I already have a system for normal combat, which is without skills. These bonuses to normal combat are measured in percent chances of happening when attacking. The system also includes applied effects such as poison, bleeding, and debuffs, but those are a result of the skill or spell used. The following are the basic attack bonuses:

//Offensive//
Criticals (double damage)
Disarm (Target misses next attack recovering weapon)
Knockback (Targets shield unable to block next turn, defenses down)

//Defensive//
Block (damage goes to shield)
Parry (Damage is nullified, chance to be disarmed increases)
Dodge (damage is nullified, chance to be critted increases while recovering)
Counter (damage is taken but counter attacks)

I suppose I can seperate skills from spells by treating skills as physical damage and stacking them with normal attack bonuses. Spells would not gain any bonuses.

Would it be viable to allow damage during combat to hamper with the regeneration or loss of skill points (treating skill as sort of a fatigue)? This would result in the player doing normal attacks until enough points were acrued to perform another skill feat. Of course the choice of waiting longer to use a more powerful skill using more skill points could be more rewarding but at the cost of maybe getting hit and losing those skill points.

Magic on the other hand could have a chance of being interrupted, resulting in a loss spell and spent magic points, but hit while not casting results in no loss.

I imagine the magic point pool would be larger than a typical skill based pool would be. Anyone have any additions, forseen balance issues, or another way to differentiate skills and spells?

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Original post by Telastyn 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.

So if they're the same thing I should call the warrior's magic pool a skill pool instead and create just a single spell implementation? To make sure my warrior doesn't cast fireball spells I would just flag the spell usable by caster classes only. This system would most likely work but I'm sure the game player would quickly figure out that skills are the same as spells and not a seperate system. You mention that tradeoffs might differentiate skills from spells...

[Begin side rant on tradeoffs]
I see tradeoffs as a last resort in design to making a single system different (and prevent deprication in similar abilities). For example, fireball (spell) takes two seconds to cast and does 10 damage, while dragon claw (skill) takes 1 second and does 5 damage. In this example, the damage output is the same, but users of dragon claw have an advantage over fireball users if there was a chance of interruption during use or overkilling provides no bonus. By making skills (which is really spells renamed) faster than spells (or vice aversa), the system lends favor to the less risky choice. This makes the choice between a class that uses skills more favorable than a class that uses spells. The player will obviously chose skill based classes and avoid the magic classes. The only way of rectifying this situation is to make skills and spells two seperate systems but identical. Dragon claw (skill) does 5 damage in one second, dragon kick (skill) does 10 damage in 2 seconds, spark (spell) does 5 damage in 1 second, and fireball (spell) does 10 damage in 2 seconds. This is why I see tradeoffs as not a solution to differentiating skills and spells. It works great if both versions of skills/spells are available to your class but not if they're split.

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Dragon claw (skill) does 5 damage in one second, dragon kick (skill) does 10 damage in 2 seconds, spark (spell) does 5 damage in 1 second, and fireball (spell) does 10 damage in 2 seconds. This is why I see tradeoffs as not a solution to differentiating skills and spells.

Except there's no trade off there. And the first example has no trade off.

A trade off is:

Dragon claw does 5 damage in 1 second.
Shock does 12 damage in 2 seconds.

Thus you have a trade off of more damage vs overkill/speed.

Or

Dragon claw does 5 damage in 1 second and costs 1 fatigue.
Shock does 5 damage in 2 seconds and costs 0 fatigue.

A trade off between speed and fatigue cost (perhaps a limiting factor in long battles, perhaps makes you more vulnerable to damage).


Splitting skills from spells will only be a categorization matter. Spells in general might take longer than skills or cost less fatigue, or cost spell points, or improve with intelligence rather than strength... They're artificial constructs you put in place for some reason.

What do you actually want to promote as the difference between the two?

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Original post by Telastyn Splitting skills from spells will only be a categorization matter. Spells in general might take longer than skills or cost less fatigue, or cost spell points, or improve with intelligence rather than strength... They're artificial constructs you put in place for some reason. What do you actually want to promote as the difference between the two?

And that is the question, isn't it? What is the point of putting skills and spells into two categories to begin with?

