Stats in 4D - Moved from Pwipe thread

[Kvetch]

*whimpers pitifully at the hopefully willing part*  Willing, able and having time are 3 different things.  The way I see it, even if Anubis had the skill trees ready to go in in 2 months, it's going to take at least that, if not longer, for builders to go through and do things like - drop prices on all eq - change all eq to new things.. etc, etc...

Brit did touch on something though in his post that I want to pull out.  Stats.

From the game port:
CONstitution:
Increases the max health gained when you level and health regeneration rate.
For fighters and rogues it increases the damage of their weapons.
*

<WHY does CON increase the damage of anyone's weapons?  What does a player having a good CON have to do with changing the attributes of a weapon?>

CHArisma:
Increases your minimum magic damage, extends the duration of spells, lowers
cost of items in shops and increases max health gained when leveling.
*

<Seriously, WHY doesn Charisma affect anything that has to do with magic?>

DEXterity:
Increases attack rating and speed and armor class, lets you cary more items.
Dex is also good for thief skills, like picking locks and backstabbing.
*

<WHY does dex let you carry more items?  Seems that'd be a thing STR would do.>

INTelligence:
Greater gain from practice sessions and gives you more mana when you level.
Increased the chance of becoming better at a skill/spell through practice.
Is the primary affect for increasing damage of all attack spells.
*

<I can basically agree with this since it has to do with magic.>

STRength:
Adds to your max carriable weight and your speed.
For fighters and rogues it increases the damage of their weapons.
*

<Ah, so STR DOES have something to do with carrying things - still don't know why DEX does.  Now, this increasing damage thing I can see - if it's a hand to hand weapon.  Most ranged weapons aren't made to use the STR of a user. IE: doesn't matter if you're str 13 or 18 if you shoot a gun - bullet's still gonna travel as fast as the gunpowder in it.>

WISdom:
Gets you more practice sessions and mana when you level and adds to magic
damage. Increases the chance of becoming better at a skill/spell through
practice.

<I can agree with this.>


I think maybe one of our first steps really should be to look at the stats and see what they SHOULD be, not neccessarily what they are right now in the game.  I posted the above with my comments for a first look, but here is my proposal:
STR - is obviously strength and thus should affect anything that is strength based - this goes for carrying capacity, damage increase on melee weapons and even skills that would use strength as a base for the skill.  For example, if you had a weightlifting skill.

DEX - is obviously dexterity so should give a bonus to anything that is movement related - movement, dodge, evasion, etc.  Also, a bonus to AC because of the ability to dodge - that may be hampered if you are wearing armor you can not affectively dodge in (like full plate mail). Also, should affect any skill that is based off movement - say like if you had a swimming skill.

INT - This is your intellegence.  This is how smart you are.  This should be how well you LEARN a skill/spell, so would in effect give you a bonus to how quickly you can learn a spell either through PRACTICE.  Should affect any skill that is based off learning things by books/knowledge aka: if you needed to know what a certain heraldry symbol meant.

WIS - this is your Wisdom aka: your common sense.  This should be how well you con comprehend what you've learned.  So it would increase your ability to increase your spell/skill knowledge by USE.  Should also affect any skill/spell that is based off Wisdom.

CON - this is how healthy a person is.  It reflects how alcohol (or poison) would affect the person along with a lot of other things.  This is also where you would get bonuses to your HP because of how your health is - both when you level and has as regeneration.

CHA - The only benefit I've ever seen to CHA is that of trade.  Buying lower in shops and selling higher.  Though, could give bonuses to any skill that has CHA as a based stat - perhaps charm spell or possibly even interrogation (if you interrogate that way, that is).

What are other peoples ideas on the basic stats?  Like them how they are, or should the be different?  Give examples.

[Virisin]

Good post. I agree with most of it except wisdom, with skill trees we will no longer get better at a skill or spell through use. I would support removing charisma, but I know it's used in some quests. I'd like to see Anubis opinion on this.

[Prometheus]

Cha is still used for spells. And since spells are going to be in the skill trees I don't see a valid reason for it being removed.

Prometheus

[Virisin]

Could make wisdom for spells seeing as otherwise wisdom won't be much good.

[Virisin]

(This is not about PWipe at all anymore.. It is also straight off the top of my head with no real thought behind it, so please feel free to point out any crazy absurdities you can see in this)

CONstitution:
Increases the max health gained when you level and health regeneration rate.
For fighters and rogues it increases the damage of their weapons.

Constitution should not affect damage. I'm also iffy about whether constitution should affect health gains.. If in a new 100 level system constitution affects health gains, I have a feeling it will lead to 'health eq' people put on quickly when they level up, and 'fighting eq' people wear whilst levelling.

