I''m interested in formulas!!! Do you increase each statistic for a character who levels up exponentially? And what''s your damage formula?

Build your own system. There are no hard and fast rules. Isn''t that what makes the design process interesting? This isn''t like implementing a shadow map algorithm in hardware. You have flexibility here.

If you really can''t think of something, go find a nice point-based pen and paper RPG and get some ideas from there. Avoid level-based RPGs.
An important thing to keep in mind is that since the game you plan on making will run on a computer, you can use complex formulas. You don''t have to limit youself to comparing random numbers with modifiers. You can do all kinds of weird things, like throwing in exponents, roots, trig functions, the exponential function, etc.

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crAzy

Here''s a tried and true formula used in the industry.

Damage = (Player.AttackLevel ^ 500000) - 2 

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You''re not serious about that, are you? No, you can''t be. never mind.

I''ve never been programming on an RPG myself, but I know ShadowCore is working on one, or at least is trying to. Try to contact him, maybe he has some good ideas.

I think I''ve said this several times before, what you need to do is first analyze what you need. Ask a few questions:

Are the characters all unique in some way?
With level growth, what exactly should change?
Is each item incrementally better or are they all balanced in some way?

For instance, lets say that out item system is somewhat balanced, which means that items found at the start of the game should still be useful by the end. This indicates that the items should have positives and negatives. That means that the Characters wouldn''t be seeing an incremental variable here, which means that the characters then need stuff to increment at level change. If you want the characters to retain uniqueness, that means their basis statistics should remain relatively static, and that the Level has to be factored into your algorythms.

Heres a simple attack formula that follows what I''ve been saying.

d = Level * WeaponAttack * Strength / (constant)

So, lets just say our constant is 32, that means that a stronger character would have strength better than 32 and a magic user would have strength lower than 32. To analyze this function, we have two variables and a constant. Level is incremental, with a derivative of 1 (since you gain one level at a time), and WeaponAttack has no real controlling factor. Heres a damage table then with an Attack of 4 and a Strength of 32.

Level : Damage
1 : 4
2 : 8
3 : 12
4 : 16
5 : 20
...
10 : 40
15 : 60
20 : 80
25 : 100

For fun, you might want to randomize damage a bit, which you could have d = d + random(0, d/8).

I hope that helps a bit.