In my opinion, it should be in one category. It is my belief that you shouldn't add systems into the game unless you are ready to make them truly unique and relevant. In other words, if spell points are gained and manipulated in an entirely different way, that could be a reason for having two categories. For instance, if spells required a unique combination of "hand seals" to execute, and this was something the player had to do before casting a spell and not skills, then that would justify the split in category. Otherwise, just combine it into one and save yourself the trouble.

Most fundamentally, ask yourself: why are spells different? Not in terms of game systems design, but in terms of why it is different in your game world. From there, design a system that is suitable.

In coming up with the mechanics for my game (a semi-futuristic action RPG), I've found myself considering some similar problems. Hopefully, we can help each other out by bouncing some ideas back and forth.

Due to the game's setting, many of the characters will be using various guns and other weapons which have limited ammunition. So, in addition to their relative power, rate of fire, etc, these objects can be balanced amongst each other by the cost and rarity of the ammo. Physical resources are another avenue that you can consider when differentiating types of skills (Some spells could even require physical components. Look at Secret Of Evermore).

However, there are also the characters with innate magical abilities. Again, these abilities can be balanced through their comparative power, casting cost, and casting time.

The theoretical problem that I've run into is how to balance the two groups between each other. On one hand, if I too heavily limit the player's access to money or capacity to carry items, they will gravitate toward the characters who don't put a heavy drain on their resources. On the other hand, if money is too plentiful, the player can just buy a truckload of ammo, to avoid the danger of running out of magical power in a critical area. Also, new spells can be acquired by simple level grinding, while a more powerful gun can't be bought until you get far enough in the game to find someone to sell it to you.

Just for a bit of background, I intend to keep the quantity of items (with the possible exception of basic ammo) and the impact of "levelling up" relatively low, more along the lines of say... Paper Mario, as opposed to Final Fantasy. In that type of environment, items for recovering health or refilling magical energy would be fairly rare.

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Original post by PinWang It is my belief that you shouldn't add systems into the game unless you are ready to make them truly unique and relevant.

There's nothing wrong with considering the addition of a concept while you search for gameplay to make the concept unique and relevant. You can always give up if nothing comes of it. But the search may lead you to discover a gameplay for the concept that you would have never considered otherwise.

You can plan for fun gameplay mechanics, then dream up excuses to have them, or you can plan for world concepts, and dream up fun gameplay mechanics to suit them. They both pay off in different ways. For some designers, it may be easier to plan world concepts than gameplay mechanics, so having the concepts help guide them to gameplay ideas would be beneficial.

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Most fundamentally, ask yourself: why are spells different? Not in terms of game systems design, but in terms of why it is different in your game world. From there, design a system that is suitable.

That's a pretty good way to start. My first guess would be that magic is meant to be safer to the caster than melee combat. Another would be that magic can be easier to learn through study and practice, while melee techniques would require actual combat to advance at a decent rate. Another reason to lean towards melee would be that it's less complicated and easier to learn as you use it.

To my mind, spells and skill are at a basic the same concept : a "limited ability" consisting of a cost in point, a label, and an effect on the game context.

Then Your character has two pools of points : skill and magic, and two pools of limited abilities : skill and spells

Finally your character provides two methods
useSkill(i): if there are enough skill points, apply the effect of skill i.
useSpell(i): if there are enough magic points, apply the effect of spell i.


this is a first quick draft. One can gather all this stuff (one pool of points and one pool of limited abilities) in a "Limited Ability Trait", then a character could have an optionnal instance for skills and another optionnal instance for spells

Well, there could be the difference in power and the number of times you can use it. I refer to the Tolkien books on this - a skill can be performed many times, numerously using nothing but your stamina (to which other skills such as running could drain pretty fast though), while a spell, perhaps can only be cast when certain conditions are met (and thus used fewer times but are really powerful), such as when upon encountering a type of enemy, or upon a type of terrain or weather condition, or near around some site, or when carrying a certain item. Make some interesting sort of conditions for the spell to be cast, and this would match especially if the magic is deity-based. Thus you would position your character appropriately, makes for some interesting strategies.

There could be learning differences: Skills can be learned, honed, and improved - but a magic spell, it is static, yet much more powerful than any skill. The only way to make a spell more powerful is learn a more powerful one. To learn a new magic spell could be like encountering some sort of cinematic cutscene to which the character discovers something about himself or is gifted with a power from an incorporeal entity.

