Rampant Gaming!

[cowgod]

I've recently defined the statistics for an angel-themed rogue-like that I've been developing. It's a classless game where you spend experience points to raise your statistics. You find "Tablets of Destiny" or get training to learn new abilities that you can only use if the relevant statistic(s) are high enough.

I've settled on the following statistics:

Survival: Life (Hit Points), Regeneration (slow regeneration for life points), Halo (a protoss-like energy shield that functions as additional Hit Points), Halo Recovery (super fast regeneration for halo)

Noncombat Skills: Computing, Mechanics, Searching, Seduction, Speech

Combat Statistics: Action Points, Anatomy (Critical Hit %), Dodge, Speed (determines the order characters act in)

Accuracy Statistics: Assimilation (Eating enemies alive), Swordsmanship (melee attacks aside from assimilation), Spellthrowing (ranged attacks)

Magic Statistics: Alchemy, Creation, Druidry, Healing, Mind Control, Necromancy, Shapeshifting, Wizardry (miscellaneous magic)

Damage Types: Cold, EMP, Fire, Magic, Mental, Physical, Toxin. Also, there's a "Healing Disability" statistic for certain armor types that may prevent healing magic from affecting you.

I had sworn up and down that I wasn't going to have any kind of speech statistic, but I would up adding it anyways. I dropped a "Glow" statistic that gave you an innate light source and a "Hunger" statistic that determined how long you could go without eating. I decided to use a spell for lighting and have hunger not be an issue.

What do you think about this mish mash of statistics? While few of the statistics are especially original, I think it's odd to see some of them in the same game.

[McTeddy]

Eating enemies alive... That skill alone makes the list a win for me.

My only concern lies with the effectiveness of the Non-Combat skills. I can see how things such as Health Regen or Critical hit% can influence a game... but I can't exactly see how much use Computing or Seduction is going to be in a Roguelike. They just seem like they would be rarely used compared to most of the skills.

That said... I don't know how your game is actually structured and supposed to play... so I've assumed alot. We all know what they say about assuming.

I am looking forward to trying this game though. It sounds like it will be alot of fun.

[Coyote]

My new kick (after seeing how badly I've over-done it for FK) is to simplify whenever in doubt. But it really depends on the game. But especially if some skills are more useful than others, think of consolidating some of the weaker ones.

So anyway - first blush, it's a little overwhelming if those are all skills that have gradated values. But if they are one-time off-or-on values, no biggie. But based on previous discussion, it sounded like you were going for having them have between 6 or 11 (0-5 or 0-10) levels each, and that might be a little much.
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Rampant Games
Games With Personality!

[Hajo]

I can see interesting applications of most of these in a roguelike, but I'm a little worried about the development.

I mean, every effect of these skills/abilities/stats must be coded or scripted, and this appears to be quite some work. For the players it's sure interesting to have so many abilities which their characters can develop, but for you as developer, it seems to be quite some extra work.

Coyote has shown that it's doable with the 500+ spells for FK, so maybe I just miss the right ideas to do such efficiently. If you can, definitely go for the list, it looks quite interesting, even with the mix. If in doubt, try to group and categorize, and make only 3 or 4 stats, like "social, technical, combat, mental" which then influences the game.

[cowgod]

You guys all have a point.

I don't know how it happened, but I somehow wound up with a list that kept getting bigger even as I was removing stuff.

Computing, seduction, and speech definetly have to go. I could add them in some kind of sequel.

I should probably combine some of the magic types. In fact, I initially meant to have less but had difficulty thinking of names for broad categories of magic. This lead me to create more different types.

I was specifically trying to avoid the bewildering away of options available in some games and seem to have made things even worse...

I'll figure something out.

[Coyote]

I guess the thing you want to strive for is ... progressive complexity. Start it out simple. (And the more I talk about this, the more I realize Frayed Knights is kinda this way, but I'm not presenting it very well).

Maybe you have only four "stats" to begin with ... easy to understand. Combat, Magic, Education, and Survival. A point in any of these offers a small general-purpose increase in all of the specialist abilities that come below them.

But in order to max out, say, hit point regeneration, you will also need to buy Regeneration explicitly. Maybe sub-skills only become available after the primary attribute that governs it has been raised at least half-way (five out of ten? Six out of ten?).

And the specialist skill is either much cheaper than raising the general attribute, or it's influence is significantly higher. Maybe Survival only gives you 1 hit point per (game) hour of healing, but Regeneration offers you 4 or 5 hit points per hour.

Anyway, that would conceal the complexity for the beginning player until they have a better grasp of the basics.
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Rampant Games
Games With Personality!

[McTeddy]

[cowgod]

As a reference, Sangband has 27 skills, most of which are unnecessary. My list had 32.

Granted, Sangband also had ability scores, but it's still obvious that my list is too long.

[Hajo]

[cowgod]

I spent the morning revising all my statistics, though I'm still working on getting the data to display properly in the game again.

There are now 20 "talents" the player can upgrade, though some of them are things like "Life", which probably shouldn't be called a skill. I decided to add some "attributes" after all so that there would be a minimal amount of optimizing statistics possible. Each attribute corresponds one set of 5 talents.

Attributes and talents both start at 0 and can be raised up to 6 (since statistics are now the affected by both attributes and talents). Talents correspond directly to statistics that affect the character's performance. Attributes raise 5 different statistics, but they are only raised a little more than half as much as by talents. I assigned attributes an XP cost of 7 * attribute level (e.g. 7 for level 1, 14 for level 2, 21 for level 3, ...) and assigned talents an XP cost of 3 * attribute level. Raising an attribute by 1 is marginally better than raising the 5 corresponding talents by 1 each, but you have to save up your XP.

The attributes are: Survival, Exploration, Magic, and Combat. I tried to correlate the skills to more standard attributes (e.g. strength, intelligence), but this non-standard organization seems to keep things categorized better.

Survival talents are: life, halo, regeneration, halo recovery, and dodge.

Exploration talents are: awe (combination speech and ally morale stat), lumens (light radius around you), mechanics, peace (essentially "stealth"), and searching.

Combat talents are: assimilation, swordsmanship, spellthrowing, action points, and speed.

Magic talents are: druidry, genetics, healing, sorcery, and witchcraft.

Resistances are similar, though there's 1 less, and they're renamed to be be more appropriate for the magic talents available.

As suggested, I eliminated some of the noncombat skills. I restored my lighting statistic, but I called it "Lumens" rather than "Glow". I also eliminated the "Anatomy" statistic to have the critical hit % be determined by attack type. That's something I had wanted to do before anyways. The different types of magic are combined into fewer categories.

I was thinking about combining assimilation and swordsmanship into 1 melee stat, but assimilation is the one that impressed McTeddy. I've decided to just make assimilation cooler to make it a more useful statistic. Assimilate will function as an instant kill attack whose success chance is affected by your hunger (your maximum life - your current life) and how weak the enemy is (the enemy's current life). If successful, you swallow the enemy whole and regain life points as you digest it. You can only assimilate one enemy at a time, but I intend for this to be the most efficient way to gain life in the game.

I plan to require more powerful healing spells to expend your life points to restore your allies' life points with assimilation being a way to regain your life points without having to expend anything.