Crossfire Wiki

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This page is a collection of my idea of redoing the skill system.  Note that this does not directly change balance, but perhaps makes some changes easier, or otherwise has some impact on it.

=== Background ===

Originally, crossfire did not have skills.  The character had an overall level (just as now), but all abilities of the character were based on that overall level.  So if the character was level 50, your attack was as level 50, spellcasting as level 50, etc.

Skills were added to the game to try and break this up some.  The original implementation of this had skill groupings, for example combat, where all combat skills would be placed, or spellcasting, for all spellcasting skills.  These groupings would accumulate experience when using the skill, and all skills in that grouping would operate on that overall level.  So if you were level 50 in the combat group, you were level 50 in sword, axe, etc.  If you did not know missile weapons and learned it, you would effectively be level 50 in missile weapons also.  This system did result in a little more differentiation between characters, but not a great deal, as maxing all these groupings was not all that hard.  The one advantage of this system is that hard to advance skills could be in the same grouping as ones easier to advance, so one could get good in those hard to advance skills.

This was scrapped for the current system, where each skill accumulates experience as it is used.  So if the character was level 50 in one handed weapons and learned 2 handed weapons, he would be level 1 in that new skill.  All skills were equal in the sense that a mage could learn one handed weapons and advance it just as easily as a fighter, minus the fact that the mage character may not have stats as well suited as the fighter.  Conversely, a fighter could become a quite proficient spellcaster.  In both cases, they would be diluting the experience since any experience the fighter got in spellcasting is experience he did not get in weapons.  But in many cases, some amount of this experience may have been unintentional or for convenience, eg, mage was low on spellpoints, was fighting weak monsters, so pulled out a weapon.

With current and prior system, the only relevance a characters race and class had would be starting skills and stat bonuses.  There were a few skills exclusive to certain classes or races, but a human fighter, especially after maxing out stats with stat potions, could learn the spellcasting skills and use them just as effectively as wizards.

=== New System ===

The new system is derived from many other games - skills don't gain experience, the character does.  In this revised system, all experience a character gains goes to the character total, and increases the characters overall level.  Each time the characters overall level goes up, they get 10 advancement points (AP), on which to improve their skills.  The skill level, just as now, determines the characters effectiveness.

The cost of increasing skills depend on the skill and the class in question, as the basic sample table below shows:

^ Class ^ Weapon ^ Armor ^ Wizard Spellcasting ^ Cleric Spellcasting ^ Notes ^
^ Fighter ^ 3 ^ 3 ^ 7 ^ 7 ^
^ Cleric ^ 5 ^ 5 ^ 7 ^ 3 ^ 
^ Wizard ^ 7 ^ 7 ^ 3 ^ 7 ^
^ Paladin ^ 4 ^ 4 ^ 7 ^ 4 ^ Paladin represents fighter/cleric hybrid ^
^ Devotee ^ 7 ^ 7 ^ 4 ^ 4 ^ Devotee represents wizard/cleric hybrid ^
^ Warlock ^ 4 ^ 4 ^ 4 ^ 7 ^ Warlock represents wizard/fighter hybrid ^
^ Everything ^ 5 ^ 5 ^ 5 ^ 5 ^ Represents theoretical class that is a mixture of all. ^

The table above only shows the 3 major character types - classes like monks, thieves, etc, would have their own entries.  The table also does not show secondary skills, like item creation/identification - those would have costs related to how closely they match the class.  For example, fighters would get smithery at a relatively low cost, but thaumaturgy at a high cost, with wizards being reverse from that.

While the header above show broad categories, skill advancement is still on a skill by skill advancement.  For example, a fighter would have to spend 3 points to increase sword skill, and 3 points to increase missile weapons - they do not just spend 3 points to increase all weapon skills.

Brief description of those skill:

**Weapon** Ability to use weapons.  This would likely get broken down into several skills just as now (missile weapons, swords, etc).  Any class could pick up any weapon, but they might not be very good with it.  As weapon skill increases, the characters damage would go up, attack speed increase, etc.  Also possible that special effects (stunned, confused, etc) could happen at higher levels.

**Armor** Ability to effectively wear armor - just as anyone can use a weapon, anyone can put on armor.  But as armor skill increases, speed penalty could go down, and perhaps the effectiveness of the armor increases (gives greater resistance). This could also get broken down into a few categories (light/medium/heavy), but not sure if it is worth it.

**Wizard Spellcasting** Just as it is now, but maybe skills get redone or merged some, but it basically represents the pyromancy, evocation, etc, skills.

**Cleric Spellcasting** Basically they praying skill as it is now.

=== Advancement ===

Whenever a characters overall level goes up, they gain 10 AP (Note that the value 10 here is arbitrary, and in fact, would probably be a settings file variable - some servers could have a higher value to make things easier, and as it stands now, 10 may just be too low in any case).

At any point after gaining that level, the player chooses how to spend those skills.  Ideally, there is some nice interface for this.  Unspent points can be carried over.

