Epsilon Rose

You are obviously unaware of the possibilities of game balancing. You can scale up or down the xp required by any given skill to level up.. That only applies if you can level skills individually, in which case having 4 different skills is meaningless (since they'll all get used at the same rate) or punitive (since some skills will level faster than others and the player has no control over it). Neither of those options are good. For my part, since this is a class based game I was assuming you'd be adding skill-points en-mass on level up. If that's the case having 4 skills would still require you to waste 4 times the resources and while yes, you can, change how much xp a skill gives when you use it futzing with that is actually a bad thing because it will cause you to level faster then people who don't pick locks which means either you'll be over-leveled or most parties will be under-leveled. Again, neither option is good.

There are two problems with that logic. First, in a PnP game the GM is going to give the characters some consideration when he describes the gear so it's likely to fit into there style without modification. Second PnP games don't have graphics. Everything's in the players' heads so if they want things to match they can easily make them match. @Ieo: Actually, from a programming standpoint it's probably trivial to separate an items image from it's stats. In fact, depending on how a game handles it's resources, they probably already are. To me it makes most sense to have the models fo each item in their own files and have the stats for items in a text based list (or series of lists) with pointers to the models. If that's the case then all they would need to do is add an if statement the goes Get Item_slot Get Cosmetic_slot if (cosmetic_slot == null) { Character_model =Item_slot.Model; } else { Caracter_model=Cosmetic_slot.Model; } That's modeled on java and assumes the items stats are stored as java classes but you could implement the same thing in any number of languages.

Well the answer is obvious, avoid getting injured so frequently. If we triumph without hardly a scratch upon us due to superior tactics and strategy, then there's no need to spend time dealing with potentially life threatening injuries, (or time sinks as you would have it) though magic and abilities may still need to be recuperated. Also what mandates that we have to have lots of battles, as i've said before i'd prefer more gruelling and intensive occasional melees than this modern obsession with endless waves of meat waiting to be butchered. Also with the multiple skills and routes one may be able to take through the gameworld, we may not have to indulge in slaughter whatsoever. I do apologise if I appear somewhat impassioned on this matter, but a strategical approach, gruelling combat and no easy answers are something that i've missed in the software of recent years. Handholding and accessibility being prioritised over verisimillitude and accomplishment have in my opinion belittled both the player, the genre and any sense of challenge. I feel that someone should point out the fact that in a non-turn-based, party-based game you're compatriots (the majority of the protagonists) are going to be controlled by the AI and the AI can be stupid. It's reasonable to demand the player act carefully when they control all of the characters they're responsible for but to penalize them or a character getting injured when they had a perfectly good strategy but the AI decided to botch it seems a tad bit unfair. Personally, I that in combat you should only have access to quick-slotted potions and that drinking them should take time during which you can get hit. If you wanted to take it further you could introduce caps on how many times a character can ingest a given potion in a set amount of time and add more than just the two standard potion (i.e. hp and mana). That way the most common potion could be a slow re-gen potion but even if you managed to stock pile insta-heals or even cure-alls you'd still only be able to down so many during a single fight. This also opens up the possibility of adding more interesting variations to potions (e.g. a potion that rapidly heals you but also makes you go berserk, a potion that heals you and makes you resistant to fire, a potion that heals you and makes you resistant to all damage but also decreases dex, int and wis, ect). Also, don't forget about magic. There's really no excuse for magic to not be able to heal people if it can do anything even remotely advanced. I also think mana should re-gen and/or individual spell should have there own resource (as is the case in Dark Souls) lest you unfairly disadvantage magic players over mundane players. That said, there are still some things that can be done to put a damper on magic based healing. The first is obviously casting time and the possibility of interruption. Beyond that, at low levels you could make the super-heal-all spell require some time and multiple mages to properly cast, so it can only be done out of combat (unless the player's really good at tactics; in which case, why do they need it?) and if they have more than one of their mages get taken out they'll have to use one of the slower/less efficient methods of healing on him before they can use the super spell.

There's no reason fireballs or any other special ability couldn't have it's own level. If it were up to me I think I'd have individual skills level, but I'd base it on how often that skill is used and not just give you some points every time your character levels up. That way skills you get at the beginning of the game are still useful towards the end and characters are actually better at the skills they favor (which makes sense).

