility stats as modifiers for it's effectiveness(armor rating), so it's less effective if worn by a warrior, but still somewhat effective since he has dex/agil and it's pretty weak on a mage user who likely progressing their intelligence/wisdom stats instead of dex/agil.

It keeps the game new longer, if someone gets bored playing a certain way, they can do it a different way, if they're killed by a different template, they can ponder whether it was because that template is over powered and might chase that path until they get killed by some third template and maybe think it's even better.

Either way it spices things up and gives players goals to meet, not maximum skills/stats either, more like I should go work on archery for a bit, I should go make some potions, I should go make some gold, etc(hint: these tasks should be fun)...The developer is partly/mostly to blame when players feel they can't like/enjoy/play a game until they have maxed skills/attributes/mods.

The big mistake that Rogue likes do is greatly increase the power of the character as they level up.

For example:
At level 1 the character might have 100 HP and have a +10 bonus to hit. Then at level 2 they have 200 HP and a +15 to hit (maybe with gear and such).

If, instead you gave the character smaller increases in skill, then the gameplay would be about player skill rather than how big the stats were.

Another idea is to not increase the character stats at all, but instead have the player able to trade one stat for another and the higher the level the more total stat points they could trade.

As an example:
If the player had 3 Stats: Strength, Reflex and Health.

If they all start at 100 at first level, then for every level the player can transfer 2 points from one stat to another.

S0 at level 2 the player might have:
Str: 98
Ref: 101
Heal: 101

At level 10 they might have:
Str 80
Ref: 115
Heal: 105

This way the characters start of as a generalist, but can become more specialised as they level up and, as the stats are traded, the character will always have some weakness that keeps even low level monsters a threat.

Gear, of course, could still give a total increase to stats (in the example above there total was 300 points, but with gear that might increase to 400 or even more). This way gear is still important and does make the character stronger, but if you apply the first idea to the gear (ie: don't give massive increases), then you can keep the whole stat problem in checks and thus allow your gameplay to reflect the player skill/choices/strategy better.

@Mythics
enemies in starter areas can still be challenging even to a lv 9999999 player, just make enemies have the same level as player.

@samoth
seems you never played a roguelike. Roguelike is 0% based on player skill, but 100% based on gear.
a hardcore elite player that has played the game for 999999 hours will still die in 1 hit if he has 99% resist instead of 100% resist.Because he has 1% chance to instantly die.

I think RPG is a hugely loaded term. Is it literally about playing a role (often in a D&D style environment), or is it about maxing out your stats? Stat-maxing bores me. It makes content arbitrarily difficult to make the game last longer. And when you have max stats everything is too easy.

There *is* such a thing as skill though. For example, take Fallout 3 & New Vegas. At the beginning Deathclaws were a scary scary thing that I could not kill. Sure, having a super-buff character helped a lot. But to kill them in quantity I needed to develop new tactics. For example, building a dart gun that paralysed their legs so I could pick them off. Or finding ways to attract one from a pack without attracting all the rest to kill me. Or finding a nice canyon so I could build a safe zone that had minefields on either side then lure them in. I think the range of stat development is silly. I can see how charisma could vary wildly. I can see strength varying by maybe a factor of 5. But one character build being 10 times faster or more intelligent than another... just makes it silly. And many MMORPGs have an even crazier range, like people being 100s of times better than another due to stats.

@jefferytitan
1) Again you assume that bigger stats mean easier enemies, thats no true as i can make enemies have the same level as you therefore always the same difficulty.
2) Also you assume that stats have a cap, well that is a bug with your game implementation, they could have used long variables to prevent such thing from ever happening.
3) Stat range should be crazy huge, to reward player choices, i can see endgame a lv 1233232484 enemy to be 1233232484^2 stronger than a level 1 player. However its up to the player, to choose to go to places with bigger level than them (if they dare).

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]@n00b0dy[/font]

[font=arial,helvetica,sans-serif]All true, however the OP is asking how to put skill on the player rather than the character. This strongly implies that he does not want "[color=#282828]

a lv 1233232484 enemy to be 1233232484^2 stronger than a level 1 player". If the power disparity is that great, it would seem that a level one player, no matter how skillful, would have no way to compete with a high level player (or enter a high level area if there is no PvP).

[/font]

ooops, thats true, he wants to move away from stats.

One thing you can do is instead of making a character stronger during leveling, make them specialized. When the player uses specific skills improve those skills and lower opposing style skills. Now the character is no stronger than any other character in the game but is still better while using the skills that player likes.

I have thought about that option too. Maybe the specialised skills get better in an asymptotic way the more you use them. Changing your speciality could be possible but painful and slow.