mmm, i was more or less thinking of having the enire skill automated. But the it would still have to be seperated somehow in order to give it relevence to the combat engine. I wonder what other ways it can be done. I think we went through this debate earlier in the whats with stats thread didn''t we. I''m sure of it.

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

I''ve retracked my step and here goes. What i was originally yarping on about is character knowledge in reference to the "Types" on enemies killed. The aim was to differential characters that may look the same in level but have killed completely different enemies. With the system i was going on about earlier it was mentioned that a character should gain a skill called Monster Knowledge. This Monster Knowledge is not something that the player needs to train at nor can they. It''s more or less a seperate xp system which improves you ability to kill ememies better if you have already fought them.

Which i think is different again from the markmanship skill that you were talking about Dwarfsoft. But it could also work with it quite well, hmmm

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

So, what about having the characters skills deteriorate after a period of time of non use?

I love Game Design and it loves me back.

Our Goal is "Fun"!

Edited by - Paul Cunningham on August 7, 2000 4:56:09 AM

quote: Original post by Anonymous Poster

Do your part. End goblin genocide. Nice work, boys...

Not at all. You just have people who are wholly dedicated to goblin genocide, and are no longer any good at orc, dragon, or human genocide! Let''s hear it for specialists

I wouldn''t use this system myself. After all, the majority of your ''experience'' is learning how to use your weapon well, not learning good ways to kill individual foes, as after all, after the foe''s first or second error, they''re defeated already. And why should goblins all fight alike and humans fight totally differently from the goblines?

It makes more sense to base it on weapon usage: split your character''s learning into ''Weapontype X proficiency'' and ''Weapontype X defence vs Weapontype Y''. Therefore, Mr Swordsman hacks and slashes his way through opponent after opponent, increasing his "Sword proficiency" as he goes. Also, as he faces new opponents with different weapons, assuming he survives, he will learn better how to defend against them, so his "Sword defence vs. Daggers", "Sword defence vs. Quarterstaff", "Sword defence vs. Sword" skills also go up. These kills would be perhaps just as important in combat as the proficiency skill.

To perhaps go over the top on realism, you should split the defence skills into "WeapontypeX defence vs. Weapontype Y" and "Weapontype Y defence techniques" where the defence techniques skill represents certain tactics that can be used to defend against that weapontype no matter what weapon you''re using. For example, against daggers, simply maintain your distance.

Opponents which are not humanoid might need to be handled differently. You could consider tail attacks/bite/claw/stings to be separate weapontypes for the purposes of the skills perhaps. Maybe factor in a ''defend vs. multiple opponents'' skill which would apply to any situation where more than 1 weapon would be attacking you at any one time.

Comments? I might just use this, in some form...

quote: Original post by dwarfsoft

Ummmm.. you miss the point of the system. It is not to teach you how to use your sword (whoops, forgot to append this stuff to the doc) because this is another SKILL MASTERY and basically the killing means that you are more effective with your more effective weapon against them. It is still kind of murder based, which comes to my next point:
Clerics don''t need to worry about using their weapons. They heal. They do not wish to kill others. They heal. Get the point? This is why we use skill based.

Why do you assume that a system is there to enforce an ideological opinion of how a game should be played? The guy who was quoted in the first message hasn''t posted in this thread, but it certainly seems like he was going for a cool and realistic battle system, not some attempt to try and reduce killing in the game. I certainly know of many skill-based games that didn''t go that way just to try and eliminate killing. They went that way to eliminate restrictive character ''classes'', or to break free of a linear ''level'' structure. There is more than one way to achieve a goal, and some of those ways are also applicable to other goals.

And, why do you assume a skill system and a ''murder-based'' system cannot happily co-exist? Many paper roleplaying games work great like this.

Nor was I specifying how a cleric should or should not work. Clerics were not in the equation. For all it matters, they could have an equally complex system based on who they are healing, what part of the body they heal, or whatever. Nothing I said implied that clerics had to even touch the skills I detailed above. I was not applying any kind of opinion to how a game should be played, and trying to fit a system to it, I was in fact trying to show how a nice system could be implemented, so that a game could incorporate it. Bottum-up design... descriptive, rather than prescriptive.