I''m starting a RPG and I hvae run into 2 stumbling blocks. 1) how should I make my character advance, lvling and giving skill credits to improve skills, or skills just imporove as you use them, or some other way? 2) should I have character classes or build up skills to define what you do? Please give me your feedback. P.S. from TrigonLoki - Hi, having been a longtime lurker on these boards, I still am in the middle on these topics and had no sage advice to give my friend, budding developer __WhatSup__. Whatever. I like food Ditto. MY FIRST POST! YET ANOTHER ANOYING NEWBIE TO ADD TO YOUR FINE SERVER! lol

Now this may sound weird, but it''s been fermenting in my brain a while

Now we humans get progressivly better at our skills right?
but is it a consistant always at all times increaasing? son''t you sometimes get brainfarts and it jsut works? that''s how i learn some of the coolest programing uh... shortcuts, (yeah that''s it shortcuts...)

Ahem,anyway, say your picking a lock, you go select(however you do it etc) your locpick skill in order to pcik th lock, but whats this, a more specialized skill has tkn it''s place, you use it it works wonders, next time you go to do the same thing but your lockpick skill is back at the old level? this continues for a whaile, but the better skill keeps poping up more and more frequently.... until it''s ther eall the time now, and low and behold sometimes an evn better skill surfaces.... etc

if you apply this to differnt areas of the game would this not make a realistic and slightly exciting aproach of character development?

okay the lockpick was a bad example ..... let''s take one everybody is more fimiliar with....

Your charged with ridding the local baron''s estats of a pesky bad of bandits who have been harrasing the trade caravans.

So you set out in the wilderness tracking down this bandit cap (internally , and by character interaction you stumble and bumble your way through the forest..... encountering emmies...
now at first you have simple knoledge of a dagger, you know how to use 1, and you know that the pointy end goes in the other guy. right we all following so far? after a couple wild animals, mabey a scout or 2, you(your character) is getting retty good at fidling with that dagger, so in the nex encounter, you whip out a dagger and instead of just being able to regularly attack it, you get an option to weild 2 daggers, now at first your not so hott, doing less damage but using 2 and getting better, after more encounters and wandering throuhg the forest, your doing more damage with those 2 daggers, but still not completly comfortable so you sometimes still only use one, eventually you stumbel out of the woods, a little wiser for the wear but still didn''t find the bandits.

But now your character can wield daggers, and after some more encounters he''ll be able to get a first strike with them throwing them at the enemy.

And after some more swarays into the forest, some things that an untrained eye would miss now are getting easier to see.....


I sunno if that got the message i was looking for across but....

basicaly instead of concrete leveling, characters skill could get better thus opening up new options etc, mabey a path or 2 to choose at important itervals of charter development?


Has anything i''ve said made any sense to anybody but myself?
comments, conserenes and referals to psyciatric wards welcome
Proofreaders will be shot with extreme prejudice :_)
PheonixCross