Right. First things first requiring 4+ skills, that have no value on there own or in other context, to do one very specific thing is a very bad idea. It means I'd have to invest 4x the resources on that one activity to be just as good as I could be at any other. That's not really a tactically sound position and I think it would turn most people off lock picking. I think at most you want 3 different skills that would represent different methods of approaching the lock and possibly have different levels of effectiveness on different types of locks. I think if I'd were to do this I'd go with lock picking, ward breaking, and forcing. Lock picking would be standard lock picking and would probably be equally effective across the board with an exception for wards. Ward breaking would be the magic equivalent; obviously this would be the most effective against wards but you'd have to worry about running into iron or magic resistant normal locks that can drastically lower your effectiveness. Forcing is just breaking the lock out right, which might have a chance of making wards explode and is always loud and irreversible (a picked lock can be re-locked, a smashed one can't). The really nice thing about these skills is that they can be easily expanded to cover other things. For example, lock picking could get rolled in with other thief-ish abilities like pick-pocketing and slight of hand while ward breaking could let you weaken an enemy's mystic defenses or remove curses and forcing could become outright demolition allowing you to sap bridges or make use of breaching charges. I'm not sure how I'd handle the mini-game portion, but making it menu based seems like it would get really boring really fast.

I'm a big fan of the way the tales series (Tales of Vespria in particular) handle new game+. As you play through the game you get grade, which is sort of like xp, but it do anything until you start a new game + (which is a separate option to just create a new game). Once you start new game + you're taken to the grade shop where you can spend the grade you earned in previous playthroughs to unlock special features like carrying over levels, items or money; making skills cost less; making you gain xp faster or adding new difficulty levels. If they idea of a grade shop seems a bit to grindy for you you could also make it achievement based. So beating the final boss lets just unlocks new game + and the option to have alternate dialog/quest variants. Maybe you'd have to find the Hidden Sage of the 8 Ways and complete a fail-able uest chain to unlock character carry over, opening the Gates of the Styx could unlock item carry over and it goes on from their. One of the really neat things with this option is that it doesn't nessesate you playing as the same character if you want to benefit from it and it can be used to reward exploration across multiple playthroughs.

Personally, I've always been a fan of magitech. You know, a gem studded gauntlet on one arm, some crystalls embedded into the sleeve on the other, runes stitched into the back of a duster, maybe some more runs on a set of metal greaves top it all off with some glowing lines conducting power to different pieces and possibly leading to a glowing crest on the chest. That sort of thing. Obviously that wouldn't work for many, or even most, cultures but I think it would be really cool if there was a really heavily magic oriented society (possibly of the ancient and lost variety) that had almost futuristic looking armor. Baring that, I'd probably prefer pant's and a duster, though I might go for hakama or a similar style of extra wide pants. They have the advantage of allowing you to include all kinds of arcane detail on them since they're almost as wide as robes but they also allow for more freedom of movement since they're pants. That said I wouldn't mind a set of armored robes a la Saber from Fate/Stay Night.

Personally, I like the way it was handled in DC ultimate alliance where you had one slot for the item and one slot for the equipment, that way you can craft a character with a certain aesthetic or, at the least, a coherent look. That said, after reading some of the arguments in this thread I also think it might be a good idea to have legendary or otherwise unique weapons lock their appearance and give crafters a greater selection of forms and/or the ability to modify pieces.

I'd love to see something like this. I don't really think the concepts of multiclassing and duel classing are exclusive to D&D (titans quest let you pick two classes) and I can actually think of a number of ways to implement it. Simplest would be to just let the player choose their class whenever they level up. After that there's dual classing where you let the player pick two different classes (possibly starting one a few levels behind). Finally, there's the hybrid option where a player first picks a main class and then gets the option of trading out a preset group of features (possibly choosing from multiple groups) for a preset group of features from another class. I'm not actually sure which version I'd like the most.

I like this idea, but I want to expand on it. I think it would be cool if when you leveled a skill it either had branching choices or aspects you could choose to increase. If you really wanted to make it impressive you could combine the two ideas so that once you increased certain aspects to a given level you'd unlock new aspects. For example, if with fire ball you might initially have to choose between range, and speed, aoe, number of projectiles and damage (though you might want to make that one automatic or dependent on the other choices, so range might give more damage then aoe) but if you get range to level 2 and speed to level 3 you could start leveling homing. It would probably be more work (though you could probably get away with having fewer base skills), but I think it would make for a really fun skill system.