I'm back [smile]
I got a little side-tracked as I wrote this reply so feel free to skip off topic parts [smile]. It gets more and more off topic as I go along.

I agree with Kaze. Just making the character stronger doens't cut it for me. Gothic and Gothic II by Pirahna Bytes employed an XP/Leveling system, but it was balanced with the fact that you also had to learn new moves with the weapons and to use certain weapons like the heavy crossbow. I still think that a skill point system could be used to become better within those skills.

Example of skills within one branch: 1H sword, Trained 1H sword, Experienced 1H sword, Advanced 1H sword and Master 1H sword (names made up on the spot by me). Each of these skills teaches the character new moves, but he can become better at them by using them. For realism a character can have a very high 1H sword and would best other characters with a lover 1H Sword skill, but a character with a Trained 1H sword would know more ways to counter the less advanced attacks and know attacks that the lesser trained character wouldn't know how to counter. Of course if someone has trained to Experienced 1H sword but has no practical use (few skill points in the skills) a very practiced (many skill points) character with fewer moves (1H Sword) could best him.

Of course this will actually cause more caps in a way. If the player can only reach 100 in a given skill then once he's maxed out Master he can't get any better. I would instead use a system where there are no max skill points (up to 32bit values at least). Instead the probability of success would be based on opposing skills.

skill: 5000
opposing skill: 10000

Probability of success for PC: 5000 / (5000 + 1000) = 33%


I recently attended a course in medival sword fighting based on a manual by Fiore de Liberi, and was surprised how complicated the various moves was (and I thought they'd be vastly more complex than what is shown in the movies).

A realistic and (I think) fun combat system would include a vast number of different manouvers and the skill points determine how well the characters perform them. The animations would be fairly easy to create, though not as easy as just a slashing or chopping anim and parry or hurt anim.
Hit points should be more or less eliminated. An axe through the head is fatal, but give the character more moves to avoid getting hit by said axe. Armor would also play a vital part, and the Gothic games way of solving that is great. In medival times a chainmail cost as much as a decent sized farm. The rulers provided the militia and armies with their equipment, and it was unheard of for a commoner to buy armor and weapons for themselves.
Plate armor was even more expensive, and only knights and lords had them.

I digress, but what I'm saying is that a single well placed hit should be enough to kill anyone, but the combat would be about manouvering to make that blow. The result would be about the same duration of combat as is normally seen in CRPGS, but with only one of the fighters getting seriously hurt or killed and thus less need to use healing potions or magic. Also - if someone tried stopped in the middle of combat to drink a healing potion the enemy would have ample time to choose which eye socket he should place his weapon in.
Instead of hit points stamina would be a very important element.

Magic and healing potions could still have it's place. In the aforemantioned course we had a game where everyone tried to kill everyone else (using wooden swords and slow motion turn based movements). In the end my leg got hit which would sereiously had needed healing if it was real, but I could have put my sword through the head of enemy. I stopped though, because I thought I had to since I got hit :-/.

GURPS and Champion are two very good (IMO) levelless systems. For a PC implementation, you'd probably need to do 'minilevels' to decide when to award character points, but it would still be entirely different from the standard exponential power curve. In these two systems you start out as a capable hero and any expansion is generally minimal.

on a game im working on there are a Varity of techniques for each weapon but its not just each is a stronger version of the last, you have your basic hit, one with extra range, one that can hit all enemies in a 180 deg area, one that a hard hit that’s easy to block but wears down you opponents stamina, then you have special ability like cure a status aliment or escape enemy attack range with them counter attacking(its turn based tactics so you might want it simpler for real time).

The idea is to so your better off using a Varity of skills abilities and attack in battle than just relying on one even if you have it at a very high level, so it will be better to have several abilitys even if there at a low level rather than capping one then moving on the next, this also makes strategy as important as raw stats in a battle.

In my RPG system, a character doesn't have an overall 'character level'. Instead, a character gains points in distinct skills and attributes.

