I WOULD APPRECIATE SOME FEEDBACK ABOUT THE SKILL SYSTEM FOR MY WESTERN.

In combat, my western features two types of skills: Gunplay, and Gimmicks.

Gunplay is fairly self explanatory. I'm using the mp stat to track bullets for each character. The characters can specialize in Pistols, Rifles, and Shotguns. I'm going for an older crpg level progression style, where the player gets a point every level or two that they can use to upgrade their techniques. The Initial/Untrained skills for any class of weapon are fairly terrible, but a couple of points in, the player gets a nice arsenal of attacks. The cost for any single shot will always be 1 mp/bullet, so it is up to the player to decide what shot to use in any situation. I'm planning on showing the percentage to hit in either the skill's description or name, so a player can make an informed decision between that 60% chance of inflicting slow with "Shin Buster", the 25% percent chance of an instant kill with "Headhunter", or the tried and true Quick Shot with its 95% success rate. Of course the option to branch out exists, letting the player specialize in aimed status inflicting shots, multiple shots on a single target, or the spray and pray approach that consumes ammo fast, but can shred an enemy party in a single turn at high levels.

That brings us to the Gimmick portion of combat. Each class has their own style, so here are a handful of options from each. The Preacher can buff the stats of his party with a rousing sermon, cow the enemies into losing their own faith/combat effectiveness through Judgment, or even perform "miracle" acts of healing - thus freeing up valuable first aid supplies for the REAL emergencies. The gunslinger can activate a mode that automatically reloads his weapons as long as there are bullets in the inventory (thus granting unlimited gunplay use, inventory permitting, for a handful of turns), greatly boost his own resistance to all damage types, scan enemies with a Squint, or even make them lose their nerve with a Glare. The Gambler can effect the enemy with his luck (turns on a switch that forces them to use versions of their own attacks with a much higher failure rate), turn on a mode that greatly enhances the effectiveness of his throwing knives, and even make use of his hand speed and reflexes by gaining a kind of auto-haste whenever he uses the attack type he linked it with during level up. The scout can substitute in altered versions of his standard shots that will deal much greater damage for a number of turns, grant the party guaranteed initiative in battle, make the party invisible to enemies on the map, and greatly increase the likelihood of beneficial encounters on the world map.

The only catch? Since I'm already using the mp stat for bullets, all the gimmicks fall under the old "You can use X number of times per 24 hours (ingame)." If a gunslinger character only has two stocks, and he has to turn on his ultra-resistance and free-fire modes in the same battle, he's going to be stuck with just his regular gunplay and item use until 24 hours go by. Of course, sleeping at a campsite or in a hotel will reset the counter.

There are also Social Gimmicks which are handled separately, with a sort of cooldown timer imposed by failure. They are stat based, with a random roll added to the determining statistic (along with any bonuses taken at level ups) to represent the touch of Lady Luck.

I'm planning on having the Gimmicks and Stocks level up separately, so that the player can choose between whether they would like to have a small number of powers they can use fairly often, or a wide variety of techniques that they need to be a little more selective in their application of.

There are also Fate Coins (name in progress) that will be awarded for accomplishments in the game, progress in the story, and exemplary performance in combat. These can be used to grant instant recovery to a character who is wounded/unconscious, move a chosen character's injury or disease rating back one step on the track, or to recharge a character's stock. They can also be used on characters will full stock to generate Over Stock (name change pending). The Over Stocks would not recharge after use like regular Stocks. Fate coins are linked to specific characters though, so one party member's fate coin can't be used to revive another, but events like completing a main story quest will grant a fate coin to every active party member.

So, I'm curious if this sounds like a royal pain in the backside, or a workable approach to my skill setup. I know it is kind of old school. One of the first RPGs I ever played was Pool of Radiance (Not Myth Drannor), back in the Tandy1000 days. The basic concept for my western has sort of transformed from "ABS Spaghetti Western Player Choice-Fest" into "Old School CRPG approach to Spaghetti Western Player Choice-Fest."

In my (very briefly) released Star Wars themed rpg, it wasn't uncommon to have a force user burn through half to 3/4's of their mp in a single encounter... but enemies showed up on the screen, so the player could take time to recover with a meditation skill between battles. When a friend of mine tested it for me, he said it turned combat into a game of red-light green-light. He'd get into a fight, use the buffs and special powers, while he had the rest of the party use their 0mp skills (which had lower accuracy then the force effects did)... and then he'd have to camp out for about fifteen seconds while the meditation skill replenished his main character's mp.

I was trying to get away from that kind of hurry up and wait mechanic with the Gimmicks, by awarding the "fate coins" for advancing the plot/mopping an enemy up in record time, but I see what you mean about it feeling too limiting. I'm liking the idea of maybe letting Gimmick use be persistent, but limiting the activations per battle, although it will require a couple of tweaks to the class balances.

The original approach was for the gunslinger class to have less starting Gimmick stocks than the other classes, to balance out the fact that they'll get the opportunity to grab most all of the Gunplay techniques, while the Gambler, as a contrast, has a relatively slow gunplay progression, but has about twice the number of stocks at the beginning, and a somewhat easier time obtaining new Gimmicks. I've been trying to balance the classes back and forth so that everyone is the best at something and the worst at something else.

As for MP/Bullet restoration, at first I was just going to use inventory items like "Box of Bullets", "Quick Loader", "Shotgun Shells" as mp restoratives. The problem was that a character using a rifle could still use the Shotgun Shells item to recover his "MP." I considered just having a generic "bullets" item that would completely restore the bullets/mp for a character, but it felt like a cop out. Now what I'm doing still uses inventory items, but not directly. I've replaced the "Defend" command with "Reload". It triggers an event that checks what weapon the character has equipped, and then checks to see if they have enough bullets in their inventory to do a full reload. If they do, the mp is completely restored and the bullets are removed from the inventory, and if they don't, they gain back as many "mp" as they DO have bullets for. If they are out of ammunition for the selected weapon type, they get a message telling them they can't complete the reload. I'm working on an in-combat weapon swap, which unfortunately requires several different variables to keep track of the max/current ammo for each of the main character's possible weapons.

I am planning on keeping the number of enemy encounters per area pretty low. It doesn't make sense to fight thousands of enemies in the Old West. It is also a fairness thing, though, since the after-effects of combat can be fairly problematic. I'm building a list of status effects ranging from grazed to gutshot and beyond. I want to drive home the idea that a bunch of people shooting at each other with guns isn't something to take lightly, and that finding a way to get an advantage in combat is key. Depending on how many enemies are in range, the party can face up to six opponents at time, so the best strategy would be to try and ambush enemies when they're far apart and whittle them down, especially if they happen to be going it alone at the time.