A character can have a skill level which is twice their character level.  So a 5th level fighter could be level 10 in swordmanship and still level 5 in armor.  If that same character decided to focus on wizard skills, that is poor choice - at level 5, at best they could be level 7 in spellcasting, and have no skill levels in anything else.

The skill levels range from 1 to 100.  Once a skill level reaches 100, it can not be advanced further, but the character likely has other skills they may want to advance.  A cap on skill levels is necessary because as designers, it must be known the parameters one works within.  For example, as damage goes up as weapon skill increases, a character that is level 1000 in a weapon skill may just do too much damage.  If effects of the skill are spread out over the maximum level, one may find that there are large gaps with no bonuses.  For example, if it is decided that at maximum weapon level, the character gets +20 damage, that means that if maximum level is 100, every 5 levels their damage increases - often enough to be a bonus the character notices.  But if maximum level is 1000, then every 50 levels the characters damage increases by 1, which would be pretty insignificant, especially if that level 1000 maximum was put in place just to satisfy a few players who work to max out characters.

However, I do not see any reason why a characters overall level can not be unlimited.  Any form of bonuses (hit points, item power usage, etc) may also cap at level 100, but the character could continue to gain levels if they so desired to increase various skills.  Given the costs and number of skills, it may be a character would have to be very high level before they would ever max out all their skills.

=== New Characters ===

I have not extensively thought about new character creation.  It may be new characters get 20 or 30 AP points to populate some skills (exact value should be a setting).  So the fighter could decide to increase the level of their weapon skills, etc.  Note that a level 1 character would still be constrained by the 2*level cap for skills.

It is conceivable that custom class builder could be designed that lets the character choose a couple skills at cost 3, a couple at cost 4, etc.  Balancing that properly could be difficult - the player could properly decide that they will only use swords, so that is the cost 3 weapon skill, will only use pyromancy as second cost 3 skill, and take armor and praying as cost 4 skills - pretty much getting all benefits with no drawbacks.

=== Why is this better? ===

These opinions are purely my own, but I do think it has some advantages:

  * Classes now have more significance - choosing to be a fighter vs wizard has actual long term implications.  However, this still does not prevent any class from learning other class skills.  Note also that how much significance the classes has really depends on cost.  If a server admin decides to, they could modify the archetypes and make all skills for all classes just cost 5, so there is no advantage/disadvantage.  Tweaking the costs also would determine difference - instead of the 3/7 mix I have above, a 4/6 mix still has some advantage/disadvantage, but not nearly so much.

  * This //fixes// problem of experience gains for skills.  Some skills right now do not gain experience easily - while this should be fixed, some skills just do not lend themselves all that easily for a balanced experience advance, either because they are skills that are infrequently used and would need to then give a very big (and seemingly out of proportion) experience reward when used, or the fact they may be considered too easy to use, and one does not want to give easy experience away.  Using skills would still gain experience, but it would got to the characters overall experience total.

  * This adds more choices during advancement and can give some goals for players.  This is purely personal opinion, but I prefer having choices to make about character advancement - I don't want to do it every minutes, but when gaining a level is fine.  And if more effects are put in for skills (at level 20, I get a chance to stun opponents with the hammer), it gives more incentive for characters to get to those points.  Within current skill system, there are things you gain, but in most cases, a character is not going to really do much about them - if a character is killing things with their pyromancy skill, it is unlikely they are going to switch to using another skill because of a bonus they may get 4 levels later.  I will note that the choice here is little like dragon characters get to make choices on focus and slowly increase resistances, which may be one reason that is a more popular character.

==== Specific Skill Ideas ====

These ideas are actually independent of the revised advancement system, but since this page is **skills**, seems like a good place to put them.

I decided to look over the existing skills, and try to give a brief breakdown of how each will work, as well as merging some and removing others.

=== Skills Vs. Abilities ===

Skills should be areas of knowledge or physical ability that the character can improve (thus, spend AP points on).  Some current crossfire skills are more like abilities - they let the character do a particular task, but that ability never increases (eg, levitate).  In AD&D parlance, these would be feats.  There is still a place for those - just they are not called skills.  In fact, it may be the case the skills grant the characters with new abilities - the effectiveness of these abilities is related to the skills that grant them.  A simple example of this is attacking - it is an ability the character has, but it improves as the skill does.

One reason for skills giving abilities is that just having a single skill and saying 'use_skill ...' makes that command very context sensitive - for example, if you are on top of an altar, praying does something different than when you use it elsewhere.  Some for some of the item creation/identification skills - if on top of the workbench, it tries to make an item, if not, it identifies in the inventory.

I think it would be better to remove this ambiguity.  Have smithery give two abilities - 'identify weapons' and 'craft weapon' as examples.  Likewise, certain combat skills may have special actions that the character wish to use now and again, but not all the time.  For example, there could be a 'sweep attack' which hits all enemies around the character, but for less damage.  This would be handy if the character is wading through some lower level opponents, but might not be something they want to use all the time.

