Suggestions welcome

[KnockOut]

I noticed in the character creation screen you changed knowledge to willpower. Willpower is typically known as the resistance type stat and the stat of most use to the psion(perhaps to get ready to add that class in in an expansion pack?).

I'm guessing willpower will determine mana points and resistances. Wisdom will determine the strengthen of clerical spells and intelligence the strength of mage spells.

Instead for fighters, it should determine their ability to fight through the pain and determine their ability to use adrenaline rushes in battles. For mages it should enable them to do things that no ordinary mortal to do. Ocassionally, based on willpower and how heated and desperate the battle is, spells have the potential to do much more damage.

So a player with more int and less willpower would do really well against sewer rats but not so well against the sewer rat king and a player with more willpower and less int would do well against the sewer rat king but not so well against regular sewer rats.

[jack1974]

Yes, will work in a similar way as you say. In my game texts I wrote:

Willpower influences the power of your spells, reduces spells fizzle rate and your character general magic resistance.
Intelligence influences how many mana points you gain for each level up, the vendor buying/selling prices and some special fighting moves.
Wisdom influences how many spells you can memorize at once, items identification, languages known, and much more.

so as you can see intelligence and wisdom are both good for any caster, moving away from the classic INT=wizard and WIS=cleric archetype

[KnockOut]

I was reading the class selection blog. And it seems like there's going to be a problem in the race/class balance. I'm going to pick the race/class that has the best white magic, then the next race/class that has the best black magic, then the race/class that has the best yellow magic.

There'll be no variety.

First you have to have a reson to have say two+ ice elf healers. Say for each ice elf healer in your party every healing spell heals (#oficeelfs in your party*the healing rate of the healing spell). Now you have to have a reason to have a dwarf healer versus an elf healer. A dwarf healer could make it so that each healing spell also blesses a healed opponent. So, when the elf healer casts a healing spell, the dwarf augments the spell, so that the fighter who was healed does 1.1X damage for five turns. If there are two dwarf healers it would be 1.2X damage.

You don't want to have any irrelevant race/class combinations or irrelevant party combinations.

[jack1974]

The idea of having a multiplier if you have more than one kind of caster in your party is very cool, and could implement it (maybe not in version 1.0, but later).

There won't be the problem you mention because: there is in effect no class with best white, but several. Example:

Paladin, white magic x1
Healer, white magic x5
Druid, white magic x3

the value indicate only how faster your character improves in that skill, so is true that the healer could rise faster, but you could prefer to have a druid which also has good green/black magic values.

Also, there will be different healing spells based on race's deity.

Ice elf could have single heal of 50hp but that depletes their mana.
Dwarf could have a +5hp heal for 10 turns that leave them some mana.
Human could have a mass heal of +3 to all allies for 5 turns.

And so on - it will be practically impossible to "know" which is the "best" class/race combo because the spells will be all different (even if doing the same effect) based on the race.

Or better, in theory after playing 100 times you can know what is the best race but that's part of the game - discovering the trick.

Won't be like the classic AD&D games where you have the dwarf paladin or the elf wizard in any case

[iulius]

My 2 cents: on the other side, must not even be too much difficult to know at least what is a good race/class combo for healer or fighter or whatever.
I like the variety of spells: that should be enough for me.
I mean, I can play with a human cleric, an elf one, and a dwarven one and have 3 different subset of spells that do the same thing but in different way? that sounds great to me!

[jack1974]

Well what I'm trying to do (trying, because is NOT easy) is to satisfy both casual hack'n'slash CRPG gamers, and more "hardcore" fans like Knockout that want some innovations.

I hope the final result will be as good as I have in mind...!

[KnockOut]

Well, each race having slightly different spells makes it worthwhile to try out different race class combinations. However, there's still no reason to have say two dwarf healers with that solution.

If you've ever played the computer game Mordor you'd know that you'd always want one healer, one thief, one warrior/seeker, and one mage or a sorceror. There was no reason to have two thieves or two healers and no reason to play any of the hybrid classes. One solution is to make each hybrid a specialist. For example, in that game there's a worthless scavenger class so you could give the scavenger a new skill the best scavenging ability.

Okay, here's the RPG party creation problem questions:

1) Is there one objectively best race/class combo for each ability needed to complete the quest?(ie. only need one halfling thief to open all the chests in the game)
2) Is there an incentive to use more than one character with the best of that ability in a given party?(ie. might I need two halfling thieves?)
3) Does each race/class combo have it's own unique ability that no other race/class combo can duplicate?(ie. if hybrids get all the spells healers get but slower, then it is better to play hybrids, specialists need unique abilities)

[jack1974]

No I never played that Mordor game, but the "paradigm" is very common. Even in Baldur's gate or other AD&D, the usual party was 1-2 fighters, 1 thief, 1 healer, 1 wizard.

I don't understand why you want to have 2 dwarf healers? jokes apart, there's a reason: in my game you could want to have 2 healers (both dwarf or different) because you can then heal 2 tanks (a warrior and a paladin maybe). Simply as that, each healer heals one tank.

About the questions:
1) well hard to answer now, but I can say NO. because there won't be any "unlockable key that requires a thief". If you have a thief you can pick lock, but if you have a strong warrior you can bash it open, or in any case you'll always find a key
2) with skills, yes. Both for casters and fighters. Example, 2 identic human thieves (halflings aren't present in my game). You can specialize each one already with weapons: make one use always piercing, and another throwing. You'll have one deadly from close combat, and another from distance. Same for 2 ice-elf wizard: if you make one cast only red magic, and another only yellow magic, already in the middle of the game after some levels you'll have 2 different wizards.
3) no, so in theory your reasoning could be right - but since a druid would have much slower White Magic increase, he couldn't cast some powerful healing spells.

To explain better, each spell will have a requirement on each of the 6 "color" of magic. So we could have 1 druid and 1 healer both level 5:

Druid with white magic at 30 skill
Healer with white magic at 50 skill

A spell called "Healing Breeze" that has min. requirement of 50 white magic skill: only the healer could use that spell. Instead the druid could use variety of lower level ones of different kind.

Also consider that all races have 2 deities, each one with his own set of spells.

Right now is a bit confusing I know - but once I make some tests I think I'll be able to show you some screenshots or better clarifications

[thegiant]

I've been following your blog too. This game looks very promising. I just saw you latest post. 180 spells seems an insane amount! even if I suspect that some are just going to be "duplicates" and not really unique spells.
Like this:

Red Magic - burning - inflicts 2 damage for 5 turns
Black Magic - death pain - inflicts 3 damage for 7 turns

but I think is fine since even the big MMORPG have "duplicate" spells like that. Beside if you have resistances for particular kind of attacks, makes sense (let's say you encounter zombies that are immune to death spells, you would be forced to use only the red magic ones).

Keep up the good work - this is going to be one of the best CRPG I'll play this year... also because there's no competition right now! :lol:

[jack1974]

Thanks for the encouragement!
Anyway remember that I'm still in planning mode. For example now after I finished the first 24 spells, I'm not very satisfied. Why? because the spells have "no identity" - hard to associate them to a specific element or group.
I think I'm going to change the way the magic schools are presented to the player.
It makes more sense to have something like:
White Magic - White Magic is the magic of life and includes mostly healing spells.
Black Magic - Black Magic is the magic of death and focuses mostly on offensive spells.

because this way I can even have a self-defensive spell for Black Magic like "Unholy Aura". Before I was listing the spells based on the effect, and not on the element/group.
Also I can have a "Summon Skeleton", while before summon spells were only Yellow Magic. I like this new method much more.

Hop, going to rewrite some part of the code and of the instructions!