[Adonthell-general] Rules Comments

[nilsfohrbeck]

Finally I have net access again!

Well first of all thanks for all the comments and ideas (and thanks that you 
seem to like ´most of the ideas I had)!

I had a look at all your e-mails and here is my response. One thing I see is 
that for you as well as for me actual roleplaying seems to be quiete important 
(I always thought lack of actual roleplaying was the weak spot of the snes 
RPGs(too combat heavy)).

Well anyways, let me know what you think!

Nils

Ps: Uups I forgot the attachment :(
Well here it is (time for me to catch some sleep)!
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LEVEL LIMIT:

To be honest, the way levels are handled was the last thing I added, and
I was not totally happy with it myself (in fact I expected you to wish for 
more than 10 levels). I mostly added it to present a full set of rules, as
a basis for more disscussion. Therefor I have no problem with changing that.
I would however suggest that it should stay transparent and easy!


MAGICS:

The reason why I came up with the three spell types was tactics. The way 
I described them a charactewr can specialize in a type of magic, which
would also determine the way he fights (eg. more offensive or defensive).
But I think using the 4 elements instead is a great idea, too. It would be 
very important that the 4 elements have very different spells, so that 
the tactical element I mentioned earlier is not lost.


SKILLS:

the main reson, why I decided to differentiate between skills and abilities
was that I wanted to seperate Combat and roleplaying a little bit. The 
one think I did not want was the kind of mindless killing/casting machine,
a character who can slay eveything but misses most of the fun, because he 
can not use any skills that let him interact with his environment in 
a non violent way (which actually makes up the difference between an RPG
and a simple action game). I think adding climbing and Disarming
Traps to the skill list would be a usefull addition. 


ENGINE:

As far as the implementation of the rules is concerned I would agree with 
you that they should be tied to Adonthell, not the game engine. It was 
just somethig I did not think about.


RACES:

As far as races are concerned the character presented here is the kind 
of uber character who has access to all the options. In the actual game
I thought each of the 8 characters should be able to gain 5 ranks in some 
skills and abilities, while being able to gain less ranks in others (this would 
be 
defined by the character's race and background (we will just have to see 
what fits for each of them)). The question who can cast magic and who can not 
was left open deliberately, because I just could not decide it for myself:).


COMBAT ABILITIES:

All in all I wanted to make a system that was really easy to understand
for everybody (I did not want to force anybody to understand the game 
mechanics in order to understand what a skill or ability actually does). 
 I also put high hopes into the fighting feats ability because the 
concept is quite flexible. Feats such as stun allow for tactical decisions
while feats such as double damage would represent the kind of actual 
improvement in fighting that some of you missed. I also thought that 
each feat represented a different attack (so you can not combine them) 
pretty much in the way a spell works. And internally the engine could 
handle them just the way spells are handled (I was inspired by Diablo 2 
where you can say what each of the attack buttons does (in this case
mouse button 1 and 2))making no difference between spells and melee/ranged 
attacks. 

I do also have a very controversal idea: In order to make combat in 
Adonthell a unique experience we could add "special moves". If a character 
uses certain fighting feats (and maybe even spells?) in a specific order
(combined with pressing the arrow keys in a certain pattern ?) their effect
would be greatly enhanched. Of course we would not document these, so one would
have to figure them out on his own. This is somethig far off however which we 
should
not pay to much attention to, until we have a basic combat system implemented
in the game.

The reson why I did not use any to hit percentage was the following: I
assumed that we'd use combat on the map (opposed to an extra combat screen with 
a different view), wich would leave it to the human player's dexterity whether 
his
character hit the opponent or not. The reason I decided for this kind of
combat model was complexity. Even so I pity Ben who will have to do tons of
graphics for combat. I will meet him tomorrow, and we will discuss graphic
questions then. Expect more on that topic soon. :)

Greetings, Nils!