=== Item Creating & Identification Skills ===

These are things like jewelery, smithery, bowyer, etc.  The item creation aspect should get expanded so there are more easy things to create give minor amounts of experience (for example, smithing a dagger should not be a hard task).  Identification of items should change - instead of there being a chance, it a straight level comparison - to identify a level 5 item, you need to be level 5 or greater in the appropriate skill.  Non magical items would be level 1, each plus of an item might add one level, each 20% resistance adds one level, etc.  Some formula could be determined for objects that do not have an item power setting.  There are a few advantages of this:

  * The server no longer needs to track if an identification attempt was made on the object or not - either the character succeeded or not, and retrying will not work better since there is no random chance.
  * Related to the above, a character can retry and perhaps succeed if they have increased the level in the skill.
  * Items can be traded in hopes that the other character may be able to identify them.
  * Right now, with current formula, even at low levels, characters can identify the vast majority of items.  This would make that harder.
  * Greater level difficult for items could give much greater rewards - completely reasonable that if you are able to identify a level 20 item, you get lots of experience - there are not going to be many such items about.

In many ways, this would just have it work the same as literacy and reading books - either you are sufficient level to read it, or you are not - there is no chance involved.

**Smithery, Jeweler, Alchemy, Bowyer, Thaumturgy, Literacy ** are current examples of these skills.  It might be worth while adding something like leather worker or otherwise split up smithery some (armorer vs weapons)?  Otherwise, smithery covers a much larger base then any of the other skills here.  Literacy does have some other uses.

**Woodsman** This is currently creation and identification of food, and reduced movement through forests.  I think this should also incorporate harvesting - at least in the forest - each skill that pertains to a particular area should allow harvesting in that area vs a generic harvesting skill.

=== Combat Skills ===

Weapon skills get broken down and re-arranged some.  Different classes may have a favorite (low cost one) and others are at a higher cost.

For example, fighters may be able to get all of those at cost 3.  But clerics, following AD&D tradition, might be clubs/maces/hammers at cost 4 (they are still not as good as fighters), and the other weapon skills at cost 5, and perhaps some at cost 6.  Paladins might get swordsmanship at cost 3, but higher cost for all the other skills - perhaps bow being cost 6, since paladins should really meet their foes in face to face combat.  Barbarians, being traditional people who uses axes, may get Axe at 3, and other ones at a higher costs.

In order to balance the system, one must think about what the advancement of the weapon skill is.  Off the top of my head, this is what I've thought of - at first level, a character does damage around 10 @ speed 0.75.  Weapon speed will peak at 2.0 - exactly when that happens could vary on a lot of factors - if the character is not wearing armor, they may get that speed much sooner, but there is clearly a disadvantage there.  Weapon damage should peak around 35 for the weapon itself (note, there are many above that) - at first level, weapons the character is likely to find should be less than 10.  A characters skill, at level 100, might give another 25 damage points, and strength 25 more.  So that is a damage value of 85 @ 2.0 speed.  That is a very big swing, but one also has to figure that at first level, the characters they are fighting have 0 armor, and at level 100, everything should have 75% armor.  So that first level character 3.75 damage/tick on the actual creature, at level 100, the character would average 21.25 DPT to the actual creature - 5 times as much - but that opponent is also going to have a lot more hitpoints (probably closer to 10 times as many), so would take longer.  Those higher level characters are also likely to have a dodge skill.  So there are lots of way to make the combat take sufficiently long time.  See section below about changing HP totals.

One addition to the skills beyond what they currently have is they should be able to identify weapons of the same type.  For example, if you are high level in the Axe skill, and use axes all the time, it is completely reasonable that the character should be able to tell a lot looking at an axe.  However, this identification only goes so far as weapons that use need the axe skill to use them - one could not identify swords with the axe skill.

**Axe**, **Sword**, **Hammer/Mace/Club**, **Spear**: These break apart the one handed/two handed weapon skills.  However, they also incorporate the throw skill - eg, the Axe skill will let you throw throwing axes, the sword skill lets you throw knives, etc.  Throwing of misc objects (non weapons) becomes an ability - anyone can throw a flask and one does not need a specific skill for that (plus, I don't think such a skill would generally be valuable enough for most people to bother improving).  Note that the logic/ability to throw items probably needs to be streamlined some with a better interface on the client to make it easier to do, but that is a different issue.

**Missile Weapons**:  This is really bow and crossbow, and is unchanged.  Improvement in this skill means faster firing rate and more damage when firing.

**Unarmed Combat**: This merges punching, flame touch, karate, clawing, wraith feed all into one skill.  Certain races may be special abilities with this skill or it has other effects - eg, it does flame damage, it drains hp, etc.  I don´t see a real need for these to all be separate - I just can not picture a dragon is going to be getting up and doing karate in any case.  Note that for normal humans, this skill should generally be a bit weaker than the weapon skills above - there is a reason people pick up a sword to hit the other person with vs hand to hand - the sword is more effective.  Probably simplest way to do this is that unarmed combat damage goes up just like the skills improve weapon damage - however, in this case, you don't have a weapon to increase the damage with.  But for special characters, like dragons, they may have a symbolic dragon claw weapon which does go up in damage.

=== Magic Skills ===

These are largely unchanged - **air magic, fire magic, water magic, earth magic** work as they do now.  Increasing level increases the potency of the spells, the spells you can cast, as well as the pool of sp.  These also replace the summoning, pyromancy, evocation, and sorcery skills.