At lower levels, the skills are quite general. At higher levels, skills branch off into increasingly specialised subskills.

One can define a 'character level' as the number of points a character has in all skills. This is a little vague, though. A level 100 character might have evenly distributed points, but find himself outmatched by a level 20 character who has points only in the specific skills that would be needed to defeat the level 100 character.

A character gains points in skills by attempting to use a skill. Skills are opposed by a skill level in whoever or whatever the skill is being used against. If a character performs effectively against a superior opponent, she gains skill points in the related level. She may gain skill points even if she fails. On the other hand, if somebody fails or only just succeeds against an inferior opponent, he may lose skill points.

Characters may also gain points by studying with libraries or teachers.

Unused skills atrophy, but it is easier to regain an atrophied skill than to gain a skill you never had before.

With this system, 'the end' needn't be linked to your character becoming as powerful as he can be: because that's impossible. In order for one skill to be raised to a superhumanly high level, some other skills must decline. If the game arranges for challenges that exploit the character's weaknesses, then the player will never stop needing to evolve his character.

Also with this system, you have another way to get the Mythical Signet Ring of Badassitude. Suppose it is protected by Master Pai Mei, whose martial prowess is legendary. He can catch arrows, dodge bullets and is impervious to poisons and diseases. The only way to defeat him is to find the lost journals of his teacher, and learn Pai Mei's fighting style, Slightly Limp Crow. Now, with the knowledge of the Slightly Limp Crow fighting style, you are equipped to take him on.

Just a few ideas:

There's no levels, just physical stats and skills. Physical stats (strength, speed, endurance) increase with use and decrease over time. The more they're used the longer it takes for them to decay, but there's a point of balance where they won't go up any higher. Skills can keep getting higher and easier to use (less effort needed to perform an action, fewer restrictions), but it gets harder and harder to train them. There is no actual cap on skills, though.

There is no best skill, either. As a player gets more and more powerful, there are always new abilities to learn or old ones to improve upon. The developers add new skills and write algorithms so existing skills improve with practice. For example, very powerful 'magic' users can learn a very limited teleportation skill. As they gain power and experience, they learn to teleport others, teleport from any location to any location, teleport more quickly and precicely, etc. Skills with swords, acrobatics, and other abilities would improve over time.

There are places that normal players aren't meant to beat, but if some ultra-strong players kill the castle full of evil and powerful creatures, they can claim it as their base. An endless dungeon or horde of powerful creatures could also challenge players.

Having no cap would allow the eighth graders with no life to become nearly invincible, though, so a few things could be done to stop that. Characters could get older, with their physical stats deteriorating and leading to eventual death. This would lead to one of a few problems, though: One possibility is that the character's life always counts down, so a character has a lifespan of three (realtime) months or something. This still gives the time-committed players a huge advantage because they still put more time into the game. On the other hand, if time only counts down while the character is online, the serious players will see their characters get old and die while others who started at the same time are still young. This wouldn't be fair either.

Online/offline time is a real detriment to gameplay, too. Players will be on factions, armies, guilds, countries, or whatever. A team might have several players and NPCs, with the players acting as leaders. When the players of one team are offline, though, another team could attack their headquarters. This wouldn't be fair with only NPCs to defend it.

What if, when players sign off, their characters go into AI mode? It would be very limited, with none of the usual penalties for death or whatever. Players could have their characters do things while they are offline, such as train and respond to team emergencies.

Stat training could take place while players are offline, with what improves chosen by the player in a schedule system, like "jogging, 1 hour; practice teleportation, 1 hour; practice various magic, 3 hours" (in game time, not real time). When the character logs back in, he takes control of the character again.

How about if the maximum level is reached fairly early, and is more like a certification than an apotheosis? In Kengo, for instance, you have five skills related to swordfighting: Attack power, attack speed, agility, insight and spirit. Each is measured between 0 and 9999. However, you can only ever have 25000 skill points in total. You start out with about 200 in each.

