Best Character Creation System

Ok, I might start to make a mock-up with simple graphics to see how it works out. Thank you for all ideas, and keep coming up with them!
 
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Maybe if you kill thousands of rats you start turning into one, all that rat life energy... you'd have to start thinking about what you could kill, kill another one of those goblins and you might start turning green, good time to sneak past maybe.. and what happens if you take too much life energy, to too quickly, that could get messy...

Sounds very, very interesting ... ;)
 
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hmm, maybe not THAT complicated, but I could imagine if you killed a lot, of poor innocents, it would have affect on you, and if you kill a very evil creature and steal all the life energy, could also have some affect, and if you kill too much too quickly..... yeah, too much too quickly of life energy, it could also have some effects... I have not decided if I will use it yet though, or stick with the tradional XP thing.
 
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I did really like the actual Wiz Character creation, but I prefer the profiency system over point-buy/roll.

I'ld be interested in how this can also work with no character level or XP.

Rather than going from farmboy weakling to uber-god in terms of hit points, the character becomes more skilled in what (s)he/it does. In fact, i'ld be interested in just how 'normal' the characters physical ability can stay. HP , Strength, Agility etc should not raise much. But it depends on how far into fantasy you go I guess.

Have the player become more skilled in various areas and have a greater access to tools/weapons etc as the game progresses. Able to pass those they know, and attempt those above them.
Taking a notion from the rougelikes, as the player combats more monsters or obstacle, they learn more about them and thus can deal with them easier, each gain is dropped the lesser the challenge.
 
Personally, I think everything should be solvable by some other means than whacking the beast with a battle axe and eating it's heart in celebration.

Personally, I have seen a very glaring LACK of the ability to eat the hearts of those I've conquered in games!
 
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Yeah, i would be interessed in having lore, in TW a book which contains each monster and info about them ,and some skills governs how much you could know, and after you killed a lot of one type, you could get some bonus against them. I am also thinking of some higher level classes like Dragon slayer that you could gain if you killed a certain amount of dragons of different type.

As far as character creation goes there is a lot of ideas out there I am going to try some mockups,, and upload the somewhere and see what people think. Everyone appears to agree at least that in a party based system, none should be able to be a jack of all trades.

I also want to make the NONE combat skills MUCH more useful in this game compared to what they are in most games!
 
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I remember Phantasie well. I still have 1&3 on my HD. I played 2 on my C64, but it was never released for PC. It was my first RPG, followed quickly by Bards Tale and Ultima!!

*dies of a heart attack*

SOMEONE REMEMBERS PHANTASIE!

:p

My first RPG was Bard's Tale, but Phantasie III came close behind. Both are among my favorite games, though the DOS version of Phantasie III sucks graphically to say the least. ADOM looks like a fancy 3D engine compared to it. One of my earliest memories is of sitting in my grandfather's lap playing Bard;s Tale on the C64. I was 3. He's the one to blame for me having a hundred pages of a design document for an RPG.

Making non-combat skills useful just requires putting in things to do with them. Being able to access otherwise inaccessible areas with climb (or a fly spell), or whatever. Allowing diplomatic negotiations for even random encounters which give the same amount of XP or whatever (same reward for a alternate path). I'd like to go one step further and have more uses for spells than just strict 'do this, do that'. Like using a Fireball to cook a BBQ, or Frost Bolt to create an ice bridge across a river. Not too many games I've played allow multiple ways of using a single spell or ability.

I like the idea of keeping the characters at the same basic physical level throughout the game. I was toying with an xd6 setup. Basically, each race having a set 'health' statistic which determines the number of d6's you roll for HP, add in stat mods. Same for spell energy. However, the highest I calculated in under the current version was 29hp; on a Minotaur. When I had classes, I got to 37 for a Minotaur Fighter.

The problem comes when you have weapons. Most character races have 1 or 2 hit die, so even with keeping all weapons at 1d6 (for 1 handers and ranged, 2d6 for 2 handers) a character could easily die in a single hit.

The characters need to be sturdy enough to survive combat. This is a sticking point with my own design, as currently they basically cannot without a lot of luck. However, too much health, and they'll be too strong and can tank through most combats, and heal up afterwards. Of course, this is using my design as an example; which won't matter much soon as I have a weekend off finally. :D So something will change, probably tonight since I took a nap.