**Divine Casting**: I don't really like the name of praying, but that is basically what skill this replaces.  Anyone should be able to pray (innate ability), but characters with high divine casting get more favor.  Given the proliferation of of cleric spells, it may also make sense to have more god specific spells - perhaps going so far as having god specific prayerbooks.  There would still be various common spells - healing is only available via this divine spellcasting.  This could be renamed better, but since what the characters are doing most of the time is casting priest spells, a skill that better describes that makes sense.

=== Thief/Bard Skills ===

These are perhaps not well balanced now, but my thoughts:

** Traps (find, remove, create)** This combines the find trap, remove trap, and set trap.  As a general principal, it is easiest to find, harder to disarm, and harder still to make a trap.  In terms of balance, a character should have a 50% chance to find a trap of the same level of the skill, a 25% chance to disarm, and 10% chance to make.  Note that failure to disarm does not mean that trap goes off - it may be a 25% disarm, 50% no effect, 25% trap goes off.  Note that because one can repeated search for traps, having it be a chance may not make a lot of sense - I know right now I just search 10 times, figuring I'll find it or a trap doesn't exist, so perhaps a straight level check is in order instead - I'm not really sure on that.  The different facets of this skill could be done by the granted abilities, eg, having this skill gets you the find trap, disarm trap, and set trap abilities (I don't think that last was ever implemented, but if it was...).

** Thievery ** This combines hiding, lockpicking, and stealing.  I think as individual skills, once again, I think they may be too broad/general to be worth advancing.  Hiding should grant a sneak attack ability, which if the character is successfully hidden, does extra damage on the creature.  A character should have perhaps a 75% chance of hiding against a creature of the same level, with various modifiers - bright light decreases this, as does armor and movement.  An attack may decrease this chance 100%.  It should take several ticks to start hiding - this gives a chance for monsters to spot the player - this time may decrease as the skill improves.  Note, it is probably completely reasonable that a level 100 character in hide could sneak attack a level 10 monster and that level 10 monster still have no idea what happened, but a 0% chance to do that on a level 100 creature (he can get the sneak attack off, but the monster will spot the player).  For lockpicking, chests should be given a level, and a 50/50 chance to unlock a chest/door of the same level.  In order for there to be some penalty, there should be a chance of lock picks perhaps breaking - any case where a character can repeated try something with no ill consequence, there is no reason to have a check.   Stealing should allow characters to steal items, even from shops, but it should be hard - but this one really does have consequences.

**Singing/Oratory**: I suggest these two get combined into one skill - maybe just called singing - I think this being 2 unique skills just makes them too dilute.  A character can calm (make non hostile) up to their level, and charm (make friendly) monsters up to 1/2 their level.  There should be some time delay to start singing, and a character can not sing if in combat (eg, taking damage).

**Acrobatics**: This combines jumping and climbing.  As it stands, even this combined skill may be too weak for anyone to bother improving - maybe it also gives some minor dodge bonus also.

**Bargaining**: As it is now, character gets better prices with higher skill.  Really high skill may start to offset shop specialization (eg, you can sell spellbooks to the armorer for good prices).  I'm not sure if that by itself would make it a good enough skill, so possibly including the ability to detect magic and cursed items as well as identify items (at a lower proficiency than the item skills themselves) may be reasonable - eg, if one is going to be buying/selling stuff all the time, they need to know what they are selling.

=== Misc Skills ===

**Literacy** Literacy would be as it is now - reading of various items.  It should also incorporate inscription - once again, I think that as a unique skill would make it not useful enough - perhaps inscription at half the level of the literacy skill - for example, a level 10 literacy skill could inscribe level 5 scrolls.

=== Skills that Become Abilities ===

These are skills which never really improve, and thus are really abilities:

**Detect Magic, Detect Curse** - while there is some level check, pretty much it hits everything.  These should be given as innate abilities for classes/races which warrant it, and should be 100% success rate.  Detect magic is a first level spell in any case, so really not giving much away to let some particular race/class use it all the time.

**Meditation** - monk specific ability which never scales - give it as an ability to them

**Levitation** - like meditation, this is given for certain races, but it never changes, so is really just an ability.

**Use Magic Item** - all races/classes can use magic items, so this really is not necessary.  If one really wanted to put checks in the ability to use wands, then that check should be in the thaumaturgy skill.  The only reason this skill really exists is that a skill bucket was needed to put exp gained by using wands, etc.


====Dodge====

== AC/WC ==

Originally, I had mentioned the idea of getting rid of WC/AC, as these are to hard to balance.  The basic reason is that AC for players can vary wildly - a character that is lucky and finds a few +2 items, such that their AC increases by 6 points is a major gain.  On a d20 system, one might think that is 30%.  But if one starts on the basis that maybe the monster hits the average AC creature 50% of the time, the improved AC creature gets hits 20% of the time, which is a 60% reduction.

