After being inspired by the programming/coding thread, and also a few thoughts on the release of the ADOM source code (mainly that we can't wait for things to happen, we have to do the best we can ourselves with what we have), I thought I'd post a few of the Design Doc's from my own conceptual Roguelike, which is a fancy way of saying I'll copy and paste bits from the very long, very messy file on my desktop called 'developmentplans.txt'.
I'd just love to know what people think of my ideas. Nothing's set in stone.
Not having done this before, there initially won't be much method to what I'm posting here, but any formatting suggestions are equally welcome.
Stats:
Some things are omitted here, because it's hard to think of everything a stat might cover, so small things are left out (for example, Dexterity will affect Pickpocket success).
Strength: Think ADOM Strength
Dexterity: Think ADOM Dexterity
Constitution: Think ADOM Toughness, also affects Carrying Capacity.
Intelligence: Governs magic and crafting skills
Spirit: Governs resistance of all kinds (including physical damage), divinity skills.
Perception: Slightly affects melee weapon accuracy, moderately affects missile weapon accuracy, and affects vision range.
Charisma: Governs NPC reactions, shop-prices.
A 'Luck' statistic will also exist, but I'm undecided if this will be visible on the display line or will instead be a 'hidden'. Luck would affect many things, slightly.
Classes/Skills:
There will be no classes as such within the game. Instead, a character's job-title (such as warrior, archer wizard, etc) will be determined by his skills.
Skills will run from 0-100, as per ADOM skills. Unlike ADOM, however, a skill-cap will be implemented. This may be race-dependant, and the exact figure of the cap is yet to be determined, but initial working figures are
500 for Trolls
700 for Humans
800 for Elves
(Other races will exist, but these represent the lowest, highest, and average, as far as the skillcap goes).
Benefits will be given at certain ranks (hypothetically, when the skill 'Fire Magic' reached 50/100, the character would gain intrinsic fire resistance, and at 100/100, Fire immunity would be gained. However, 69/100 Fire Magic would give higher damage/success rates than 68/100 - not a great deal more, though).
On character generation, the player would pick a race followed by a 'template'. For example, choosing the 'Fire Mage' template would start a player with 40/100 Fire magic, 30/100 Evocations, 30/100 Intuition. An 'advanced' template would perhaps exist, allowing complete customisation (to equivalent strength of a starting template) of skills/stats.
Skills would be advanced by a mixture of use and level gains, as in ADOM (I feel a bit like I'm just conceiving a rip-off here, but I prefer to think that I'm simply appreciating good ideas. And to be honest, the skill system owes more to Ultima Online than ADOM). A level gain would provide 10 or so (I'm tempted to double this) rank points to the player. Skills would require more rank points (and use) to advance as they became higher. For example, 0-10 would require 1 rank point, 10-20 would require 2, etc. So to level a skill from 90 to 100 entirely on level gains would take ten levels.
To prevent undesired skills rising (such as gaining Shields, when you don't want to gain shields, you just want to hold two of them while you run like a madman from the demon chasing you) you'll be able to 'lock' skills, and also remove a LIMITED amount of skillpoints throughout the game.
List of Skills
Skills are placed into trees - the 'Melee Fighting' tree contains Swords, Shields, etc. A certain amount of points within any one tree will gain the player a title (in this case, 100 points would make the player a 'Warrior', 200 an 'Armsmaster', 300 a 'Hero'). Titles would be cosmetic, and would be chosen by the player from all those available; however, most titles (being available, not being chosen) unlock certain benefits.
Melee Fighting 100/200/300 = Warrior/Armsmaster/Hero
- Swords - Increases skill with sword-type weapons
- Two Handed Weapons - See above, same applies for below
- Shields
- Maces & Hammers
- Polearms
- Exotic Weapons -Whips, and special cases (I may include 'alien' weaponry)
- Daggers
- Unarmed
Warrior: Undecided, most likely a straight bonus to Accuracy and Damage
Armsmaster: See above, larger bonus.