Using battlefield tactics can help offset the weaker characters; but that's another topic.

*edit*

I came up with an idea for classes, which appeals to me. It might also appeal to others; but I'm a sociopath and don't care. It's also 2:30a and I worked OT yesterday. So forgive me for being short, or misspelling half my words and having poor grammar everywhere.

Each character starts out able to learn all skills, as a general 'Adventurer'. Later (around level 5) if they qualify, they can choose to enter into a base class.

A base class would give them the ability to raise skills up to 125% instead of 100%, at the cost of losing out on the sheer versatility. For example an Elementalist would be restricted to spells of his particular element, as well as allied elements (more on that later). They might also gain new abilities.

Eventually, a character in a base class might choose to enter into another base class, or even an elite class. This is limited by a max of 2 base classes and a single elite class; and classes whose restrictions conflict cannot be taken by the same character. This is to prevent someone from breaking the who class change mechanic like in DnD3.5. Not to say it can't be broken, but just not that way.

The Elite class would give some more, stronger abilities and maybe cut costs to use others; while upping class skill caps to 150%, and 200% for the class' primary skill (Spellcasting for an Arch-Mage; Lore for an Arch-Druid, etc). The offset would be that it would be even more restricted; the character unable to even use skills not on the class' list; much less learn them. Whereas a base class might restrict learning a skill, but not it's use if it was already known beforehand.

Skills would still be the focus, however joining a class would help define a character more, give them greater strength in that area they already specialize in, and qualify them for even more goodies later on down the line.

One build would be a Rogue+Fighter or Warrior into Assassin. Or a Ranger into Sniper.

The thing would be that while the classes would be there, it wouldn't take away from the freedom of doing what you will; they'd be completely optional.

Which leads to another idea; variable difficulty. Include the traditional mechanics for leveling, increased HP and all, the ability to adjust the power gap between players and the enemy, effectiveness of spells; stackable enchantments; etc... all in the name of making the game truly customizable. Dungeon Hack did this to some extend. This would go a step further with additional gameplay mechanics which would be totally optional. The hardest would be a level-less solo Iron Man run with XP set to 50% (or half gained) and monster difficulty ramped up to 200%.

That would solve any challenge problems as well; if the game has a static difficulty some players will get mad and leave it because it's too hard, others because it's too easy. I remember Devil Whiskey being extremely easy when it first came out; even on the hardest difficulty. It still is easy now, after the rebalancing, but not near as badly. This would put the level of challenge in the hands of the player, not the designer.
 
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I must admit that a game with a German name - Phantasie - is so relatively well known here. Me, on the other hand, I never knew this game until this forum.

"Phantasie" is German language and means "fantastic", "fantasy" (well, not really, but in part), but mostly "imagination".

Phantasie is used when you invent something new out of your "fantasy" - a story, for example.
Phantasie is also used as "imagination" while daydreaming - in your dreams you "invent" something "fantastic".

This world is a little bit difficult to translate,m because it contains several (partly different) meanings in the English language. It's a little bit like the English word "mind", which has several rather different meanings in the German language.

To see several possible translations, click this link: http://dict.leo.org/ende?lp=ende&la...r=on&spellToler=on&search=Phantasie&relink=on
 
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*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*

One possible solution would be to limit the max "trainable" skill level depending on how difficult the opposing monster is. A master swordfighter would for instance not learn any new tricks by hacking away at sheep or rats, but might learn a lot from fighting other veterans or the assorted demon king. The mechanism would be a bit like the scaling of XP rewards in 3rd edition AD&D.

Some thoughts from various XP-less rpg systems I played in my youth:
You could allow the use of trainers up to a certain skill level.
Make the basic attributes (str, dex et al) more or less fixed. A guy with a heart problem will not suddenly become superman. Maybe you could allow temporary raises of a point of con/str or two due to physical exercise regimens and generally keeping fit, and temporary points in int and the like from playing chess/reading, but you might as well keep the attributes fixed as the gamer otherwise just would optimise his gameplay in an artificial way.
Balancing skills is tricky. Darklands has been mentioned, and it is one example of how some skills are very hard to train due to not getting used very often.
One Western RPG also had skills decrease if the skill wasnt used for a while as the character forgets. I think that is a good mechanism within reason as it prevents the master of all trades of Bethesda fame.