You could make magic spells be dependent on your morale - if your morale is shaken, so will your spells (insert something about magic is a force of the soul), and as such, you then rely on your skills and tools.

Magic could be dependent on a morality system, if applicable. While your skills and tools are robotic things, Magic could have its own sensory awareness, and thus turn evil when you turn evil, or so on, or even certain spells being incompatible with certain actions thus you cannot use them (the special conditions again).

Skills are limited by the mortal body, while Magics are limited by the mortal soul. Something like that.

Now if you were to have a Stamina bar as well as a Mana bar, you could say that while skills drain stamina, magic drains both (you could say it renders your stamina bar temporarily unavailable when casting, while draining regular cost from mana).

If you make Skills and Magic the same, then they would be redundant, why not just make them one and call it Lore? It would be simpler and more refined if you were to go with that.

@Telastyn
You're right, I tried to simplify the problem showing an unbalance and messed up my whole trade off. It's hard to say what makes a fair trade off without defining the full system. In your example, the trade off is having 2 points extra damage at the cost of waiting another second. Now if your splitting trade offs between skills and spells (separate systems), then the player will chose one type over the other not because they want to play that class but because they chose that trade off (an imbalance). This was my point for not using trade offs as a way to split skills and magic.

Your question is exactly the point of this thread and my 2nd question.

@PinWang
Hand seals is another good idea to differentiate magic. Mixing and matching seals could provide different strengths of the spell and not knowing certain seals would prevent casting of certain spells.

@Davian_
So skills for you are weapons which require a resource such as ammunition -- and spells for you are a series of trade offs? For your game, it sounds like you have already solved the problem of how to differentiate skills from spells. Using ammunition for skills is much like PinWang's idea using seals for magic. I suppose what you have left is just balancing your resources.

@Kest
Your suggestions logically make sense when splitting skills into melee and spells into magic. I'm not sure what you mean by melee skills being less complicated and easier to learn as you use it. Would this be a skill leveling system where the effect of the skill (damage output?) would be increased the more it was used (effectively different from spells)? Also, what would the player do to “learn through study and practice” to gain spells?

@davidsporn
You and Telastyn appear to be in agreeance. Do you think I should remove skills completely since there is no difference from spells (thus not a discernible extra feature)?

@Tangireon
First off, great ideas! This was exactly the type of feedback I am looking for.

If skills could be performed many times, numerously using nothing but stamina, what differentiates a skill from a normal attack? By solving the issue of what makes skills different from Magic (by making skills physical), I think we have made the question, what makes normal attacks different from skills. In the case of the magic user, I imagine them expending all of their magic pool before resorting to physical attacks. Would this result in the same behavior for the warrior using his skill pool before turning to normal attacks? Or should normal attacks be removed completely since a trained mage will most likely be ineffective at normal attacks and a warrior fully fatigued from using his skills/stamina pool wouldn't be very effective either?

Special conditions for spell casting is another effective way you mentioned. I think it encompasses the idea of using resources/reagents to cast spells mentioned previously by others. I like the idea of diety, weather, or terrain effecting the casting of a spell. Perhaps a spell that manipulates an element such as water or fire could only be used when one of those sources is present such as a rainy day or a lit torch in the bottom of the catacombs.

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There could be learning differences: Skills can be learned, honed, and improved - but a magic spell, it is static, yet much more powerful than any skill. The only way to make a spell more powerful is learn a more powerful one. To learn a new magic spell could be like encountering some sort of cinematic cutscene to which the character discovers something about himself or is gifted with a power from an incorporeal entity.

Interesting. I think this is what Kest started to explain. I worry that having static spells would result in deprecation of spells that no longer do as much damage as newer learned spells, essentially making a limited combat choice even more limited in use (ie fireball level 1 does 5 damage and fireball level 2 does 10 damage).

