ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I'm a little apprehensive about the changes to saves (and even moreso to the changes to accuracy/defense), but I do like the philosophy behind them and I would like to see further development in that direction. One big issue I see is how complicated the player's stat investment decisions have become. Yes, you do get to see what benefit certain statistics provide, but in the end most classes are locked into certain investments for skill and equipment purposes. Here's my pie-in-the-sky take on how these stats should be changed. Criticism is appreciated and understandable - I really doubt this will ever be implemented, but maybe parts will be popular.

Ditch traditional statistics
Not only do the current statistics obfuscate actual gameplay effects, they feel outdated and cumbersome. Strength is a primary offender - it's needed for inventory space and item equip requirements, even though 1) the former really has nothing to do with strength, except in a traditional sense, and 2) the latter is subverted by stacking +str equipment and abandoned in the face of strength-scaling skills. Removing these statistics would be an incredible endeavor - you'd need to change many stat-dependent calculations, stat requirement for items and talents, and completely reevaluate NPC's stat distributions. Crazy, right?

Replace old stats with more open, directed choices
(Ignore the names for now, I'm having trouble choosing something that sounds right. The numbers, where shown, are meant to exhibit the relative bonus.)
Physical

• +Physical Power(3)
• +Physical Save(3)
• +Physical Crit

Spell

• +Spell Power(3)
• +Spell Save(3)
• +Spell Crit

Mental

• +Mental Power(3)
• +Mental Save(3)
• +Mental Crit (I'm not sure this is used/exists)

Power

• +Physical Power(2)
• +Spell Power(2)
• +Mental Power(2)
• +Resource limit (mana, stamina, vim, positive, negative, ...)

Saves

• +Physical Saves(2)
• +Spell Saves(2)
• +Mental Saves(2)
• +Health

Not only do I think this system is more intuitive, it also makes it easier for hybrid classes to get off the ground without needing special modifications to stat levels through sustains (Temporal Wardens) or by fundamentally modifying equipment function (Rogues). Further, if you were to perceive a weakness in your current setup, you can start to investment in the "Saves" category to improve overall survivability, or one of the more direct categories (Physical/Spell/Mental) to help you overcome a specific type of status effect.

More leveling rewards
I'd like to see carry limit get a bonus on level up, instead of through strength investment. It's a natural move, in my opinion - the higher your level, the more equipment you have found (and want to have on hand). Equipment requirements, if they exist for the sake of balance, should just be relegated to level limitations.

Clearer definitions for immunities and saves
Saves currently seem to do everything and nothing. Removing up to 50% of an effect isn't too useful if that effect is already 30 turns long, nor does it mean much if that effect is going to get canceled by other means. Saves were changed back to allow the "shrugging off" of effects, which is a huge increase in effectiveness (trying playing the advanced tutorial in 36!). Immunities lead a troubled existence, being simultaneously way too good and not good enough.

It would be better for these functions to be more clearly defined. Immunities should only govern the complete resistance to (aka failed application) of status effects, and, where appropriate, acting through these status effects (confusion is all that comes to mind; perhaps also silence?). Saves should not reduce duration directly, nor should they allow the player to completely resist status effects. Instead, saves should allow the player to prematurely shrug off status effects on their turn, checking power against save to see if the effect is ended early. Status effect duration would then follow a geometric distribution.

Accuracy and defense should be a function of equipment
If accuracy/defense checks are meant to follow a very strict scaling (i.e. absolutely no chance of hitting over a certain margin), make them equipment-dependent. Armor and weapon choice would be much more important if the player could adapt to these situations. If defense was penalized by heavier equipment, there'd be greater reason for combat-oriented classes to wear light armor over heavy.

I like the proposed system... Though I see little use for "power"... other than resource limit. In all cases the actual skill is better.

Though for hybrids like AB, etc. power is probably more useful.

I would assume you only get 1 point to allocate per level? *maybe* two...

It's very boring I think. There would be one optimal way for each class, and any deviation or variety would be almost pointless. In fact the optimal way for all might simply be an even split between power and saves.

Since I'm not coding it, I'd pretty much be willing to try any system at least once. One thing that concerns me about your proposal though:

bricks wrote:If accuracy/defense checks are meant to follow a very strict scaling (i.e. absolutely no chance of hitting over a certain margin), make them equipment-dependent. Armor and weapon choice would be much more important if the player could adapt to these situations. If defense was penalized by heavier equipment, there'd be greater reason for combat-oriented classes to wear light armor over heavy.