As you train and study, you beef up, until you hit that 25000 mark. Every time you train up one of your skills at that point, the other ones atrophy so that they always average 5000 each, and add up to 25000. So now training is less beefing and more balancing. The thing is, you hit this point well before you finish the game. You still spend a lot of time perfecting your fighting style, designing your personal combos and stances, and competing in tournaments or sparring with other dojos.

A system in which a player can reach a sort of plateau of straight strength and then shift gears into a tuning and tweaking sort of gameplay might be just the way to get around the problem of levelling. You start out a sissy, and get yourself into shape, but you can only get so strong. It's absurd to think that you can lift weights until you can shove a knife through a diamond golem. So, you get into "peak condition" and then you set about the sim-style skill development. You climb mountains and talk to gurus, or visit island dojos to train with reclusive senseis, or travel to foreign universities to study with great scholars, and that is the adventure of your game.

You can also be rescuiing damsels or conquering nations, but dashing around burning orcs to death is no longer a method of self-improvement. If players could teach one another, then guilds and clan would have more to do than hang out and trade items.

To push this idea further into the realm of idiocy, perhaps characters could be "retired" to NPC status, and teach the skills they've mastered to newbs. You get bored with your masterful ninja, and so you put him out to pasture, or have him die and be preserved as a guardian spirit of your dojo. Students can earn his ghostly approval and be taught some of his secrets. I dunno. Just thinking, here.

I spent over a month trying out a system with item progression. The idea was to "get to the fun stuff" as so many players put it. I discovered that when I wasn't removing leveling, I was replacing it. Level Grinding was gone, but Item Grinding was in. I'm not saying this system is impossible to pull off, I just dont see the point. A lot of new issues come up with a level progression system also.

All of the above is with MMO's only. There are plenty of non multiplayer games that have item progression and are great games (Zelda and Metroid).

I vaguley remember a PnP RPG were you have to go from level 1 to 30 in 4 classes with the same starting stats (which rarely changed during play) to make it to god status......

Start off as a fighter, kick ass, then go through life as a wizard that can swing a sword but can barley remember his spells, then as a thief that fails most of his sneak checks..........

Not the same as new areas but could make old areas fun.

That's interesting. Maybe some way to "unlock" specialized--but not invincible--character classes would help. It's been mentioned here and elsewhere, but if you take the "elite hacker can become an AI construct" idea and pair it with the "some places only the best can go", you can create a new sort of specialization.

For instance, hackers can interact with the DataStream through terminals and wireless connections, with varying degrees of success. They putter around with access codes, subroutines and data storage, and if an adversarial hacker or program tries to nail them, they might get booted out of the system or have to disable their link so that they don't get counter-hacked.

Once they've made the jump to being an AI construct (which requires huge skill allocations and a considerable investment), then their world is inverted. They live in the DataStream, interacting with the "real" world through terminals, security cameras or whatever mechanical hosts they can commandeer. You can't shoot them, you can't see them, and you can't arrest them. On the other hand, if a virus, or a skilled hacker, or another construct manages to find them, they can't just pull the plug and walk away; they have to fight for their lives. Maybe backups can be made, and hidden, so thay they'll activate in the event that the construct is destroyed or corrupted.

The point is that the game itself isn't any easier, but the gameplay changes and that character's role in the world changes. You can turn into Durandal (the AI, not the sword), and help a team of commandos infiltrate a facility, or try to steal money from a computerized bank, or do any of the other things that would be tough for a hacker to do with a keyboard. I think it would be neat to play through Halo, then go through again as Cortana (the AI, not the sword). Opening all those doors, decrypting all those transmissions, and overriding all those security clearances could be fun.

Other examples could be a High Templar fusing into an Archon or a hydralisk becoming a lurker(in StarCraft parlance), or an infantryman getting trained to be a pilot, or being issued some power armor. Some capabilities increased, others decreased. Some abilities gained, others lost.

Farmer-> Soldier-> Captain-> General-> Statesman-> Consultant-> Conspirator?