CHArisma:
Increases your minimum magic damage, extends the duration of spells, lowers
cost of items in shops and increases max health gained when leveling.

I dislike charisma overall and think it should be removed. I think it's only like 1 quest in the game that would be effected.

DEXterity:
Increases attack rating and speed and armor class, lets you carry more items.
Dex is also good for thief skills, like picking locks and backstabbing.

Dexterity should not alter items carried, as Kvetch said it should alter evasion and most skill damage for things like backstab as well as increasing damage done by short weapons. Speed will be in skill trees.

INTelligence:
Greater gain from practice sessions and gives you more mana when you level.
Increased the chance of becoming better at a skill/spell through practice.
Is the primary affect for increasing damage of all attack spells.

With skill trees there won't be greater or smaller gains from practice sessions, and it won't be possible for skills or spells to improve through use. Should have a bigger affect on attack spells.

STRength:
Adds to your max carriable weight and your speed.
For fighters and rogues it increases the damage of their weapons.

Seems pretty good. Strength should have a greater affect on weapon damage for long weapons and skills like cleave.

WISdom:
Gets you more practice sessionsand mana when you level and adds to magic
damage. Increases the chance of becoming better at a skill/spell through
practice.

Wisdom will be exactly the same as intelligence with skill trees if they are not altered at all. I would support removing wisdom altogether as well.

Would leave us with: strength, intelligence, constitution and dexterity with primarily strength being good for anyone wanting to do a lot of damage with larger weapons, intelligence being good for casting, constitution being good for HP gains and anyone that wanted to be a tank or good defender, and dexterity being good for doing a lot of damage with smaller weapons.

This is completely off the top of my head, so there could be plenty of flaws in my thinking.

I also think we should remove caps on stats and add a cap to the total amount of stats one player can attain instead. So if someone really wanted to they could get say 50 strength and 0 of any other stats. Actually it should probably be necessary for characters to have at least say, 5 in every stat. This would require stricter equipment guidelines though, with a max number of an individual stat any item could have (5 probably), as well as a max number of stats any item can have (5 probably).

[Virisin]

Also thinking wisdom and intelligence could be differentiated based on aggressive or protective spells possibly. One giving more damage and better affects to aggressive spells, one giving stronger and longer lasting defensive spells. Would work with different build casters.

[Virisin]

From another game:

Strength slightly affects HP gain, minorly affects certain attacks for accuracy, and is the damage stat for most weapon skills

Constitution effects HP more than Strength, helps you resist diseases and sickness

Dexterity affects accuracy and evasion the most out of all stats

Agiltiy affects your base speed, and your ability to dodge projectile attacks

Perception affects the damage for most projectile base attacks and some minor speed and ranged defense boost, also boost spell accuracy slightly

Intelligence gives a small mana boost, and is the the main accuracy stat for most spells, and affects spell defense a little

Willpower gives a large mana boost, affects damage for spells the most, and affects defenses against enemy spells and social-based attacks

Charisma mostly affects your accuracy with social-based attacks, some defense against the same type of attack, minor defense against diseases and sickness, and healing

***

Food for thought. I think my earlier post cutting down to 4 stats is a bad idea. The less stats we have the less room we have to balance the game and 4d has a heck of a lot of quests and equipment out there and it would be silly to make all of it more similar than it is already (although adding +skill rank as a stat will give some diversity too). More stats means a more complex system and if it's balanced in a good and controlled way it's great.

[Virisin]

I am rambling here and it's mainly the result of sitting at recall talking to Once and Hayato, and I'm not entirely sure why I'm posting in this thread but eh..

I think if we break it down into the potential subclasses we have it will be easier to consider what stats we should have:

1. Offensive caster (casts offensive spells obviously, is more about doing lots of damage and killing mobs before they can do damage back because they probably have weak defense or resistance)
2. Defensive caster (guess what defensive caster does.. the opposite)
3. Assassin (strangle, poison, short weapons)
4. Ninja (martial arts)
5. Bard (sing battle songs)
6. Merchant (woodsing, tinker)
5. Heavy set warrior (gimli)
6. Lighter warrior (aragorn)

We'll also have large/long weapons, small/short weapons and ranged weapons. Assassin will likely use daggers and short weapons, ninja's could use ranged throwing stars, etc. Stats should take into account all of these types of build and the others I've forgotten.

[Molly]

Good discussion, keep it going!

I won't comment specifically on anything except to defend the so much despised CHA a bit.

