Skills vs Spells? Are they the same or different? I'm designing a spell and skill based system and have run into a bit of overlap. The original idea was that skills and spells are different because skills rely on the use of skill points and magic relies on magic points. This would allow me to create characters which shouldn't have access to magic (warriors, rogues, etc) and still have special attacks that are limited in use (using skill points). It also allows me to create special hybrid classes such as a monk that could use both magic (healing) and skills (tiger claw?) and have to juggle balancing two bars (magic and skill). I'm beginning to implement the two types, skills and spells, and I'm realizing that apart from the naming and seperate point pools, the two are almost identical. Here are my 2 questions... 1. Are skills and spells different enough to warrant seperation? Why? 2. If considered different, what are some ideas to prevent overlap in skills and spells? (ie tiger claw skill does 5 damage and fireball does 5 damage. Why have both?)

1) maybe. Some games work well separated, some work well combined (especially stuff like chi skills where 'magic' and honed technique are one in the same).

2) What's the trade off? Is one faster to cast? Does one recharge faster? Is one harder to find/learn? Does one make you inherently weaker/disadvantaged? Does one improve with time/practice?

There's a lot of things that go into a skill/ability/spell and can thus be tweaked in the design.

Quote:

Original post by Rasm I'm beginning to implement the two types, skills and spells, and I'm realizing that apart from the naming and seperate point pools, the two are almost identical. Here are my 2 questions... 1. Are skills and spells different enough to warrant seperation? Why? 2. If considered different, what are some ideas to prevent overlap in skills and spells? (ie tiger claw skill does 5 damage and fireball does 5 damage. Why have both?)

It seems to me that in your system, a spell is a type of skill. If you just want to prevent some characters from having access to spells, then all you need to do is flag some skills as being 'magic' and use that to disallow them from being learned by warriors (for example).

It's simple enough to prevent overlap - just don't create the same skill twice. If your tiger claw and fireball only do 5 damage and have no other features, then that looks like an overlap. But if tiger claw had a 5 second cooldown while fireball had only a 1 second cooldown but cost 8 magic points, then they are strategically different.

these questions seem pretty specific to the gameplay of your particular project. Without knowing the type of game its going to be (traditional RPG, sidescroller, roguelike, etc.) I don't think I can really answer for sure.

Here is what I would do; I would make skills be learnable attacks that anyone can learn. People with more speed/strength (warriors) will perform the skills with greater effect. This doesn't bar mages from using the skills, but it seriously reduces their usefulness (and simultaneously opens up a new avenue: mage skills). Mages in my implementation would learn spells as they level up.

As for skill points, I think I'd rather have an "endurance" bar that refills at a rate based on the characters stats. Normal attacks wouldn't reduce the endurance, but using skills would. This way higher level skills could only be learned when the character had enough endurance.

Quote:

Original post by Rasm 2. If considered different, what are some ideas to prevent overlap in skills and spells? (ie tiger claw skill does 5 damage and fireball does 5 damage. Why have both?)

ummm you could make skills deal physical damage, and fireball deal magic (elemental/fire) damage. Then some enemies/NPC/characters would have high physical resistance but low elemental resistance, so you'd prefer to have fireball at the time.

Well, as described, spells and skills could well be functionally identical, but nevertheless useful to have separate in-game resource pools from which to draw.

For example, a mage might have access to spells that draw from magic points, a monk skills that draw from skill points, and another class - the "arcanist", let's call it - abilities that variously draw from one, the other, or both. Having access to both pools would provide strategic advantage - essentially increasing the character's potential "ammo pool" - which could be balanced in a variety of ways, such as reduced damage, having damage powers draw only from one pool, increasing cooldown times, etc.

In terms of implementation, Argus2's suggestion of flagging skills in order to filter the character types that may have them seems to me to be a potentially useful one. It also opens up the possibility of further filtration. To give two simple examples, you might flag some skills or spells as being "good" or "evil", and disallow characters of the opposite alignment to use them, or make it easier for nature mages to pick up spells labelled "nature". I image that you could provide many more flags and relationships.