Likewise, WC has a similar problem - if one goes on the basis that a good fighter might hit creatures 50% of the time, this really makes life hard for mages - they are likely loosing a few points from strength, and several more from not improving weapon skills.  While they should not be as good as fighters, at some point it becomes hopeless - if they are just down to hitting 10% of the time, there probably is no point for them to try - better off going to another map, waiting 5 minutes to get back SP, and then come back (my main thought here is the wizards and other classes may choose to fall back to weapons when fighting some less dangerous creatures to let their mana recharge).

In terms of balance, at level 50, one could expect both a mage and fighter to have a similar quality weapon - lets same damage 15.  The fighter is going to be faster (due to increasing weapon skill) and do more damage (weapon skill again, plus more likely to increase strength) - this could probably make the fighter 2-3 times better than the wizard - a big gap.  But this is still not nearly as bad as 10% vs 50% hit chance (5 times better, and even then, damage and speed are still likely to be better in that model, so fighter is actually a lot better).

== Dodge Skill ==

Getting rid of the AC/WC all together does have issues.  What do mages do for protection?  They really shouldn't wear armor, and robes shouldn't provide that much protection.  Lack of AC/WC also means that all attacks hit, which means monsters are effectively easier unless their armor and/or hp are ramped out.

My solution to this is adding a dodge skill.  Unlike WC/AC which is a contested roll, dodge is purely on the defender.  If the defender has 25% dodge, 25% of attacks against them just miss.

It is worth noting that under this system, a dodge of X% is the equivalent of armor of X%.  Eg, a character with dodge 25 but 0 armor would over the course of a combat take the same amount of damage as a character of doge 0 but 25 armor.  This makes it easier to figure balance.

I figure a hard cap of 75% for dodge would be needed - no matter what, 25% of attacks are going to hit you.  Starting characters may be in the 15-25% range - dexterity should improve dodge, as well as improving the dodge skill itself.

Wearing armor would incur a penalty to dodge.  For example, chain mail may have a 40% dodge penalty, so if the character puts it on, his armor goes up, his dodge goes down, and balance is retained.  This could make decisions about armor a little trickier - does adding armor actually help you out?

As noted earlier, there is the idea of an armor skill also - increasing that should decrease dodge penalty.  Eg, if you are max level, may be the dodge penalty is just 1/4 the original penalty (so that chain is now 10%).  The penalty would be applied after the 75% dodge cap, in other words, at best, wearing that chain armor, you are at 65% dodge.

The reason I note that is like many bonuses, it would be possible to get above a limit.  For example, with both dexterity and dodge skill increase dodge, it is reasonable to suggest that a character with level 100 in dodge would have a 75% dodge rating, regardless of dexterity.  Likewise, a level 50 dodge with maximum dex might also achive that 75% dodge rating.

Dodge would have some pluses and minuses vs conventional armor:

  * If character is paralyzed, their dodge rating would drop to 0% (can not dodge if you can not move)
  * Likewise, slowed character would incur some penalty.
  * Blind characters would also have a near 0% dodge rating.
  * Characters that are invisible or hidden and attacking would bypass the dodge rating of the defender - once again, character can not dodge what they can not see.
  * The one plus is that it is reasonable that dodge could be used to avoid certain spells (bullet, bolts, but probably not cones or exploding balls which encompass everything in the area)

I am concerned about a character that maxes out both their dodge and armor skills - such a character could have very good armor rating and also have a very good dodge rating.  But perhaps that is reasonable - if a character focuses on that, they are probably not focusing on as many weapon skills or perhaps other useful skills, like possible survival skills which give some elemental resistances.

=== Attributes ===

In thinking about this, and how to balance it with everything else, one has to re-examine attributes (str, int, dex, etc) and current bonuses.  The reason behind this is that the bonuses one gets with high attributes has to be balanced with the skills themselves.

For example, under the current system, a Quetzalcoutal (+6 str) barbarian (+3 str) could start with a 29 strength.  A 29 strength gives a +9 damage bonus.  Now a non fighter character may have a 15 strength, which is +2 damage bonus, so that barbarian has a net +7.  If one follows the system where every 4 levels of fighting one gets +1 damage bonus, that corresponds effectively to having 28 levels of fighting skill (this may not be technically true, as the fighting skill would also improve weapon speed some).  This means that the attribute itself becomes much more important than the skill.

Also, many of the skills have the bonus be very front loaded, meaning that the first several levels one gets a lot of bonus, and not much after that.  Things like Constitution and grace/mana bonuses are that way - they give bonuses for the first 10 levels, and nothing after that.  So a character with a 30 con would get 25 hp/level for the first 10 - this has many balance impacts.