Hero: Can wield any weapon at 50/100 proficiency, added bonus to Accuracy/Damage
Armour 150/200 Defender/Iron Man
- Light Armour
- Heavy Armour
Defender: +25% DV/PV
Iron Man: +50% DV/PV
Armour based skills
Dependant on armour weight, you'll use either the 'Light Armour' or 'Heavy Armour' skill. Light armour will typically be high in Evasion (DV), low in Protection (PV). The higher the skill, the greater bonuses you'll gain from the armor, with bonuses given for how extreme you go. If you're a GM Heavy Armour user and are wearing VERY HEAVY armour (total, not just one piece), you'll have a very high protection value - but you'll be easy to hit. This will be somewhat more useful than in ADOM because critical hits won't entirely bypass PV - or perhaps, at least not once PV is above a certain threshhold.
(To anyone who has played 'Elona', although the systems are somewhat similar, I actually wrote this before I'd ever even heard of it).
Stealth 100/200/300 - Thief/Rogue/Assassin
Poisoning - Adds poisoning effect to a weapon (success/duration/chance to poison/damage increases as skill rises), but this causes it to get damaged quicker. No resources required for regular poisoning, but 100/100 is required to poison artifact weaponry (as artifacts don't become damaged), as is a poison potion (and it wears off! So save those poison potions).
Hiding - General 'Stealth' skill, ability to not be detected by monsters.
Escaping - Ability to swap places with a monster. Size/strength dependant, certain ranks required for certain swaps (e.g 1/100, you can try swap with a kobold, and succeed, eventually. But you'll never succeed on a dragon. At 99/100, you'll succeed most of the time you try to swap places with a dragon)
Stealing - Pickpocket, ability to pickpocket from a store at 80/100 (success rates low, if you fail, shopkeeper is hostile)
Backstabbing - Damage bonus for attacking a monster that is unaware of the player's location.
Thief:
Rogue:
Assassin:
Missile Targeting 100 Archer
- Bows - Same as Melee weapons, but with missile weapons.
- Crossbows - See above
Archer: Range increased by 1 with all missile weapons.
Divinity (MAX 100) 20/50/100 Initiate/Acolyte/Disciple
Divinity is a player's relationship with one of the minor Gods of the world. It won't require anything like sacrificing or such to gain, but instead, like the other skills, will rise by use/skill point assignation.
There are seven Gods planned, but only two are done so far, so I'll just post those two.
- Wyrd, God of Fate
- 20 - Roll the Dice: Random effect to your character, weak, luck dependant)
- 40 - Cat's Grace: (Divinity/10 + 1) Bonus to luck, though it drains SP while in effect
- 60 - Transform: Transforms one creature into another
- 80 - Wheel of Fortune:
- 100 - Black Roulette: +20 to all stats(/skills?), +100HP for 10 turns, has a 1/20 chance of killing you.
Passive effects:
20: +1 to Luck
50: +3 to Luck
100: +10 to luck, 10% higher chance of item drops
- Aether, God of Elements
- 20 - Quad Bolt - Fires a four-element bolt, e.g. 4d6 (in practice, fires four bolts, each 1d6)
- 40 - Resist Elements - 1d10+15 turns, substantial PP cost.
- 60 Elemental Wreath - Does ice and fire damage to any monster attacking or attacked by the player, adds +1 to Hit/Damage rolls for melee/missile attacks (Air), and provides +5 PV (Earth). Drains PP while active
- 80 Summon Elemental - Summons one normal elemental of random type (Air/Earth/Fire/Water)
- 100 Chromatic Breath - Gain elemental breath of each of the 4 types. High damage, but -1 Constitution each use, and it takes up a large amount of PP to use.
Passive Effects:
100: Gain one level of resistance to each of the four elements (can't be lost, as long as the skill is at 100)
100: Summons a greater elemental instead of a normal one with the Summon Elemental skill.
Mercantile 100/200/300 Trader / Craftsman / Artisan
- Weapon/Armour Care - Lowers chance of damage to weapons and armour, allows you to repair them, and you have a chance to improve them to a certain degree (add to their +'s).
- Harvesting - Herbalism. Also other uses, such as mining.
- Enchantment - (need to be a Wizard). Add bonuses to a non-artifact weapon/armour. Tied to Crafting system (not discussed here)
- Detect Curse - Skill gain increases how quickly it acts. Unsure about this.
- Intuition - Detect how 'good' an item is (think Angband's pseudo-ID). Unsure about this.
- Music - For charming animals/monsters.