On a vaguely related note I enjoyed a system with separate HP for different body parts, allowing you to keep on fighting with your left arm cut off for a while, while the total HP loss or knocking out of head/torso would kill you instantly. You could of course also aim for various body parts at a penalty.

But in general it might be worth it to keep the character creation system fairly simple. Gameplay always trumps realism, and you dont want your game to turn out a glorified spreadsheet exercise:p
 
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One possible solution would be to limit the max "trainable" skill level depending on how difficult the opposing monster is. A master swordfighter would for instance not learn any new tricks by hacking away at sheep or rats, but might learn a lot from fighting other veterans or the assorted demon king. The mechanism would be a bit like the scaling of XP rewards in 3rd edition AD&D.

Yes, I would already do it this way.

But in general it might be worth it to keep the character creation system fairly simple. Gameplay always trumps realism, and you dont want your game to turn out a glorified spreadsheet exercise

But but, creating characters are soooo much fun in for example wizardry. in Wiz gold I think I spent as much time creating characters as I did playing the game HEHE.
 
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I've run well over 100 parties thru the monestary (or further) in Wiz8, playing with different character builds and party makeups. I think that says something to the quality of character development in that game.
 
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I've run well over 100 parties thru the monestary (or further) in Wiz8, playing with different character builds and party makeups. I think that says something to the quality of character development in that game.

Bah if it was a truely excellent char gen system you would never have got that far. You'd still be generating hundreds of characters and saving them (as per Megatraveller) ;)

Seriously though I like the concept of essence being used as a universal currency therefore allowing full control over development (i.e. do I get better stuff or do I get better with the stuff I have). I also thought the idea of taking on traits from the essence was a good one (kinda like a karma thing). on that note have you seen the PnP Shadowrun Char development system it's kinda like XP where you buy new skills but you can also use it adhoc to assit inthe field like one time boosts (or rerolls).
 
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Not so, Kendrik. I said "development" not "generation". Actually, strictly for character generation, I'd say Wizards&Warriors and MW would be the games that gained the most time from me. Kinda funny that I always hold up MW as the pinnacle of horrible character development but still think it's one of the best examples of complex and varied character generation (and I'm not referring to MW's interview process, which I only did a couple times).
 
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Kinda funny.

I agree. Similarly, for me Wizardry 7 worked in opposite manner. To preserve your rhetorics - while I found it one of the best examples of complex and varied character development, I found the character generation to be pretty tedious and unnecesarily time consuming.
Of course, since you spent 150 hours developing characters in game, those two hours in front of character generation screen weren't that bad:)
Character generation in Wizardry 8 was ship-shape. It offered many different possibilities for creating starting characters, while being simple in principle. Re-rolling is stupid! >:O
 
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The problem with Wiz7 (and 6) was that it is nearly impossibly to roll a good number of bonus points. I'm working on starting a new game now; and that's all I've been doing. Even if I stick with the 'base' classes like fighter and mage, I want a solid foundation to build a samurai or bishop. Wizardry 8 allowed you to create whatever, and even a weird combination such as Dwarf Mage or Hobbit Lord was possible with ease.

Personally, I want options when I start a game. That's one of the reasons I love ADOM; I can create something like 200 different combinations of races and classes. I love Wizardry for much the same reason; 6-8 had a broader range of "what can I do with this" than nearly every other game on the market at the time. In fact, I don't know of any game which has as good a character creation system as those games designed by D.W. Bradley back in the day.

It doesn't have to be complex, just give me the option of creating a Spite or Minotaur along with an Elf or Dwarf, or maybe a Cat-folk just because I remember vaguely a poster on one forum railing against furries and expressing a deep hatred for them. The more options there are for the player, the better.

However, these options do need to be balanced; nothing like AD&D 2e rules where there was no point to being anything but Human by the RAW. I'm sure y'all've played the classic Gold Box games and ran across level caps and racial class restrictions.