So my basic thought is this:
  * Attributes range from 1 to 100.  This creates nice symmetry with levels and other aspects of the game (100 based).
  * Base attributed (no bonus/no penalty) would be 20.  This gives sufficient space for things to be less than humans.  Eg, one might say a cat should be strength 8, and a mouse strength 2.
  * Attributes bonuses are linear.  For example, if 100 strength gives a +20 damage bonus, that means that every 4 attribute points ( (100-20)/20 ) would increase damage.  There are not major jumps like current systems.
  * For penalties, the rate of penalty is higher, for example, a 1 strength may be a -9 penalty ( (20 - 1) / 2 ).  This makes penalties for starting characters a bit more harsh, but may also be perfectly reasonable.  For example, that starting mage may have a 10 strength, or -5 damage penalty because they spent their points increasing magic attributes.  That is fine, and if they never plan to use a weapon, doesn't really hurt them.
  * For attributes that give a bonus per level (Eg, hp, mana, sp), this should be for complete level range (1-100), not first 10.  The bonus per level can actually be worked backward.  For example, if it is decided that a character should get 500 bonus hp from maxed con, that means +5 @ 100 con.  This means that the con bonus would be .0625/level (5/80) - note that instead of having integer values, these could also be stored as floats.  Thus, if you are level 16, each point you increase con is 1 hp.
  * Starting stat bonuses may be more extreme - but not much more, than right now.  Eg, the best combination may give a character a 30 stat.

This attribute system is based on the idea that characters get about 10 hp/mana/grace per level (it may be random, but assume that improvement potions exist).  So my idea of actual stats:

  * Strength - max strength bonus is 20.  Strength would still determine how much you carry, but would not improve weapon speed nor would it counteract maximum speed from armor.  The fact it lets one carry more does me that the character may move faster.
  * Intelligence is used for arcane spell effectiveness.  For example, a high intelligence might mean spells do more damage.  Some skills, like literacy, would still get some bonus from intelligence, but IMO, the skill should be the dominant factor.
  * Wisdom is used for priest spells.  Like Intelligence, high wisdom may increase spell effectiveness - does more healing, lasts longer, etc - effect really depends on the spell.  A simple implementation may be that the high attribute increases effective caster level (eg, +1 every 5 levels).  Wisdom is also used for grace - max bonus at level 100 is +500 grace, or 5/level
  * Dexterity is used for dodge bonus - perhaps its peaks at 40% (since dodge is a new concept, exact balance here is hard) - that is .5%/attribute point above 20.  If it is suggested that starting character have 15% dodge (anyone is going to try to dodge attacks), a starting character may be able to get 20-25% dodge (5% from 30 stat, another 5% from skill?)
  * Constitution is usd for hp bonus.  Max of 500 total hp gained, or 5 hp/level.  Note that high con could start giving other benefits, eg, faster regeneration, resistance to poison, etc.
  * Power is used for mana bonus.  Max of 500 total mana, or 5 mana/level.  Unlike current system where mana bonus is a mix of int and power, I'd suggest it just be power to make things simpler/more direct.  How power could give faster regeneration - I'm not sure if it would get used for skills much.
  * Charisma is currently not utilized much - some skills use it, but also used for shop pricing.  I'd suggest that at 100 Charisma, a character can buy and sell items at near the same price (eg, if you sold something, you could buy it back for just a few percentage more than you sold it).  Bargaining also affects pricing, but I suggest and and/or setup.  Eg, the bonus from bargaining + bonus for charisma is added, and cap applied. Thus, a 50 bargaining/50 charisma character may get near best pricing as a 100 charisma or 100 bargaining character.  One thought is that penalty for 'not the right shop' gets deducted, so a 100 bargaining/100 charisma may be able to sell anything and any shop and still get good prices.

Note that since in many cases, the actual bonus for the attribute will be much less per level than current, starting at level 5 makes more sense - it means the bonus is more likely to be noticable.  One other thought I had is that instead of attribute giving per level bonus, it is a straight bonus.  Eg, each point of constitution gives a 5 hp bonus.  The problem with this approach is that a character with a 30 attribute would get 50 hp more than a character with a 20.  If one presumes that starting characters have about 50 hp, this really makes balance harder - smaller/per level bonuses make it much more predictable - at a 5 bonus/level, one can figure that at any given level, best hp the character has is 15 * level - realistically, it is going to be lower because a level 10 character is unlikely to have a 100 con.  But this would certainly keep the range of hp/grace/mana at any given level fairly close.

As far as improvements of attributes, I have following thoughts:
  * There is no cap put in by potions, eg, if one can find enough potions, one can get 100 attribute.
  * Make different variety of potions (minor, moderate, greater), but these determine attribute total it applies to.  Eg, minor applies to when stats are up to 250 total, moderate is 500 total, and greater is 700 total.  Idea behind make it work on total stats is that it once again provides some incentive to focus on stats.
  * Perhaps remove the fact that potion is tied to different stat, eg, if you drink a stat improvement potion, you can improve any stat you want through some mechanism.
  * Since there are now many more stat points, quests or rare treasures could also increase stats - these would have to be non repeatable, but one could imagine a strength training type quest which will increase the characters strength.
  * Perhaps also allow spending of AP points to increase attributes (10 AP/point?)
  * In general, it is harder to increase attributes than skills.  One thought behind this is that for some attribute, many skills use it.  Eg, a character with a high strength gets an advantage with all the weapon skills, where as if he increases swordsmanship, he is only better in that one skill.