1. Like someone already said; removing cha would mean removing one variable, which would lead to less variety.

2. To me it's in a way logic that cha should be beneficial to magicians, because to me magicians are partlly tricksters.
So try to regard high cha, not as how beautiful and attractive you are, but how well you are able to con people (no pun intended). Another word for magician actually is conjurer or illusionist.

3. Cha is actually used in several quests, again in an attempt to add some variation, so that the quest isn't always the same to every player.

4. And naturally cha should affect how successful you are in charming mobs or bartering with them.

As someone also said, don't expect a mud to be fully logic. After all, we are dealing with magic, dragons and vampires here. Within it's very twisted world however, we should at least try to be consistant. That's not the same of being logic.

[Riley]

Some mud use cha for how many people can follow them... it's just really like a charisma factor the prettier you are the more people that want to "follow" you.  but cha shouldn't affect spells wis/int should.  so really all stats should cap at 22.

[Virisin]

There are only actually 2 quests in the game that use charisma, but I actually agree. More stats is better than less stats I think.

Just waiting for Anubis to post his thoughts.

[Natalya B.]

Going on from what Viri said re classes..

Id like some more magey type classes, instead of just offensive and defensive.

Like, a straight deadset mage, Lunar Mage or something, strong attack spells, weaker on defenses han melee classes.

Some kind of 'warrior mage', a mixture of attack spells and melee abilities.

You could also choose which type of mage path you take. Arcane, Ethereal, etc. The elements.. fire, air, water, earth.

PVP system would involve: parry, dodge, and then a range of actual abilities. Spell casting (In theory you should prepare a spell (say, takes 3 seconds) then target your target, even have the ability to target a specific body type, and cast it.

This would mean subskills would need to be trained up. Target ability for one as an example.

Also other subskills for non-specific classes..

IE: Hiding, sneaking, perception, stealing.

One could train up their hiding/sneaking/stealing. All classes would be able to do these things, however not as well as a thief/assassin class. However all can train up their perception, and if Player X's perception is higher than Player Z's hiding/sneaking/stealing, then they would be caught out in their attempts to do those things. The larger the gap between skills, the higher success. IE: If someone's hiding is rank 10, and if theyre trying to hide in the same room as someone who has a perception level of 80, that person is guaranteed to spot the person hiding. Other players in the room that have a lower perception, say 10, 15, 20, would not see that player hide at all.

Same applies for attempts of sneaking and stealing.


Furthermore, training. I'd love to see trainers removed, and replaced by physical aspects of training subskills. IE: Perception could be trained a number of ways, not only through use (IE catching someone hiding/sneaking/stealing), but also through things like Juggling. You could start off training juggling two balls. As your perception rank increases, you can move onto three balls, four balls, five balls. Etc etc. Also invent other/higher ways of ranking up your perception.

Hiding could be trained by hiding in a room full of people, hiding infront of mobs, etc. Same as sneaking.

Spells could not only be trained through use, but also through study, like spell books.


To actually level up, I also propose the idea of having a subskill rank requirement to level up. Example: To get to level 3, and you are say.. an assassin. Your requirement is to have at least rank 5 of hiding, rank 7 of sneaking, rank 3 of stealing, rank 4 of Backstab. (Whatever, just an example).

As for base stats, strength, wisdom, etc, these could be trained at trainers, or given a more "Realistic" feel. IE: Every time to you level up, you get say.. I dont know.. 5 points to improve skills of your choice, and you decide where you spend them. So, say you level up. Your current stats are:

Strength: 3
Wisdom: 2
intelligence: 5
Dexterity: 3
Agility: 4
Charisma: 2

You now have 5 points to spend this level to upgrade your stats.

So, to go TRAIN your strength, you would go somewhere like a weight training room. To improve your Wisdom, you could go to some kind of university or college and train it there. To improve your Agility, you could train youself in some kind of Mud pit or something that's difficult to move in to push yourself there. Etc etc...

I have always been a fan of never limiting myself to one class. IE, just because I'm a mage doesn't mean I shouldn't be able to pick locks or hide or sneak or steal. It just means I'll have to work a lot harder and train a lot longer than a thief-type class. As an example, say there's a locked door. A thief with level 10 lockpicking might be able to easily pick it. But a mage or warrior class will have a lot more trouble and may expect to get their rank to level 20 or 30 before they can do it with a tad more ease.

Same goes for other subskills, stealing success rate, hiding success rate, etc. The only thing that should be limited per class is things like spells. "Warrior mages" should get limited spells (and again, I suggest a particular path, arcane etc etc). Lunar Mages Would get the whole spell set and that would be their entire path.

I also propose that you can only learn certain skills at certain levels, or even certain stat requirements. IE: To be able to learn the Hiding skill, you need to be level 10 and have stats of: Dexterity: 12, Agility: 15. And you could even add subskills into that. Like to learn Stealing, you would need hiding rank 20, perception rank 14, level requirement: 15.