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You could make magic spells be dependent on your morale - if your morale is shaken, so will your spells (insert something about magic is a force of the soul), and as such, you then rely on your skills and tools. Magic could be dependent on a morality system, if applicable. While your skills and tools are robotic things, Magic could have its own sensory awareness, and thus turn evil when you turn evil, or so on, or even certain spells being incompatible with certain actions thus you cannot use them (the special conditions again). Skills are limited by the mortal body, while Magics are limited by the mortal soul. Something like that. Now if you were to have a Stamina bar as well as a Mana bar, you could say that while skills drain stamina, magic drains both (you could say it renders your stamina bar temporarily unavailable when casting, while draining regular cost from mana).

Wow, this is a very interesting system because it not only splits skills and spells, it gives reason to why the magic user performs magic. This ties the players actions to his spell abilities rather than having an unrelated list of spells that defines what the magic user's class can learn.

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If you make Skills and Magic the same, then they would be redundant, why not just make them one and call it Lore?

If combining skills and spells, lore would work since it means something passed on. The world would need trainers/family/guilds or some means of learning skills and spells rather than an instant skill/spell when leveled up.

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If skills could be performed many times, numerously using nothing but stamina, what differentiates a skill from a normal attack? By solving the issue of what makes skills different from Magic (by making skills physical), I think we have made the question, what makes normal attacks different from skills. In the case of the magic user, I imagine them expending all of their magic pool before resorting to physical attacks. Would this result in the same behavior for the warrior using his skill pool before turning to normal attacks? Or should normal attacks be removed completely since a trained mage will most likely be ineffective at normal attacks and a warrior fully fatigued from using his skills/stamina pool wouldn't be very effective either?

Well the way I see it, a "normal attack" is a type of skill (I see there can be many different types of attacks as such, like a system from the upcoming Age of Hyborea MMORPG - a Left Attack, a Right Attack, a Forward Attack - each is treated like a skill icon and are even part of the skill bar). This of course depends on what kind of system you will be using, but I was thinking more along the lines of Hyborea rather than say something like WoW.

If you do have a WoW-like system where you just click on the enemy and wait for the battle to resolve, you could adopt this idea by having just one general "Normal Attack Mode" skill to which will drain X stamina over time. You also add other attack modes such as a "Sneak Attack Mode" which would do something different (costs and power and styles are different), or "Power Attack Mode" (more power, less stealth, more stamina costs), or a "Parry Attack Mode" (defensive).

Now I believe that all classes should be able to use both spells and skills, its just that they would have differences in the number and type of spells and skills they get. This of course depends on your system, so if you already have something else then that's fine. But here is my idea:

Warriors would have lots of fighting-related skills, and can obtain a limited number of lower-tiered spells that provide subtle effects such as Blessing and etc. You could say that by having a certain religion or etc, that would impart a number of such lower-tiered spells to them. Warriors would be more about using spells to enhance their fighting capabilities (such as Bless), so there would be a lot more Target-Self or Touch spells.

Mages would have lots of magic spells and few skills (the basic ones), and can obtain more spells of any tier. Mages would be more about using skills to enhance their spellcasting capabilities (such as Meditation), so there would be a lot more ranged and area of effect spells, and preparation skills.

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Interesting. I think this is what Kest started to explain. I worry that having static spells would result in deprecation of spells that no longer do as much damage as newer learned spells, essentially making a limited combat choice even more limited in use (ie fireball level 1 does 5 damage and fireball level 2 does 10 damage).

But, those weaker spells will be a lot cheaper to cast, and thus more able to be used numerously, and thus, we won't just be seeing everyone casting their most powerful spells they have on hand for every encounter and every situation they meet, draining their mana quickly - they will cast what power of spell that the situation will deem economically fit. The lower tier will still have purpose despite the existence of the higher tier, and it would be because of mana economics. For example, when encountering a large wave of Level 1 goblins, and knowing that you have a Fireball 2 and a Fireball 1 where both have relatively the same Area of Effect but F2 costs more and is more powerful while F1 is cheaper but is enough to kill the goblins, F1 would be the better choice in this instance (so you don't run out of mana before the attack wave is over).

I would say that the design should be so that the most powerful spell you have (same level as your exp level) would drain you completely (used only for epic purposes), while medium-power/cost spells in relation to your exp/level would be used more often in dangerous situations, and low-power/cost spells used more plentifully - these low-powered spells could be as subtle as something like Provide Light in a Dark Place, or a simple Blessing, things like that.