Quest & Area Design/Layout - BG1 style vs BG2 / IWD style

[Prometheus]

What might be interesting is a system in which certain general things are tied to simple level-ups (ehh... minor HP/stamina gain? Or regen, at least? I'm not really sure what all would be here, off the top of my head). Then, in each encounter/quest, have a limited XP award, just as usual. Only, have the game keep track of what skills were used to complete objectives. If a combat encounter granted XP, for example, and your Wizard used nothing but destruction spells, then he would gain 100% of the combat XP towards his destruction skill. If he swung a sword at something once, and spent the rest of the time casting destruction spells, then he could gain like 95% of it toward Destruction, and 5% toward Swordsmanship. etc.

 

I think I wouldn't like this system. I had to be careful what skills I use. in a normal system, If one enemy has low hp and I don't want to waste a spell to kill it, I will attack it with my weapon. In your  system my mage would do nothing, because I would like to play a "pure" mage. Or even worse, an easy encounter and your priest didn't need to cast stamina healing spells, he only attacked with his weapons. In your system he would gain 100% combat gain to his weapon.

[Lephys]

I think I wouldn't like this system. I had to be careful what skills I use. in a normal system, If one enemy has low hp and I don't want to waste a spell to kill it, I will attack it with my weapon. In your  system my mage would do nothing, because I would like to play a "pure" mage. Or even worse, an easy encounter and your priest didn't need to cast stamina healing spells, he only attacked with his weapons. In your system he would gain 100% combat gain to his weapon.

Point taken. That's one reason I don't really like some aspects of how magic is typically handled. It feels too much like a bag of grenades that you, as a Wizard, are privileged to carry around and utilize (as their pins are like the sword in the stone, and only you can pull them to use the grenades), rather than an actually ability/extension of yourself.

 

That being said, I believe this is exactly why (or one reason... or it's simply coincidentally good that this is so) Wizards will have a small set (relative to their entire spell repertoire at any given point) of infinite-use spells, if I'm not mistaken (fewer, even, than the per-encounter ones). Kind of like Level-0 spells in Pathfinder rules. If you've prepared Ray of Frost, you basically can fire off infinite Rays of Frost in a day. So, really, you'll never be completely without the ability to use a magical means of dispatching that foe. Especially if he's clinging to life.

 

As for the priest... if it's such an easy encounter, then you're not dealing with much XP anyway. If you wanted him to focus on support, rather than attacking things, then you'd just have him stand by while some more-combat-oriented character ran in and slew the easy things, and you could heal them, if you'd like. And if you DO want him to sometimes attack things and improve his weapon skills to any degree whatsoever, then, voila... that was one instance in which he got to contribute to that aspect of his build. 8P

 

There's not really any other way to fix the "Oh no, I'd have to use the appropriate skills/abilities to gain the appropriate XP" without stepping into the realm of "why do I get better at Shrubbery when I kill enough rats?"

 

So, my example was in the context of wanting the "as you use it" system of progression, but with an effort of trying to possibly fix some of the problems with existing systems of that type. Namely the "nothing prevents you from just standing there and infinitely using skills to progressive effect, for no reason" one.

 

To use the Priest as an example, again, if you spend 25% of your time healing peeps, and 75% fighting, then you'd be 3 times more advanced in whatever combat skills you used than you were in your healing stuff. Not even counting the choices you made at character creation that affected your starting variance.

 

I admit, again, that it would be quite tricky to implement. It's not as if I feel I've just made a complete system that we should shove into a game. I literally thought that example up in the time it took me to type that paragraph (... 3 minutes, maybe?). It's just an idea, and would need a load of work to become an actual usable system.

Edited June 27, 2013 by Lephys