There definitely does need to be a mixed warrior/magey type though. Else Ill cry. I can't stand being pigeon holed into one exact class where I'm only able to do a certain set of skills.


Also, instead of Merchant, I propose a Ranger type class, that can also make armors through tanning and skinning hides (tanning and skinning would be subskills, that would effect the quality of the hide produced from those skills, and therefor, the quality of the armor). The better the hide, the better the armor. BUT, then this goes to challenge the equipment basics out there... soooo... I don't know how thatd work. But ranger could also do the tinkering and whatnot I believe.

Okay. Thats enough for now. Just got sparked up by conversations in the MUD. You get the idea...


PS: Wisdom should be magic accuracy and magic registance. IE, the higher your wisdom is, the higher chance you have of targeting a person with your spell successfully, or targeting a body part. If their wisdom is far higher than yours, they have a higher chance of resisting your spells, targeted or not.

Intelligence is magic damage and increased Mana. That's self explanatory.

[Britnoth]

Good discussion, keep it going!

I won't comment specifically on anything except to defend the so much despised CHA a bit.

1. Like someone already said; removing cha would mean removing one variable, which would lead to less variety.

2. To me it's in a way logic that cha should be beneficial to magicians, because to me magicians are partlly tricksters.
So try to regard high cha, not as how beautiful and attractive you are, but how well you are able to con people (no pun intended). Another word for magician actually is conjurer or illusionist.

3. Cha is actually used in several quests, again in an attempt to add some variation, so that the quest isn't always the same to every player.

4. And naturally cha should affect how successful you are in charming mobs or bartering with them.

As someone also said, don't expect a mud to be fully logic. After all, we are dealing with magic, dragons and vampires here. Within it's very twisted world however, we should at least try to be consistant. That's not the same of being logic.

Disagree with pretty much every point..

1. Impossible. We have no variety right now. I don't see how you can get into negative variety? I never suggested removing cha, just stopping it affecting the power of spells and raising hp like it does now, and developing its own use into the mud. See Riley's suggestion. I have others.

2. To me and 99% of people it is illogical that how pretty you are affects the strength of a fireball. Or your abiltiy to absorb damage before you die. Yes, those are synonyms of magician, but that is because we do not have real magic, so it is an illusion. 4D has real magic, it is NO illusion.

3. I see no reason why this is a problem. Unless of course some quests are only available if you have enough charisma... which is a horrendus quest design and should be fixed anyway.

4. How pretty you are should affect your interactions with sentient beings only, How does being good looking stop a bear from mauling you again? Charm is a spell, so should require spell ability no?

[Kvetch]

CHA doesn't = how pretty you are.  In the old D&D, that is basically what it stood for, but I think even in AD&D they were moving away from that concept, though they do still consider "how pretty you are" to be *part* of the score.  So, I'm going to give you two sources.

1) Merriem-Webster Online dictionary
http://www.merriam-webster.com/
charisma
One entry found.

Main Entry: cha·ris·ma
Pronunciation: \kə-ˈriz-mə\
Function: noun
Etymology: Greek, favor, gift, from charizesthai to favor, from charis grace; akin to Greek chairein to rejoice — more at yearn
Date: 1930

1 : a personal magic of leadership arousing special popular loyalty or enthusiasm for a public figure (as a political leader)
2 : a special magnetic charm or appeal <the charisma of a popular actor>

2) Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook Core  Rulebook 1 v.3.5
Charisma(CHA)
Charisma measurs a character's force of personality, persuasiveness, personal magnetism, ability to lead and physical attractiveness.  This ability represents actual strength of personality, not merely how one is perceived by others in a social setting.  Charisma is most important for paladins, sorcerers, and bards.  It is also important for clerics, since it affects their ability to turn undead.

So, you can have a pretty ugly thief, but they could still have a pretty high charisma if they are a great smooth-talker.  You can have a knocked around fighter that doesn't look "pretty" because of all his scars, but could still have a high charisma because of their ability to take charge and lead.  So, "how pretty you are" is only about 1/5 of the score - not even close to the same thing. 

How does having a high charisma stop you from being beat up by the bear?  By the personality, the persuasiveness (even if you don't speak the same language, you may be able to be persuasive by how you approach the matter), personal magnetism (maybe the bear senses that you aren't like all the other "pink things" he's gone after and should be treated with a bit more respect).  Just the way you carry yourself relays a lot to animals.

So, can we all stop thinking of Charisma as "how pretty you are"?

[Virisin]

Just cause you've got low charisma.