=== Hit/Sp/Grace Points ===

Much of balancing this depends on hit points.  1d10 hp + Con bonus/level seems good, with no 10 level cap on that.  Just making it 10 hp/level actually makes things much simpler - a characters hit points is then level * (10 + Con Bonus).  If Con bonus peaks at 5/level, that means at level 100, a character has 1500 hit points.

I suggest similar mechanism be done for SP and Grace.  Maybe not 10/level, but some fixed amount, but it scales all the way up to level 100.  A problem with current system is that the stat bonus is very heavily loaded at low levels (potentially 25 points/level for the first 10) - this means that a level 10 character can have wildly different values based on attributes - as low as ~50 (minor penalty, poor roles) to 350 (max hp via improvement potions, 25/level).  It is impossible to have balanced encounters for such a wide range.  Now I realize that is very non typical, but a difference of 100 may not be that uncommon, since the bonuses go up dramatically as one gets up to 30.

Not that SP/Grace would be bsed on skill level, while HP would be on overall level.

=== Resistances ===

Since I am talking about all other aspects of the game, might as well talk about resistances/attacktypes (they are almost the same thing)

One problem as I see is that many of the attacktypes are really effects, and not an actual attacktype. So there are now 26 different attacktypes, which really makes having that number of resistances pretty ludicrous.

So the idea is to merge some attacktypes (and thus resistances) for a more manageable number, and with that, one can actually start giving out more items that grant resistances.

Note that some attacks have the idea of a character saving throw, which is to say that the character resists the effects.  As a simple matter of balance, I would say a character of the same level of the attack has a 50% chance to make such a saving throw - abilities may increase that.  Higher level characters against a lower level attack would have a greater chance (eg, a level 50 character against a level 40 attack may have a 75% chance, and against a level 30 attack, 100% chance).  Note that the level of the attack would be the skill used to create it, in the case of a spell, which may be different than the level of the creature.

Resistances would not increase this save, but would reduce the effects (less damage, shorter duration, etc).  There may be a place for adding items that give actual bonus to the saves.

Actual implementation of this may be that the attack code passes in the effect it should hit the creatures with - that effect might just be damage, or it could be fear, etc.

Note that I've basically gone down the list of current attacktypes here, suggesting what they become.

//Saru: I have converted these to a table format for easier reading [[user:saru:balance#attack_types|here]]//

<del>Magic</del> This has always been a messy one - the idea behind it goes back to AD&D where creatures had magic resistance - this corresponded to that - if the creature was hit with a magic attack, this resistance would apply.  I think this should just get removed - we shouldn't care where the attack comes from (magic or otherwise), and removing it simplifies the code.

**Fire, Electricty, Cold** These elemental resistances are fine, and are unchanged.

<del>Confusion</del> This all becomes part of Mental

**Acid** Remains, but the damaging of items needs to be revisited.

<del>Drain</del> Becomes part of Negative Energy

<del>Weaponmagic</del> This goes back to AD&D where certain creatures needed to be hit by magic weapons.  Crossfire did this by giving such creatures immunity to physical, and some weapons had weaponmagic set.  However, this is largely broken - very few creatures actually have resist_weaponmagic set, and things like normal armor should make one resistant to these attacks.  In addition, under AD&D rules, a +1 sword would be magical, and thus could hit such creatures, but that doesn't work in crossfire - only a few artifacts have weaponmagic set.  For these reasons, it should get removed, and if we really want to come up with some idea of 'needing magic weapons to hit', we should re-examine the best way to do that - but I personally think there will not be any great harm just removing this.

<del>Ghosthit</del> Becomes part of Negative Energy

<del>Poison</del> Becomes part of Fortitude

<del>Slow, Paralyze</del> Becomes part of Mental

<del>Turn Undead</del> Becomes part of Holy Fire

<del>Fear</del> Becomes part of Mental

<del>Cancellation</del> This is used so infrequently and is irreversible (it just removes the magic plus from items) that I think it should get removed - I don't think there would be any real change in play balance by removing this.

<del>Depletion</del>Becomes part of Negative Energe

<del>Death</del>This could really be any of Mental (frightening visage scares character to death), negative energy (drain all lifeforce) or fortitude - whatever the case, it doesn't need to be its own top level attack.

<del>Chaos</del> This is really an administrative/effect - it is supposed to randomize for one of the other attacktypes, so characters should never be facing chaos itself.

<del>Counterspell</del> Once again, this is an effect, can get removed.

<del>Godpower, Holyword</del> These become part of Holy Fire

<del>Blind</del>Part of fortitude.

Internal: This continues to exist, but should never be visible to players - this is really just used when a convenient way to do damage to the character is done (eg, ceiling collapsing, crushing you, character is dead) - it probably should be used sparingly.

<del>Life Stealing</del>Part of negative Energy

<del>Disease</del>Part of Fortitude

**Mental** (new) This new attack encompasses all attacks that try to effect the mind - confusion, slow, paralyze, fear

**Negative Energy** (new) This covers all attack forms where some aspects of the character lifeforce is being attacked or threatened.  Not that in a basic mode, it may just do HP damage, with other attacks draining experience, stats, etc.  It encompasses dragin, ghosthit, depletion, death

**Fortitude** (new) I need a new name for this, but basically this covers all attacks which try to do some physical effect (poison, disease, blindness)

**Holy Fire** (new) This describes all effects which are attributed to the power of the god - covers godpower, holyword, turn undead.  Actual effect depends on the attack.

