Class restrictions

[Zireael]

There is option 4:
  scale equipment/spells/skills effect with main attribute of class to which this item/spell/skill belongs.

Heavy weapon should deal damage based on str, light weapon based on dex, spells based on int.
Heavy armor protects better if you are strong, in light armor more dexterious are more evasive, robes might improve spelcasting.

I like this idea a lot, although in my game I go with more or less standard AD&D class restrictions.

[Krice]

If you have a small carrying capacity then it just means you have to make more trips to get everything

It must be a trade off between food clock and the turns spent on those trips. Anything that makes it more difficult and not just something that takes time only. If there is no cost then some people are picking up and selling everything.

[Gr3yling]

At this point a short sword sells for 7gp and one scroll of recall costs 80gp. With a maximum of 26 inventory slots of which about a maximum of 7 goes to worn equipment. So there's 19 slots for other stuff. Potions and other necessary general stuff take about 5 slots. So 14 slots of junk doesn't give much money at this point. Sometimes there might be only a few items per level.

I think that's really sound logic.  I like that solution. 

I think Krice is right that if there are hunger/corruption clocks are present they will probably make players think twice about picking up everything and taking it back to town, unlike in a game like diablo.  For example, ADOM doesn't even have town portal scrolls, so you don't want to spend a lot of time backtracking to a shop and increasing the PC's exposure to background corruption unless you have a good reason.

So, I think backtracking should be possible, but I think there probably should be an associated cost (just like there should be a cost associated with pretty much everything the PC does).

I have wondered before if maybe each item the PC picks up, even small ones, should slow them down a little bit, rather than having a threshold carrying capacity where they are "encumbered."  This way it is no longer a no brainer to pick up junk, even if you can sell it for a little bit of profit. 

[Gr3yling]

Strength adds 1 point to melee damage, dexterity adds 1 point to ranged damage and intelligence adds 1 point to spell damage.

I think that's a really good idea.  It's extremely easy to understand and has a kind of symmetry.

I do have some questions, though.  Would dexterity have no effect on the warrior's fighting abilities and would strength have no effect on the rogue's?  I just feel kind of weird about having a hulking warrior who doesn't get any damage bonus when using a dagger.  Or saying that a super coordinated rogue [edit]wouldn't[edit] be good with a broadsword.

[Vanguard]

Or saying that a super coordinated rogue [edit]wouldn't[edit] be good with a broadsword.

Yes because in this case the rogue is only super coordinated when it comes to using bows of some kind.  Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence could always be renamed to Fighting, Archery, and Magic if it made you feel better.

[Gr3yling]

Or saying that a super coordinated rogue [edit]wouldn't[edit] be good with a broadsword.

Yes because in this case the rogue is only super coordinated when it comes to using bows of some kind.  Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence could always be renamed to Fighting, Archery, and Magic if it made you feel better.

This does limit the ability of those attributes to be applied to other situations, though.  You wouldn't say that a rogue was able to use his archery to pick a lock, or that a warrior's fighting could be used to carry more weight.

There's a reason terms like "strength" or "dexterity" keep coming up in these types of discussions.  People aren't just thinking of some sort of abstract quantity of "warriorishness" or "roguishness", they're imagining a warrior as being strong and a rogue as being dexterous, respectively.  Those are the qualities that a lot of people associate with those professions.

Every concept in a game isn't completely abstract and arbitrarily defined.  You can't just say "call these quantities whatever you want",  because the names we give them have an entrenched meaning that makes them understandable and familiar.

Anyway, I don't think it would be terrible if you gave +1 to damage with all melee weapons per 2 points of dexerity, so that even if a PC wasn't very strong, being agile was still somewhat of an advantage.  Although it still wouldn't be as effective as brute force, in this case.  Bows might also have strength requirements, since draw weights could be very high, as far as I know.  I admit my knowledge about medieval weapons is very limited, though, so I could be wrong.

Anyway, Aukustus, I do think you've got some really solid ideas, I was just curious what you thought about my question.

[Aukustus]

I'm not sure if I got the question correct but at this point every melee weapon uses strength bonus and only strength bonus. Strength adds even to unarmed combat for every class. Sorcerer having 5 points in strength does +5 dmg with staff and so on.

However since my fighter cannot use bows and spells picking int and dex has no effect at all. Maybe dexterity could give +1 armor class and intelligence +5% magic resistance so that every point in any stat would give some bonus for all classes.

At the moment every 5 armor class points count since I divide armor class by five because combat is counted using d20, not percent based. 5 points in dex would then be +1AC in d20.

I have to think about the penalties when backtracking. Hunger clock which is in my game is good and two-way trips with scrolls of recall cost quite much but I think there should be something else too.

[Vanguard]

This does limit the ability of those attributes to be applied to other situations, though.  You wouldn't say that a rogue was able to use his archery to pick a lock, or that a warrior's fighting could be used to carry more weight.

Why is it necessary or desirable for your ability to operate a crossbow to have anything to do with your ability to bypass a lock?  There are already literally thousands of games with the same set of stats that do the same kinds of things.  Let's try out some different concepts.

[guest509]

Or saying that a super coordinated rogue [edit]wouldn't[edit] be good with a broadsword.

Yes because in this case the rogue is only super coordinated when it comes to using bows of some kind.  Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence could always be renamed to Fighting, Archery, and Magic if it made you feel better.

