Best Character Creation System

[azraelck]

Basically meaning that there are 'base' classes and 'prestige' classes, ala DnD 3.5.

I prefer having classes, but I also like the freedom of a skill-only system. As far a cRPGs go, Wizardry 8 is one of the better ones IMO; because it effectively combines both.

HOWEVER; I do think that the class should not dictate limits on what a character can learn, just whan the character specializes in. Say giving the basic Knight (cheap example) the ability to raise his sword and shield skills to 125% rather than merely 100%. Maybe having non-class skills like various spell-casting skills or music cost 2x skill point to train.

This would allow a character to net some spell casting ability if desired, to cast utility spells and save spell slots for the better casters to use for things like Fireflash or Implosion.

As an addem, if you're really serious about this, it would probably be best to have a sub-forum or even an entirely new forum dedicated to this project's development; and use RPGWatch as a way to test general concepts; which can be fleshed out by contributors on the main one.

Otherwise, this one will be looking like a real mess real soon.

 

[GothicGothicness]

One thing to consider with a system similar to Wiz (and which is found in Grimoire, for example ) is that not all classes are available at creation, but can be accessed later with an opportunity to switch class when your stats have improved.

Yes, I have plenty of ideas, I want to have it like this, for example if you are a rogue and want to subclass to a higher level class like assassin, I want to have some requirements, like for example, you must have 1000 kills, you must have sneak at a certain level, etc etc!

As an addem, if you're really serious about this, it would probably be best to have a sub-forum

YEah, I would like to have one here at RPGWatch, not much point in having a completely own one since I want the RPGWatch members feedback, at this point. Of course I setup a website later!

 

[Zaleukos]

Darklands. A classless system where you improve your skills through use and dont have any artificial levels (nor magical become twice as sturdy upon gaining a 1000 xp).

Other good ones are Might and Magic VI-VIII and Realms of Arkania (though I normally dislike rolling attributes).

In general I like systems where there is a choice and reasonable consequences and where I cant be a master of all trades. Specialisation should be rewarded (but not to such an extent that it becomes mandatory).

I didnt like Arcanum's system much, mainly because the stats were so unbalanced with some being infinitely more useful than others (dex was essential, beauty was next to useless).

The TES system could have worked if the initial choices also affected the caps for the different abilities.

And 2nd edition AD&D is probably the worst one around. Your character is largely defined by his gear, class, and level. There is very little actual development in there. 3rd edition is admittedly better though.

 

[Cm]

I have played all types of games including MMO's and found one aspect I liked was rarely used in most games. The ability to select atributes and skills for your NPC members is hard to find in games. I like being able to level them and select skills myself. I agree with Zaleukos that there should be a limit to what you can do based on your original choices. It creates better immersion in the game if you know you must form a party that will cover most of the party needs and then you can work through the game building those various ablilities.

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Yes, indeed. The Realms of Arcania allowed the manual levelling of the party characters.

 

[DeepO]

I like the character creation/development in Wizardry 8 the best.
It's reasonably complex with a lot of possibilities and the combination of learning by practicing and by assigning points at level ups is very engaging.

I'd like to muse a little about a character specialization here.
As a basis, I'm using the Wizardry 8 system.
Beforehand I'd like to mention that possible power training may be restricted somehow, for example - you can raise a skill by training only by maximum of 5 points per level.

Well, I think that it may be quite interesting to allow various classes to gain more than one specialization. Basically, if the NPC fulfills the required conditions for the specialization, then gains it automatically. Of course, all specializations would be class-specific.

I'll use a thief class as an example for this.
Thief class would have, say, 4 possible specializations: assassin, robber, burglar and sniper.
Each would have its own requirements, be it skills or attributes:

Assassin: certain value (I'll use a "cv" abbreviation from now on) of
dexterity/accuracy, cv of stealth and 100 (maximum as in %) in one of thief
weapon (close combat or thrown)

Robber: cv of strength, cv of dual wielding, 100 in one of weapon (close combat),
maybe cv of dexterity/accuracy as well

Burglar: cv of dexterity/accuracy, maybe cv of senses, cv in disarming traps, cv in
lockpicking

Sniper: cv of dexterity/accuracy, cv of speed, 100 in one of ranged (not thrown)
weapons

Those requirements should be transparent and their list easily reachable from character screen, I would leave those benefits gained from them as a surprise though.
That was just a VERY rough example, eh.