With these changes, there are now 11 attacktypes (not including internal, but including 3 new ones for physical) - this is a much more manageable number IMO, and much more reasonable to give out resistances for any/all of these.

=== Loose Ends ===

The examples here really just focused on the 3 main character archetypes (fighter, cleric, mage).  Crossfire has many more than that, and I think this also helps them out.

For example, with such a system, thieves may be better able to improve their thief like skills - they don't care how they get their experience, so if they are able to sneak around and get a surprise attack for extra damage bonus on a tough monster, it doesn't matter where the exp for that kill goes.

Dragon characters probably get a different skill mix - for example, clawing and dragon armor may become skills they need to improve instead of armor being tied to overall level.

These changes do not directly impact balance, except so far as the characters skill level relative to overall level may differ.  But if the skills are properly defined for effects, eg, that at level 100 weapon skill, you get +20 damage bonus, one can work out appropriate power for other skills.  For example, one could assume that a person with 100 weapon skill would need to be at least level 50, and so may have a weapon that does damage 20, have another 10 damage from strength, and attack speed could be defined as at best being 2.0.  So that means that the character has damage 50 at speed 2.0, so would average 50 damage a tick (since damage is rolled as a random number from 1 to damage, and they get 2 attacks).  So one could then figure a spell of similar level should also do 50 damage/tick, but one might lower that average for large area of effect spells.

=== Wrapping Up ===

This page was mostly just to record some thoughts that have been bouncing around my head for a while.  I don't know if/when it would ever get implemented.

Mark Wedel
January 2011


=== Comments ===
 --- //[[nicolas.weeger@laposte.net|Ryo Saeba]] 2011/02/06 03:58//

Seems like good ideas.

Random thoughts:
  * need a way to handle level (and thus AP) loss
  * monsters should probably use the exact same mechanism, makes easier to balance ; but monsters could use a larger level range, eg 1-10000
  * have players start at level eg 5, so monsters level 1 can have a sense
  * powerful artifacts and items should be carefully balanced against that ; maybe a sword requiring a minimum level in one handed weapons?
  * maybe a possibility to use AP to get more HP/SP/GR? so you can level up all you want, and still have a (minor) benefit
  * add 'handicaps' to claim more AP? for instance, as a fighter, I choose 'no magic', which makes my sp recharge rate almost zero but gives me eg 5 AP I can use elsewhere ; need to balance so the points given by handicap can't be used to counterbalance said handicap, of course, and maybe limit how many handicaps one can take

 --- [[user:mwedel|Mark Wedel]] 2011/02/09, in response to comments above:
  * For level loss, do not try to do anything - it is just that much longer before character will get new AP and be able to increase anything
  * Monsters should use same mechanism - I'm not sure they actually need a larger range
  * Players starting at level 5 make sense.
  * Balancing of items is very important.  Putting in skill requirements (instead of item power) may make sense.  Artifacts should also be properly balance between all the skills (eg, all the best weapon artifacts should not be swords - there should be some good hammers, axes, etc)
  * Ability to use AP for other things is a possibility.  Using it for hp/sp/grace should really be a near end game decision - until character has maxed out many skills, it should be of greater advantage to do that than increase hp/sp/grace.
  * Advantages/disadvantages could be added - some advantages could cost AP points also, eg, fast regeneration.  But I'd leave that for a later phase since that creates a complete new set of things that would need to get balanced.  However, if that was balanced, one could then use that as a basis for balancing classes and races, eg, regeneration is worth 20 AP, see in dark is worth 10, so a race that starts those should really get 30 AP less.

 --- [[user:Saru]] 09/09/2014, comments:
  * These ideas are fantastic and marry perfectly with my thoughts on the overall direction to take for crossfire
  * To address overall balance for each of these changes so that a consistent feel is maintained, a K value needs to be selected to balance against. This should probably simply be level. e.g. a level 10 monster should be consistently difficult to kill (even if easier for a warrior but harder for a priest). This is probably highly subjective in evaluation but that is why crossfire is a game :).
  * Instead of utilising tables to outline improvements per attribute or skill, a formula should be used. This makes it much easier to predict overall impact.
  * I think linear relationships should be used wherever possible to simplify balance, the current mess of almost exponential growth in some factors leads to 0 improvement for some improvements ( 15 str to 16 str) but terrific improvement in a character e.g. 10 extra damage by going from 29 to 30 STR. There is little in game to warn players of this behavior.
  * The simplification of many of the skills, attack_types (and many other types of objects) will further make implementing changes simpler. The current long list of attack_types is a clear example of where things appear to be complicated for the sake of complexity.
  * many properties related to these objectives are currently stored in unique objects within map files. This should be limited should  to enable easier 'large scale' balancing when required. This probably requires a policy such as that a monster should not vary by more than 10% of the .arc for example, and must be renamed completely if any modification that affects balance is made.
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