This does limit the ability of those attributes to be applied to other situations, though.  You wouldn't say that a rogue was able to use his archery to pick a lock, or that a warrior's fighting could be used to carry more weight.

There's a reason terms like "strength" or "dexterity" keep coming up in these types of discussions.  People aren't just thinking of some sort of abstract quantity of "warriorishness" or "roguishness", they're imagining a warrior as being strong and a rogue as being dexterous, respectively.  Those are the qualities that a lot of people associate with those professions.

Every concept in a game isn't completely abstract and arbitrarily defined.  You can't just say "call these quantities whatever you want",  because the names we give them have an entrenched meaning that makes them understandable and familiar.

Anyway, I don't think it would be terrible if you gave +1 to damage with all melee weapons per 2 points of dexerity, so that even if a PC wasn't very strong, being agile was still somewhat of an advantage.  Although it still wouldn't be as effective as brute force, in this case.  Bows might also have strength requirements, since draw weights could be very high, as far as I know.  I admit my knowledge about medieval weapons is very limited, though, so I could be wrong.

Anyway, Aukustus, I do think you've got some really solid ideas, I was just curious what you thought about my question.

I always found it kind of silly that manual dexterity and footwork seem to be the same stat. I saw a tabletop RPG once that had Mind, Arms, Feet, Body, Eye etc...those were the stats. So Arms affected hitting with swords, Eye with bows and other ranged stuff, Feet/Legs was dodge, Mind was magic and what not, Body ended up being the HP stat.

[Vanguard]

I always found it kind of silly that manual dexterity and footwork seem to be the same stat. I saw a tabletop RPG once that had Mind, Arms, Feet, Body, Eye etc...those were the stats. So Arms affected hitting with swords, Eye with bows and other ranged stuff, Feet/Legs was dodge, Mind was magic and what not, Body ended up being the HP stat.

I like Sil's method where mosts stat are their own thing instead of an arbitrary combination of traits.  If you want to be better at hitting things, you raise the fighting skill and if you want to be sneakier you raise the stealth skill.  That way you can make your character just the way you want them instead of the usual systems where being good with light weapons means you're also good at picking locks or whatever.

[Gr3yling]

Why is it necessary or desirable for your ability to operate a crossbow to have anything to do with your ability to bypass a lock?  There are already literally thousands of games with the same set of stats that do the same kinds of things.  Let's try out some different concepts.

My suggestions were given based on the system that I thought Aukustus was planning to use.  In his original post, Aukustus only mentioned 3 attributes.  He did not make any reference to skills or other modifiers (except equipment).  So, I made the assumption that he wanted all PC abilities to be derived only from those 3 attributes and equips.  Maybe that assumption was incorrect, but based on the context that he gave, I think it was a fairly rational one.

How were you planning to determine the PC's ability to perform actions like lock picking, Aukustus? 

[Gr3yling]

I always found it kind of silly that manual dexterity and footwork seem to be the same stat. I saw a tabletop RPG once that had Mind, Arms, Feet, Body, Eye etc...those were the stats. So Arms affected hitting with swords, Eye with bows and other ranged stuff, Feet/Legs was dodge, Mind was magic and what not, Body ended up being the HP stat.

That's a cool idea, and it fits well with a system for localized damage.  I have thought about using a setup like that before, but for some reason decided that I didn't like it.  Maybe I was being too picky.

[Aukustus]

Why is it necessary or desirable for your ability to operate a crossbow to have anything to do with your ability to bypass a lock?  There are already literally thousands of games with the same set of stats that do the same kinds of things.  Let's try out some different concepts.

My suggestions were given based on the system that I thought Aukustus was planning to use.  In his original post, Aukustus only mentioned 3 attributes.  He did not make any reference to skills or other modifiers (except equipment).  So, I made the assumption that he wanted all PC abilities to be derived only from those 3 attributes and equips.  Maybe that assumption was incorrect, but based on the context that he gave, I think it was a fairly rational one.

How were you planning to determine the PC's ability to perform actions like lock picking, Aukustus?

Three attributes is all I want at the moment. I'm not sure about if I ever implement skills such as lock picking because I don't even have doors in my dungeon, it depends how large this game grows. I wish to keep it fairly straight forward and simple.

[Vanguard]

My suggestions were given based on the system that I thought Aukustus was planning to use.  In his original post, Aukustus only mentioned 3 attributes.  He did not make any reference to skills or other modifiers (except equipment).  So, I made the assumption that he wanted all PC abilities to be derived only from those 3 attributes and equips.  Maybe that assumption was incorrect, but based on the context that he gave, I think it was a fairly rational one.

I see.  But in a system where classes have a main stat it doesn't make sense to give one of them a special benefit the others don't get.  If the rogue is strong in combat and can pick locks while fighters and wizards are strong in combat and can't pick locks, why be anything other than a rogue?  On the other hand, if fighters can break chests and wizards can cast unlock, everyone can get pasts locks and the whole locking mechanic is just a waste of time.

[Aukustus]

Well now I have doors that are opened by moving to that tile.

Lockpicking could also be implemented as lockpicks sold in shop and every time a locked door is bumped one is used. So it isn't a skill but a money sink instead for every class with 100% succeed rate.