I believe ADOM actually reduces and eventually eliminates the skill gain from a particular monster the more you fight it. So while you may have killed a billion rats, only a couple thousand actually helped sharpen your skills in pointy shrew.

Of course, a pure skill-based system, lacking earnable skill points or levels, would make certain skills difficult to train, and might introduce grinding if not done well. I for one don't care much for standing around climbing the same tree over and over so I can continue on my quest! It's why I don't care over much for MMORPGs, and why I have stepped away from a lot of otherwise good games for a time or two. Grind = no-fun, except for a few who probably need help. :D

I prefer having levels from a design standpoint because it gives me a reference when balancing things. I also get more use out of my class-system that way. I'll reference and plug my own work once more and say that the only mechanical aspect a level has in my system currently is to give 10 +INT bonus skill points. XP itself gives a set skill point bonus every so often, independent of levels; which is also able to be distributed by the player. But, we're getting away from a character creation system and into development now.
 
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But, we're getting away from a character creation system and into development now.

This is a bit like the chicken-egg question, though.

It may be preferable to flesh out character development first because:
a) player will spend much more time developing his characters then creating them
b) certain means of character development may be derived from/tied to the game's setting (environment, story)

I think it may be quite sensible firstly devise some general principles of character development which will work well with other game's aspects and design the fitting creation procedure which will put the characters at their starting development point afterwards. After all, classes and especially races which will be aviable to the player should be clear only after the basic layout of the story/world.

Or maybe not:) However, I'm pretty sure that thinking about character development and character creation systems together shouldn't do this thread any harm, at least not at this point.

Uh, I'm completely falling asleep right now. And I think it was a chicken.
 
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Actually, going off topic, but you can easily design a world/setting long after the races' basic statistics and characteristics are noted. Races are little more than a picture or character model pasted over a bunch of stat bonuses and penalties (vs the "average human"), maybe some special traits like claws or scales, and a few special abilities.

None of which matters at all to the world in particular; just fill in the details later.

But it probably doesn't matter in the context of this thread.

I'd post the rest of my earlier thought, but I forgot it.
 
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Well, I am thinking like if you have a good Character creation system. It should be easy to go from their with the character development, in for example WIZ it feels very natural to develop the way it does from creation.

But we did already consider a lot of development here, like to have or not to have XP, skill development, higher level classes etc. I still think I might go the XP way not sure yet. But I will not have respawning of monsters, so if it is a skill system it might be that it doesn't matter since you will acctually run out of things to kill, so you can't max your skills by killing rats. Kill one million rats, and there will be no rats left in this world!
 
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Of course, a pure skill-based system, lacking earnable skill points or levels, would make certain skills difficult to train, and might introduce grinding if not done well. I for one don't care much for standing around climbing the same tree over and over so I can continue on my quest! It's why I don't care over much for MMORPGs, and why I have stepped away from a lot of otherwise good games for a time or two. Grind = no-fun, except for a few who probably need help. :D

XP based system can invite grinding as well. I'm sure I'm not the only one to "vacuum" the worlds of Gothic I and especially II at the start of each chapter:p
 
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XP based system can invite grinding as well. I'm sure I'm not the only one to "vacuum" the worlds of Gothic I and especially II at the start of each chapter:p

Who said they don't? Phantasy Star IV has been uncompleted for about 6 months for this reason. GTA: SA sat for about 3 when I hit a point that I had to spend time leveling mt lung capacity. It's been sitting since I had to learn to fly; by doing things in air that I would never have to do again except during that one mission.

I consider any game that requires you to grind, whether for levels, gold, or skills, to be poorly balanced. Here lately, I'm more likely to drop it and go to something else as I simply don't have the time I did when I was young and spent hours kicking in doors in The Bard's Tale.

That's why I like keeping XP and some method for earning skill points, or at least buying training with otherwise useless gold, over a pure practice-makes-perfect system. Wizardry did it right, giving you a few skill points but also leveling skills up as you used them. That way, you could pump lesser-used skills like mapping and swimming, and when you NEED those skills, you're not lost in the woods or drowning in a shallow creek.
 
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