The point is that thief would be able to reach most, if not all these specialist statutes throughout the game.
Reaching any of these specializations would grant him one special ability, maybe some additional bonuses as well and ability to use some gear designed just for the respective specialization.
Overlapping of some requirements shouldn't be a problem. If implemented right, it would just add another strategic element to character development.
Then, the player would need to decide for which specialization go first, for which second and so on.

The question is, how to implement possible class changing. I think that quite reasonable way may be to allow class changing from the point when certain experience value is reached. This may obstruct some tactics such as changing class at level 2 and similar.
What may be even more interesting is to make it more like adding the second class for the NPC. Such NPC would either stop to train in its original class altogether and just concentrate on the newly added class or dispense the points/training between both. However, from the point second class is added, NPC would be able to gain those specializations only from the second class. Also, the first class wouldn't gain any attribute/skill points at level ups, only hitpoints,spellpoints,AC modifiers and such. Or something like that

What class can NPC add would be determined by attribute requirements.
Also, second class would start at half the level of the first class or so. Starting at level 1 would grant progress too fast, just continuing from the same level as the first class too slow.

Well, I haven't really thought it through, it was just an idea I got upon seeing this thread, so it's all maybe insensible or hardly possible for implementation, but right now I kinda like it
Of course, everything would have to be well balanced, calculated etc to make it work effectively for different strategies, not make some combinations too powerful and also not to make character development tedious, especially with the party of 6-8.
Hm, after spellcheck this post seem kinda more useless than I thought but I'm posting it anyway, just in case

And I'd like to add that balancing story, questing, combat and character development should be somewhere on the top of the priority list for making a good game.
I'm playing MM7 right now and while I'm having a good fun upon looking at it from a perspective, 90% of playtime is either killing hundreds of same groups of monsters (my mouse will be shortly on life support from all that furious clicking) or running from teacher to teacher to teacher to teacher. It doesn't help that most of the promotional quests consist of killing hundreds of monsters either. Yeah, I've ended this post with a bit of heresy!

 

[Gallifrey]

The Fallout system, which was a modification of GURPS, is probably my favourite. It's streamlined, simple and colossally effective. Being freely able to build your character via skills, stats, traits and perks and continue to develop that build in any way the player saw fit worked remarkably well. The system allowed freedom and choice and yet was not over complicated, it was nicely balanced and didn't take a punitive perspective (ie no "you DIDN'T take that?! sucks to be you!" philosophy here).

What worked so well in Fallout though was not only did the character creation/development system give you full control over your character, the game never really fought against your choices or made you regret them. Troika were really bad for doing this sort of thing in Arcanum and Bloodlines. In Arcanum the system was so free-form it was woefully easy to completely cripple your character and the game, in an attempt to have something for everyone, threw stuff at you that made you regret certain build choices. And Bloodlines fully allowed a player to take a number of paths through the early game (want a sneaky, seductive diplomat? done!) but ended up with a situation requiring the player to have a very combat-capable character. Fallout, in contrast, maintained gameplay vs character build balance throughout.

Point being, for a character creation system to work it has to be supported throughout the game.
And this is probably one reason why class systems are popular. It's much easier to build a game based around a reasonably finite number of character build capabilties. That and people really like having a title that shows up which defines what they are (hence the alarming popularity of D&D's "Prestige Class" system).
Class systems have their place and I don't mind them but they are ultimately very restrictive.

 

[DeepO]

Class systems have their place and I don't mind them but they are ultimately very restrictive.

But in the same time, the restrictive nature of class systems makes them ideal for party based CRPGs imho.

In single character CRPGs, more freedom in character development is welcomed.
Besides Fallout, I also liked character development in System Shock. Gothic has very effective character development too - it's pretty straightforward and simple but the choices you make affect the character significantly.

 

[Gallifrey]

But in the same time, the restrictive nature of class systems makes them ideal for party based CRPGs imho.

Oh absolutely. I can't imagine making an entire party of characters using something like Fallout's system. At that point the micromanagement would become so tedious it'd overshadow the RPG aspect of the game. A micromangement system is great for one character as you totally throw yourself into it, but for a party-based system you need quicker reference points.

In single character CRPGs, more freedom in character development is welcomed.
Besides Fallout, I also liked character development in System Shock. Gothic has very effective character development too - it's pretty straightforward and simple but the choices you make affect the character significantly.

I really enjoyed the character development of Deus Ex as well. SS was pretty similar, and from what little I've seen of Gothic 2, that was a good system too. Had a feeling of really learning rather than just aquiring abilities.