In terms of which pool to draw from, since I'm suggesting the possibility of drawing from both, I suggest providing spells and skills with two cost values, one in magic points and one in skill points.

These are some good ideas. I purposely left out implementation details (other than a weak example) to see what ideas could emerge.

@Telastyn & Argus2
I understand the concept of tradeoffs between spells, like some that were mentioned (cast speed, recharge rate, etc), but when compairing a skill and a spell (both can have the same tradeoffs), what are some ideas to differentiate the two that is unique to its type? Of course balancing afterwards.

@Funkymunky
A recharging skill/endurance bar is a great suggestion to make skills different from spells.

@i_luv_cplusplus
Making skills cause physical damage and spells cause magic damage is another good idea.

Quote:

Original post by Rasm Skills vs Spells? Are they the same or different? I'm designing a spell and skill based system and have run into a bit of overlap. The original idea was that skills and spells are different because skills rely on the use of skill points and magic relies on magic points. This would allow me to create characters which shouldn't have access to magic (warriors, rogues, etc) and still have special attacks that are limited in use (using skill points). It also allows me to create special hybrid classes such as a monk that could use both magic (healing) and skills (tiger claw?) and have to juggle balancing two bars (magic and skill). I'm beginning to implement the two types, skills and spells, and I'm realizing that apart from the naming and seperate point pools, the two are almost identical. Here are my 2 questions... 1. Are skills and spells different enough to warrant seperation? Why? 2. If considered different, what are some ideas to prevent overlap in skills and spells? (ie tiger claw skill does 5 damage and fireball does 5 damage. Why have both?)

This is how I did it for my mmo idea. Skills = melee based abilities and magic = caster based abilities. Maybe you could use a different word than skill, but that is a pretty easy way to not overlap. Look at it like this, it takes skill to do some kind of melee combo because you have timing and accuracy. Magic is just magic and its casted by thought or memorization.

Quote:

Original post by Rasm 2. If considered different, what are some ideas to prevent overlap in skills and spells? (ie tiger claw skill does 5 damage and fireball does 5 damage. Why have both?)

There are no rules for specifying difference, so you'll just have to invent them yourself. Here are some general concepts to consider:

1. Cover - Blasting or smashing through a wall or door effectively
2. Armor - Bypassing or penetrating armor more effectively
3. Multi hit - Blasting through one enemy to hit more behind them
4. Area hit - Attacking several enemies in proximity
5. Drain energy - The attack drains some stamina or mana along with health
6. Stun - The target is mildly stunned or slowed down, and can't take action as well
7. Force - Knocks the target around, into walls, off of ledges, onto the ground
8. Critical hits - Better chance of causing a critical injury or mistake
9. Accuracy - Easier to hit a target with, or easier to miss

There are plenty more, but you get the idea. Oblivion used armor bypassing for all magic attacks, for example. It also seperated hand-to-hand from other melee attacks by causing it to drain stamina as it damages them, making it harder for them to effectively fight back.

So for your fireball example, I would have the tiger claw do 5 points of damage with a high rate of critical injury, and the fireball do 3 points of splash damage to all enemies in an area.

Quote:

Original post by Rasm @Telastyn & Argus2 I understand the concept of tradeoffs between spells, like some that were mentioned (cast speed, recharge rate, etc), but when compairing a skill and a spell (both can have the same tradeoffs), what are some ideas to differentiate the two that is unique to its type? Of course balancing afterwards.

What Type?. They're just labels for the same thing. The label aids in human categorization or adding style/feel to a game, but as far as rules are concerned, they're really the same thing.

The types only exist as design concepts. Skills might be slower to recharge, but easy to learn compared to magic. That's a design category used to balance sets of abilities. Taking some pre-made categorization and making rules off of it is just going backwards.

It's the most common trap in game design; making rules off of ideas rather than ideas off of rules. Rules matter. Anything else is stylization.