CYBERDAGGER'S PROFILE

author=MrChearlie
Action:persuade the skeletons to get near into the dim red light of the crystal with dance and sounds, so there is more accuracy in the party actions.

OOC: This makes me think. Are these kinds of undead more sensitive to sound? Beliette may be on to something.

Also, poor Cadeon. He has a high Wisdom score but low Charisma. He has good advice to give but nobody listens to it.

That is a pretty awesome post. I see now that three attack stats is definitely not overboard, and I even got some sweet ideas out of it.

Still, while I seem to have only glanced over it in the first post, I think my main problem here is actually the dump stats by design instead of choice. Your game seems to be one that's mostly classless, with little restrictions, and as so, which attack stats you use as dump stats is a choice. I have a game concept in my brain's archives that works that way, but this game is not like that. Character builds are customizable, but with exclusive possibilities. More specifically, Character 1 is a dedicated physical attacker and Character 3 is a dedicated spellcaster, each without attacks of the other type. Magic and Strength, respectively, are dump stats by design to them. They have no reason to invest in them.

Now, there are tow solutions to this problem. Solution 1 is to give Strength something that benefits spellcasters and Magic something that helps physical attackers. Though I'm afraid that if I go that way, the bonuses will actually end up being minor and I end up not fixing anything. The other solution is, as I was saying before, mergng the stats.

The skeleton was sent crashing into the crystal room, dismembered in more than one way, as it lost both its weapon and the arm holding it. However, while it was much less of a threat now, undead, as their name implies, don't usually have the decency of staying dead.

ACTION: Move to the crystal room to finish off the skeleton. If it's still laying on the ground attempt to curb stomp it, if not hold sword in defensive position to counter the skeleton's unarmed attack.

Some of you may have been there in my IRC conversation on whether I should merge my physical and magic stats. If so, you may remember me saying that having two attacking stats was unfair for my fourth character, who was a paladin-style character and as such had both physical and magical attacks. Now, if characters' stat spreads were set in stone, this wouldn't be a problem, I'd just give him a stat spread that accounted for that. However, I'm aiming to have heavy customization of stats, and so having to hybridize while everyone else gets to have one of the attacking stats as a dump stat would not be fair for him. And I hate the very concept of dump stats that are so by design instead of the player's choice.

Then, as the conversation went on, I realized there was interesting design in having a hybrid attacking character, as long as his skills were balanced around it. Hybrids are overall less powerful than specialists, but they make up for it in versatility, by being able to hit the lowest defensive stat. I could also implement some sort of diminishing returns in attack power, so a character with half the attack of another would still deal more than half the damage of the second. And considering that I am going to giva nearly all of his attacks secondary effects, there would still be a reason to use his spells if you went full physical and vice-versa.

Now I realized that My paladin dude is not the one hurt the most by the stat division. Meet my second character, an archer specialized in conditions. He is the only character in the game that can inflict all three damaging status effects. So you'd want to invest a bit in condition damage for him. Then, he has his bow, so his attacks will deal physical damage. That is, except for his most powerful attack. It's pretty much a more extreme version of Pokémon's Venoshock. It's pitiful normally but if the target is poisoned it deals tons of damage. And it's his only spell so far. I just can't make sense of it as a physical attack, especially when deliversd from a distance. It is his most powerful attack, and I have seen games with builds focusing on only one skill of the character in question, but still, I don't like that to make a build based on this attack, it has to be to the detriment of everything else. I could fill the gap with extra spells, but it feels like I'm treating the symptom and not the disease, and having spell just for the sake of having spells makes for a skillset without identity.

From what you've read so far, you might have noticed something more general related to this problem. The game has three attack stats. Condition damage is not a percentage value of total HP, nor is it determined solely by the skill used. It has a damage stat of its own, much like the sword swings. And right now, I'm thinking that maybe three attack stats is a bit overboard, and since having conditions be treated as an extra attack vector is part of the game's core design, I'm not giving up on the condition damage stat. So if I want to reduce that number to two, my only option is to merge the physical and magical attack stats.

Excluding HP and SP, my stats right now are defined as follows:
Strength: Determines physical attack damage.
Endurance: Determines physical damage reduction.
Magic: Determines magical attack damage.
Spirit: Determines magical damage reduction, and heal potency. (I didn't want to tie heals to magic attack power as is tradition, as that makes it so the best healers have to also be powerful casters as well, eliminating the possibility of a physical attacking healer. Magic defense seemed like the most logical choice to shift heals to.)
Agility: Determines turn order.
Skill: Determines critical chance, and condition damage.

It's easy to notice that two of the stats determine two things instead of just one like the other four. Spirit I'm not too worried about, as if I end up not merging the stats, physical attacks will likely end up more powerful than magic on average, so it kinda evens out. Skill, however, has some potential to become the game's One Stat to Rule Them All, especially if I go through with my intention of having certain builds make the character inflict a condition on crit.

If I do end up merging the stats, I end up with the perfect ammount of attributes to stats. I have one stat for attack damage, one for condition damage, one for heals, one for attack damage reduction, one for turn order, and one for crit rate. That's pretty neat.

So yeah, this dilemma is still with me, and I'll have to solve it before I start implementing the combat mechanics. Any feedback would be gratly appreciated. Even of I end up disagreeing with you, understanding different ideas never hurt anybody.

It's two days over the deadline now. Any news on this?