What would be the point of heavy armor then? If heavier armor mitigated more damage then it still wouldn't be as good as the lighter armor, since that would prevent the hit altogether. Wearing the lightest/highest defense armor would become the sole 'best' armor in the game, making all others rather pointless.

Grey wrote:It's very boring I think. There would be one optimal way for each class, and any deviation or variety would be almost pointless. In fact the optimal way for all might simply be an even split between power and saves.

I don't really see how that's so different from now. If the points are scarce enough you'll still have trade offs. Let's say you only get enough points to max 1 skill and bring another to just over 0.5 of max. You have quite a bit of trade offs already.

Though.most people I guess would take probably power and saves. Power should probably be less strong than 2/3 of primary damage. Though... crits could be the swinging factor.

Uh...physical statistics are combat statistics, which is why it makes sense for them to contribute for accuracy and defense. Encumbrance given by strength isn't bad, it intentionally hurts casters who need less items but gather them anyway for gold/energy. I'd say encumbrance affects hybrid characters the most if anything, but really isn't an issue.

Would it make sense for a high level archmage with barely the strength to lift their arms to hold more weight than a lower level warrior whom could probably lift a telephone booth? Would it make sense for a lumbering cursed to have more accuracy and defense than a rogue because of lucky items despite the fact that the rogue has the grace and speed of a trapeze artist? Statistics should reflect reality.

Another reason the basic stats of strength, dexterity, constitution, wisdom/willpower, magic/intelligence, and cunning/charisma exist in practically every rpg that I've played are that they make sense thematically and logically. Reducing them down to the fundamental statistics of variables like "power" takes flavor out of the game and replaces it with an artificial statistic that has no value other than making your character better.

Also, the argument that a player can 'subvert' a statistic by stacking the item, you could do the exact same thing with this proposal, I don't see your point at all. Why invest in weapon mastery or physical stat when I can get all of that by stacking items? I'd just like to point out that heavier armor already penalizes defense because the default stats offer less defense than their lighter counterparts.

This is a conversation that I would expect from a change like this:
A:"Yay my character has 13 mental points...thats like intelligence right?"
B:"No it just means that your brain hurts people more."
A:"...what?"
B:"Your character isn't smarter, their skills just hurt more."
A:"wtf...ok"

I'll just say, completely against changing the statistics. Especially if they don't offer changes that can be altered in the current system.

I should probably qualify my original post by saying that I'm not entirely committed to the divisions I set up. There are so many stats right now that I tend to forget what should be included, which is part of the reason I think primary stats need to be reanalyzed anyway. But I would like the categories to be more direct.

I agree with Candarel - yeah, these may be boring, but they are at least more direct and purposeful. Making it so players would have actual reason to pursue different stat investments is a challenge. I don't feel as if the current system truly does so, at least not until the late-game. I've tried to plot out a few crazy builds, and I always find myself starved for stat points.

@Avianpilot: I don't think that would be the case at all, assuming some thoughtful mathematics were applied. In fact, I'd expect most players to still pursue heavier armor, simply because damage mitigation is much more reliable than damage avoidance. Really, I think this comes back to the problem with the latest system, in that it is possible to obtain 100% dodge success. I have a huge issue with that.

@Rectifier: I disagree with a lot of your points, and I think the main difference is how we interpret ToME, so I don't expect to change your opinion. What I will say is that I don't really buy into the "role-playing" aspect of ToME - it feels more like a hack-and-slash turn-based adventure game with a lot of RPG/roguelike elements. Strength obviously would determine encumbrance if we're talking about real life, though the realism of carrying around a few suits of armor and a dozen weapons is questionable. I'd be curious to know how you feel about the transmogrification chest, since it really dodges around that fantasy trope. I don't quite follow your point about my system allowing you to subvert statistics; maybe I wasn't clear enough. I'm not saying that it's bad to stack a stat, I'm saying it's bad to stack it just so you can invest in a talent/equip a piece of armor. You are right in saying that a lot of these changes can be accomplished through changing how the current stats work.

Any thoughts on the tidbit about immunities and saves?

Immunities are a staple of roguelikes, and saves used to be worthless. Current iteration is head and shoulders above what it was before.

The current stats are perfectly open and direct to me; almost every class has one or two "primary stats" and it's very obvious that you should pump those. I don't find the proposed stats any more intuitive than the current ones. To me, they read as the following:
Physical: Strength, but with Cunning built in
Spell: Magic, but again with Cunning built in
Mental: Willpower and Cunning, except without the added resource limit
Power: A weird combination of Strength, Magic, and Willpower that seems manufactured for the benefit of hybrid classes
Saves: Constitution with saves to everything instead of just physical.
Equipment: Dexterity gets shoved here and for their talents, rogues use the new version of Strength instead.

