ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

max_skill_overage is a variable in module.lua that dictates how much past your character's level you can raise a skill. e.g with the default of 4, if your character is at level 20 then you can raise any skill to 24 (if you have enough skill points available).

This variable has a large effect on game balance. As a crude example, bumping it up to 50 lets you dump points into one (useful) skill early on, quickly creating a character with damage output and/or durability far beyond what makes sense for their level. For instance you can have a level 7 Rogue with Dodging at 50, who will be pretty invulnerable in melee for some time. This is IMO not desirable...

It's the other side, reducing the variable, that I'm more interested in. With max_skill_overage tuned down to 1, characters start out somewhat weaker for their level, but the player is forced to allocate skill points more evenly, which may help them more at medium levels. More importantly, power-leveling in the swamps and mountains becomes much more difficult for many classes.

I'm thinking that reducing max_skill_overage to 1 or 2 could go quite a ways towards making classes more balanced relative to each other. What say you all?

It would have different effects depending on the skill. The power of some skills, like Weaponmastery and Sorcery, increases fairly smoothly. Other skills, like Mindcraft, are more step functions. It wouldn't have that much effect on the former, but the latter would be hit hard.

If you need to reach a particular level to use a critical power- say detect traps- then this would encourage power leveling in the swamp.

And large differences depending on the class. Some classes have sharply diminishing returns that encourage spreading points anyways-- they'd be unaffected. Others have too much dead-weight, or combos that involve relatively few talents, and would be hit harder. (edit: i wasn't paying enough attention, i don't know anything about T2 )

If it relatively hurt the simple types, then it might be a good thing. I think that Sorcerors and antimagic-using Swordmasters fall into your classes that would be hit harder, and they are probably the most overpowered classes. The various loremaster classes would be much less affected, I would guess.

Good points...

@nate - Mindcraft in 2.3.9-ah has been modified to scale more steadily. (Mostly this means that Adrenaline gives speed dependent on skill level).

@Yottle - Sorcerers I'm not sure about, I've never made it that far with a glass cannon character. Swordmasters could probably use some balancing, though even with Antimagic they get crazily hard at high levels. I'm thinking, now that I've modified Archery to be effective, maybe I should take it away from the weaponmaster classes...

(Actually, everything gets crazily hard at high levels except for summoning classes. I've never made it past level 40 in unmodified T2.)

Funny... I find sorcerors and warriors to be easy at high levels, but I have never won with a summoning type character.