 

[dteowner]

I really enjoyed the character development of Deus Ex as well.

To expand on that a bit:
The key with Deus Ex was that there were two augs for each slot and you only got to pick one. This forced you to make choices and suffer consequences. It doesn't necessarily have to alter the game dramatically, but it does force the player to consider strategies appropriate for the choices they've made.

 

[Arhu]

Yea, I was thinking about Deus Ex as well. Making choices to flesh out your character was fun.

What I like mostly about character development has already been mentioned one way or another:

- You need to make exclusive choices that have consequences. Can do something you couldn't do before, can't do something else because of that.
- All points you spend in some skill or stat should be supported throughout the game.

As for character creation, I really dig specializing, almost to the point of being a munchkin. I usually form a specific character in my mind and try to give him skills and such that support that image.

 

[Sergius64]

For me it was Darklands. It would go through the steps starting from your character's birth to choose gender and name(think different genders gave different stat bonuses), then ask for your family background which would also give different bonuses and also different number of Attribute points you would get. Then you would distribute those attribute points across your attributes with increasing costs once they got high enough. These attributes wouldn't normally permanatly change in game, so you were stuck with them.
Next step was fun: you would have to choose which profession your character was focused on when he was 15 years old. The list of possible professions would be compiled by looking at the character's Gender, Family Background, and I believe his attributes as well. Once you chose the profession you would get certain skill raises automatically and a number of skill points depending on your profession and age and get to spend them on skills but to a limit for each skills, also determined by uour profession. For example taking your Profession to be a Recruit would give you a fair bonus to weapons skills and also let you spend large amounts of skill points to reaise them further, but on the other hand skills like 'Speak Latin' wouldn't get raised automatically at all and you would only be able to spend 1 or 2 of your skillpoints on it to raise it.
After you were done with that you could either ok that character to be played with in the game, or choose another profession, the one you would take at 20. The profession list would change depending on your earlier profession, for example you could take 'Soldier' after taking 'Recruit'. The trade-off was that the older your character would be (ups by 5 years for each profession) the more Attribute penalties he would start to take, and also the number of skill points you can spend on anything decreased with each 5 years. Meanwhile taking more professions would give you higher starting skills in the game and other bonuses, like better armor, knowledge of more saints and alchemical formulae. For example certain characters would be able to chose 'Knight' as their profession eventually and get a starting character with awesome armor.

 

[GothicGothicness]

Does everyone love the XP system? would you guys go crazy if I said like maybe it doesn't need XP and I Want to try something else instead??

 

[narpet]

The Fallout system, which was a modification of GURPS, is probably my favourite.

Actually, during development of Fallout, they lost their contract with Steve Jackson Games, which prohibited them from using the GURPS system.

The S.P.E.C.I.A.L system was developed "in-house" specifically for Fallout. I'm sure they stole some ideas from GURPs (as well as from many other established systems), but it was made to be as different from the actual GURPs system as possible, in order to keep them from getting sued.

 

[blatantninja]

I think I'm just used to the XP system. I like the idea of a skills based system, at least conceptually, but I find it hard to really 'get' if there isn't some quantitative way of reading it in the game. IE, I want to know what 'level' of proficiency I am at, plus I want to know what I need to do to get to the next level.

 

[dteowner]

*begin rant*
Eliminating XP has to be very carefully considered. My huge (and oft-repeated) complaint with Morrowind was that you could get the same character development results from killing 1000 rats outside of Seyda Neen as from saving the world. There was very little benefit to doing quests in MW. Outside of a little bit of swag and some meaningless guild ranks, you gained nothing from quests that you couldn't get randomly razing the countryside. That completely killed any motivation to do the quests. We've discussed in other threads that there are ways around this problem (PJ's "Ever Improving Artifact" was probably the most workable), but it's much more difficult than doling out XP (which is, in turn, "spent" on character development).
*wiping froth from chin*

 

[DeepO]

Yeah, character development in Morrowind was conceptually just plain stupid.

And those decisions in Deus Ex were painful sometimes ... I liked that!

would you guys go crazy

I would

 

[Alrik Fassbauer]

Does everyone love the XP system? would you guys go crazy if I said like maybe it doesn't need XP and I Want to try something else instead??

Depends.

I have no idea what else might work,
but hey, there are even RPG systems with cards instead of dice out there !

So, why not ?

 

[Corwin]

Put me in Dte's camp on this one!!

 

[woges]

Hmmm, apart from the the fact that quests generally mean money (in Morrowind) to buy training and the like.