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THE NUMBER OF SKILLS FOR CHARACTERS
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Verincia
366
Verincia
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CloseYeah, I have a question. In A game I'm making, my characters are given a handful of skills that I try to incorperate within them. But sometimes, I think that I have given them too few, and yet, were I to play the game, some of the skills that I do give these characters I would never use in the actual playing of the game. There are those people who believe that it's important to give characters lots of skills, and no I'm not using the spell book teaching method. They just get these skills as they go up in level. For the most part.
Make what skills you give them count. Make them useful. The amount doesn't matter so much as there being a reason to use them. Of course, don't just give them two and say 'done!', but take into consideration the kinds of skills you could give them that would work to increase strategy in battle.
A decent amount is, imo, 6-15 at the end of levelling. I personally prefer swapping out skills for others - that is, have a low level skill that might 'evolve' into a stronger version of itself or allow for a stronger version with modifiers. One of my games has four base skills for a character, but she can modify them into over 20 different skills depending on the modifiers she uses. For example, a fire spell is initially a one-target, low damage spell, but with modifiers she can create a high-damage, burn-infliction spell or a medium-damage, hit all spell or a lose-damage, hit-all burn-inflicting spell.
Give your players choices to make. Do they want to go all out and damage an enemy but deal with lowered defense? Or perhaps deal lower damage but inflict the enemy with a status effect? Some people like fast and hard, some prefer slower and damage accrued over time. Give them the option, but don't inundate them with useless skills. Hell, give them the choice of which skills they'd prefer to learn on level up, perhaps? Do they want the fire spell that deals huge damage or the ice spell that can freeze an enemy for a while?
Just an idea or two.
A decent amount is, imo, 6-15 at the end of levelling. I personally prefer swapping out skills for others - that is, have a low level skill that might 'evolve' into a stronger version of itself or allow for a stronger version with modifiers. One of my games has four base skills for a character, but she can modify them into over 20 different skills depending on the modifiers she uses. For example, a fire spell is initially a one-target, low damage spell, but with modifiers she can create a high-damage, burn-infliction spell or a medium-damage, hit all spell or a lose-damage, hit-all burn-inflicting spell.
Give your players choices to make. Do they want to go all out and damage an enemy but deal with lowered defense? Or perhaps deal lower damage but inflict the enemy with a status effect? Some people like fast and hard, some prefer slower and damage accrued over time. Give them the option, but don't inundate them with useless skills. Hell, give them the choice of which skills they'd prefer to learn on level up, perhaps? Do they want the fire spell that deals huge damage or the ice spell that can freeze an enemy for a while?
Just an idea or two.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
I find it amazing how some RPGs can give a character only three skills and still find a way to make two of those useless.
This isn't a problem with the number, it's a problem with you not understanding how to create useful and interesting skills. There are so many ways to get this wrong that it's hard to give advice without more info. Can you post the skill list of one of your characters as an example, listing what each skill does, and explain the situations in which each skill is useful? Pick the character who has the most skills you would never use, if you can.
I would actually love to go through and help you work through a very detailed breakdown of a character, since doing this kind of combat skill design is frankly more fun to me than playing most RPGs.
This isn't a problem with the number, it's a problem with you not understanding how to create useful and interesting skills. There are so many ways to get this wrong that it's hard to give advice without more info. Can you post the skill list of one of your characters as an example, listing what each skill does, and explain the situations in which each skill is useful? Pick the character who has the most skills you would never use, if you can.
I would actually love to go through and help you work through a very detailed breakdown of a character, since doing this kind of combat skill design is frankly more fun to me than playing most RPGs.
Crystalgate
694
author=LockeZ
This isn't a problem with the number, it's a problem with you not understanding how to create useful and interesting skills. There are so many ways to get this wrong that it's hard to give advice without more info. Can you post the skill list of one of your characters as an example, listing what each skill does, and explain the situations in which each skill is useful? Pick the character who has the most skills you would never use, if you can.
Emphasis mine. In my experience, the problem is often not necessarily the skill itself, but the situations where a certain skill would be useful just doesn't happen. If you make a skill that is useful in specific situations, then said situations also have to actually happen.
Anyway, Liberty's guideline of 6-15 skills sounds good. However, I think that you should count any Fire/Fira/Firaga type of series as only one skill.
RyaReisender
200
The number of skills doesn't matter so much, it matters more that each skill is meaningful.
A new skill should always add a new strategy previously not possible rather than just costing 20% more MP and doing 10% more damage (of course after a certain point of damage increase, that also adds to strategy, like if you have a skill that does triple damage and costs ten times as much, you will have to decide between staying cost efficient and killing the monster as fast as possible).
I can imagine combat system where each character only has 3 skills and still have every battle require a different strategy (that requires some synergies between the skills, though, y'know, like the Vanish + Doom trick in FFVI).
A new skill should always add a new strategy previously not possible rather than just costing 20% more MP and doing 10% more damage (of course after a certain point of damage increase, that also adds to strategy, like if you have a skill that does triple damage and costs ten times as much, you will have to decide between staying cost efficient and killing the monster as fast as possible).
I can imagine combat system where each character only has 3 skills and still have every battle require a different strategy (that requires some synergies between the skills, though, y'know, like the Vanish + Doom trick in FFVI).
Treason89
360
I think 5 is a nice number. Three for main use and two for support, buffs, ailments, or other ideas. Besides specific cases, more than 5 skills and the others will fall in the forgotten land of desuse. Pokemon knows it since 1996!
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
Pokemon has like 30 skills per character though. You just can only bring 4 into battle.
It can also get away with having fewer skills because every battle is 1v1, so targetting elements are just completely absent from your skill choices. And there are no bosses, so you don't need healing in 95% of cases, or in fact any skills at all designed for battles that last more than two rounds. And there are like... maybe three enemies in the entire series who use strategies you have to actually respond to, so you don't need any situational skills beyond elemental attacks.
Normal RPGs have waaaaaaaaay more combat tactics than that. Pokemon is 99% pre-battle strategy and 1% in-battle tactics.
Some of these points are not as true about level 100 pvp, which is basically an entirely separate game in the same engine.
It can also get away with having fewer skills because every battle is 1v1, so targetting elements are just completely absent from your skill choices. And there are no bosses, so you don't need healing in 95% of cases, or in fact any skills at all designed for battles that last more than two rounds. And there are like... maybe three enemies in the entire series who use strategies you have to actually respond to, so you don't need any situational skills beyond elemental attacks.
Normal RPGs have waaaaaaaaay more combat tactics than that. Pokemon is 99% pre-battle strategy and 1% in-battle tactics.
Some of these points are not as true about level 100 pvp, which is basically an entirely separate game in the same engine.
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