Re: Misc thoughts.

[Peter Mardahl <peterm@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU>]

In message <199410120435.VAA18686@soda.CSUA.Berkeley.EDU>, Philip Brown writes:
>
>Make experience for killing things go WAY down, for levels less than you.
>
>  1 level less than you has MAYBE .5 experience of normal.
>  Probably better to have it .25
>
>  Have NO experience gain for anything lower than 1 level below you.

This is too simple-minded.  10th level character kills 3 wyverns with
a sword.  I'd say winning a 3-1 fight deserves non-zero experience.
The present system is fine.  You get diminishing returns for killing
weak monsters, as it should be. Just *try* and get from 11th to 12th by
killing kobolds.

>
>Similarly, if you kill of a cloud of monsters with one spell.. in my
>opinion, you should not get much more than the experience from killing
>ONE of the beasts.

Another slant on this:  
    Characters should have 4 skill areas, and killing monsters
by different means should add experience to the appropriate skill areas.
If by magic, then your mage experience goes up, if by a sword, fighting exp.,
if by clerical magic, then clerical exp., if you disarm traps, thief
experience.  Then you simply make it much harder in terms of experience
to gain "mage" levels.

But people didn't seem too crazy about the 4 skill idea, so it never
got implemented.  :)

>in short, the way you make it more balanced, is to make it more like real
>life.

Huh?  This is a game, we're trying to escape from real life.

Regards,

PeterM