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frumbert · 05-26-2004, 05:51 AM

I've often wondered how a classless, level-less skill-based system would go. My idea was this:

A player chooses to learn a skill - e.g. Magery. This gives them the basic ability to learn magic, and would probably be given to them by a mage master or school of some kind. You could put a requirement into the master/school itself rather than inherent in the magery skills themselves which would stop or limit people joining up with every type of school.

Just by joining a magery school doesn't stop you from trying out the topiary school or becoming a warrior - it just gives you an ability to learn how to wield the items in that class (spells in magery, weapon handling and fighting styles as a warrior, and shears and fertaliser use for topiary, presumably).

Then your skill is based on how much you use given items within that school. For example (in magery again), you might have health, flame, mana, transport and ice based spells. These would be broken down into various types of spells in each spell class. Using a particular heal spell would increase your proficiency in that spell, but also affect *any* heal spell by a lesser amount, and *any* magic type to an even lesser amount. E.g. Say using a heal increases your proficiency in that spell by 2% (for a successful heal). It might also increase your procifiency in Healing class (thereby increasing any spells in that class to a degree) by 0.05%, and increase your proficiency in Magery (hence all your mage spells) by 0.01%. This would be weighted against a players inherint abilities - so that a player with a higher "intelligence" ability would learn faster (by a balanced percentage based on their attribute distribution) than a player with a higher "strength".

Players would still therefore need start out choosing certain attributes for their character - a roll of the dice, or a fixed pool which can be assigned to various attributes - health, intelligence, strength, magic resisitance, dexterity, etc.

It would mean that if a player started out with all the attributes of a warrior (classically high strength, dexterity but less intelligence, magic) but decided late in play to become a scholar, he would probably have to work harder to increase his skill in that school, as his base attributes make it harder to progress in areas that rely on them.

I think this would lead to a game that leads to more concentration on the skills that one is good at, and less of a game (especially later at higher skills) where most players end up having fairly similar stengths and weaknesses, regardless of their class. In a class based system a high level mage has lots of mana and heal spells and some powerful fighting spells, which is kind of like the warrior classes armour and weapon handling. In a classless system, a good warrior could still increase his magic resistance by learning magery and use magic resist spells over and over - they wouldn't inherently get good at healing or fire spells, though those levels would very slowly increase too. It could even end up broadening the diversity of character types - people can get exceptionally good in one skill but still remain terrible in another skill, and related skills slightly affect each other. People would have to rely on their individual skills rather than the skills given to them by levelling or inherent in a class.

05-26-2004, 05:51 AM	#69
frumbert New Member Join Date: May 2004 Posts: 2	I've often wondered how a classless, level-less skill-based system would go. My idea was this: A player chooses to learn a skill - e.g. Magery. This gives them the basic ability to learn magic, and would probably be given to them by a mage master or school of some kind. You could put a requirement into the master/school itself rather than inherent in the magery skills themselves which would stop or limit people joining up with every type of school. Just by joining a magery school doesn't stop you from trying out the topiary school or becoming a warrior - it just gives you an ability to learn how to wield the items in that class (spells in magery, weapon handling and fighting styles as a warrior, and shears and fertaliser use for topiary, presumably). Then your skill is based on how much you use given items within that school. For example (in magery again), you might have health, flame, mana, transport and ice based spells. These would be broken down into various types of spells in each spell class. Using a particular heal spell would increase your proficiency in that spell, but also affect any heal spell by a lesser amount, and any magic type to an even lesser amount. E.g. Say using a heal increases your proficiency in that spell by 2% (for a successful heal). It might also increase your procifiency in Healing class (thereby increasing any spells in that class to a degree) by 0.05%, and increase your proficiency in Magery (hence all your mage spells) by 0.01%. This would be weighted against a players inherint abilities - so that a player with a higher "intelligence" ability would learn faster (by a balanced percentage based on their attribute distribution) than a player with a higher "strength". Players would still therefore need start out choosing certain attributes for their character - a roll of the dice, or a fixed pool which can be assigned to various attributes - health, intelligence, strength, magic resisitance, dexterity, etc. It would mean that if a player started out with all the attributes of a warrior (classically high strength, dexterity but less intelligence, magic) but decided late in play to become a scholar, he would probably have to work harder to increase his skill in that school, as his base attributes make it harder to progress in areas that rely on them. I think this would lead to a game that leads to more concentration on the skills that one is good at, and less of a game (especially later at higher skills) where most players end up having fairly similar stengths and weaknesses, regardless of their class. In a class based system a high level mage has lots of mana and heal spells and some powerful fighting spells, which is kind of like the warrior classes armour and weapon handling. In a classless system, a good warrior could still increase his magic resistance by learning magery and use magic resist spells over and over - they wouldn't inherently get good at healing or fire spells, though those levels would very slowly increase too. It could even end up broadening the diversity of character types - people can get exceptionally good in one skill but still remain terrible in another skill, and related skills slightly affect each other. People would have to rely on their individual skills rather than the skills given to them by levelling or inherent in a class.