Experience as "currency" (Re: Merged proposal)

[woodruff@cadence.com (Ken Woodruff)]

Wow--conciliation and compromise.  A Crossfire first?

Peter and Brian hash out:
> > I rather like this proposal. But if I may, I would like to instead suggest
> > a "6-experience" system. Each catagory has a player "stat" associated with it.
>
> We can argue about how many experience divisions later.  Your position
> is viable in the long run, but it needs lots of prerequisites before
> it will make sense.

I don't see any real motivation for moving beyond the four basic classes, and
I'm not particularly compelled by assigning skills to particular stats.  A typical
skill is dependant on several stats, e.g. lockpicking should be a factor of
dexterity for the physical aspect of jiggling the tools around, intelligence,
to figure out the intricacies of this particular lock, and wisdom, for how many
similar locks you've seen before.   The class division seems more natural to 
me.   Since everybody else is coming up with new names, I'll suggest some 
as well:

   Fighting  (this term is ok, although "Physicality" might be more general,
              this covers anything which requires a primarily physical effort,
              be it chopping orcs with a battle axe or bashing down doors with
              a mace.)
   Thievery  (I'd like to call this "Subtlety", this basically covers any
              means of accomplishing a task through less than straigthforward
              means)
   Magical   (this term is fine, this covers all activities which use or derive 
              from magic power.  I see spells as the primary manifestation of
              magic skills.)
   Clerical  (I'd like to call this "Spirituality", this basically covers all
              interactions with God/gods/other higher powers)

Now to the main subject of this message:

I'd like to float a proposal to coincide with a new experience system that may
make it easier to handle accumulating experience and doling it out to various
skills/classes/levels, etc.   What if we considered experience not as an ever
increasing number but rather as a kind of currency which you accumulate by
adventuring and then "spend" (in a guild or similar place) to learn new skills
or refine existing ones.  This would allow players to have more flexibility in
developing their characters and would also free the code from analyzing every
activity for its effect on players skills.  That's the basics, what follows are
some more advanced ideas:
  -  Make starting "profession" affect a multiplier for EP cost, e.g. a thief
     could buy lockpicking skills cheaper than a wizard could.
  -  Allow for transferrence of experience from one category to
     another with some penalty, e.g. Physical EP could be spent for Subtlety skills
     at a cost of 3x the Subtlety cost.
  -  Add an actual cost (gold pieces) to certain skills in addition to the 
     experience cost.  Again profession could have a multiplier effect here.
     (So could charisma?)
  -  Profession Levels become another purchaseable skill, e.g. you could either
     become a 2nd level thief with that 1000EP or you could improve your ability to
     conceal yourself.
  -  Skills can have prerequisites, which can be levels (i.e. you must be at least 
     third level to learn this skill), or other skills (e.g. you must know how to 
     make fire and levitate objects before you can throw fireballs)
  -  Fundamental skills (ones which serve as prerequisites to many other skills)
     could be given a much higher price to encourage specialization.  (a similar
     notion exists with the path attuned/repelled features of the current magic
     system).  This could help prevent high level players from simply accumulating
     every skill from every class (at least not until they're a *really* high level.)

Some obvious problems:
  -  how to keep "score".  Currently score is based on experience, if this goes
     up and down (as you spend it to get skills) it no longer makes sense as a
     score.  I see several possibilities: 1) eliminate the idea of score, who
     really cares anyway, 2) come up with a scoring system that calculates the
     EP value of all of your skills and levels, or 3) keep two experience numbers,
     one being the available EP to spend and one the total EP ever accumulated.
  -  What to do about "draining" attacks.  I suggest this be changed to suck 
     stats, magic power, spirituality and hit points instead of experience.

This is still a very rough idea so I encourage criticism.

--Ken

+------------------------+---------------------------------------------+
| Ken Woodruff           | Most Latin words in -us have plural in -i,  |
| woodruff@cadence.com   | but not all, & so zeal not according to     |
+------------------------+ knowledge issues in such oddities as hiati, |
| Disclaimer: What tote  | octopi, omnibi, & ignorami; ...             |
| bag full of $20 bills? |     Fowler, "Modern English Usage"          |
+------------------------+---------------------------------------------+