So now instead of Willpower-based classes having a disproportionately larger resource pool (for the record I think it's weird that a frail mage has MORE physical stamina than a hulking, beefy warrior), it's hybrids having the disproportionately larger resource pool. Resource pool should just be tied to the primary stat of the classes that use them. Strength (and maybe Dexterity) for stamina, Willpower for equilibrium, hate, and psi, and Magic for everything else. Or just have a separate Resource stat that does adds to the resource pool but doesn't power any talents. Hybrids already benefit from the fact that they have twice the number of resource pools to draw from; they don't really need more resource pool help. And maybe there could be other tweaks but there is nothing indirect about the stat name "Strength". I read that word and have a pretty darned good idea of what it's going to do for my character. Just as good as renaming it to "Physical", if not better.

Immunities should only determine complete resistance and not the intensity of the status effect. Or, if it must affect the intensity, it needs to do so for all statuses. Otherwise, they would not scale in the same way. 50% immunity to stun makes stun exactly half as effective, but 50% immunity to confusion under your proposal would make confusion one-fourth as effective (50% chance to apply the effect, and then once the effect has been applied the magnitude of that effect is cut another 50%). I do like your idea for saves though, if I understand it correctly.

The chest Bricks? A reward for playing well, nothing wrong with that; assuming you don't cheat or anything. The recent stairscum nerf makes the chest much more difficult to obtain, if the chest was easy to get as it was a few versions ago then maybe I'd have a different tone, but its okay at the moment. Bags of Holding have been a staple even of more realistic fantasy rpg settings than tome for years, I don't think the chest really breaks any molds... We'll see if feedback from players is positive or negative from the achievement reward of chest on birth change.

While I agree that stats don't offer many interesting choices, I'm not sure if the proposed changes do enough to make them interesting. And as Rectifier points out, it's hard to make them feel realistic with this approach. I think if you want stats to be interesting, you have to fix the problem that there is usually an "optimal" strategy for every class. To do that, you have to 1) make the optimal choice less compelling, 2) make sub-optimal choices more rewarding. I'm not sure if this is really possible without doing it in a class-based way because each class is usually dominated by just a few bonuses (spellpower, physical power, etc.).

Take archmages for example. Right now you put every point you can into magic to get spellpower and talent scaling and then go for things like max mana and health. To change that, you could do something like:

Level Up:
+1 spellpower
+0.5 physical power
+0.5 mindpower
(Move some Magic bonuses to level up to make Magic a little less important)

Magic:
+0.5 spellpower
+0.35 spell save

Dexterity:
+0.5% spell speed
+0.35 Defense
+0.35 Ranged defense
+1 Accuracy
(Add spell speed to dexterity to give you a "fast" mage option)

Strength:
+0.3 spellpower
+0.1% spell crit chance
+0.5 physicalpower
+0.35 physical save
+1.8 max encumberance
(Add spellpower and some criticals to strength to give you a "power" mage option)

etc.

Additionally, talent scaling could be changed to use a wider variety of stats for some classes to encourage different builds/styles of play. This approach has the advantage that it could be worked in gradually by just defaulting to how it is now.

As a side note, I'd agree that equipment restrictions shoudn't be based on stats. It only restricts player choices. Stat-based penalties and bonuses are a better way to go. Armors would need something though: strength reduces fatigue for heavy armor and dex increases defense for light armor? With the above scheme for changing stats, classes could be better balanced for different weapon style builds which really opens up a lot of options for melee classes. It might also make sense to work that into the level up display: Strength could show a +1 two handed weapon power and a +0.3 dagger power.

Hmm, Benli, that's very interesting. Conceptually, I really like the idea of an archmage using strength and dexterity to enhance spellcasting. I also agree that equipment needs interactions with stats, and I like the scheme you suggest.

So long as a proposed change like Benli says doesn't become needlessly complex or esoteric, then I see nothing wrong with it.

I would like to see greater gains by default on level up. For example to all stats a small gain. Different gains per class.

So mages get +1.5 Mag, +1 Wil, 0.5 str,dex,con,cun.

Also you could have no "max", just diminishing returns.

So people could put all the points they want into something. Their choice.

I'd just like to say Bricks that if I came off as hostile I apologize, but I feel strongly about certain design elements in rpgs. I have played numerous good and bad games and they have been my favorite genre for years, and because of their rarity in mainstream releases I want them to be as good as they can be...or I'll just replay Baldur's Gate or Planescape again.