[Adonthell-general] rules miscellany

[Kai Sterker]

I had a few thoughts about the game rules I'd like to share.

Implementation:
===============

All the stats, properties, attributes and skills would be stored in the
character's storage. A python module could be written to ease
manipulation of them. I imagine for each variable we'd have a current,
max and bonus value.

max would naturally determine the upper limit. E.g. the maximun health
or power, or the maximum rank a character can gain in an attribute or
skill. This is sorta fixed. For derived properties such as health it
will of course change whenever the underlying stat changes. But
attributes and skills maxima always remain the same and can be kept in a
table, not with individual characters.

cur would be the current, unmodified state of the variable. E.g. the
current health or power, or the current rank of an attribute or skill.
It can range anywhere between 0 and max.

bon (or maybe mod) would be a modifier to cur. That is for items that
give boni or mali to certain variables. For curses or blessings, spell
effects, etc. All such modifiers are simply added up and finally added
to cur. Therefore, a variable can be boosted above max in certain
circumstances (and drop below 0 as well).

Both cur and bon/mod are needed for each character.


GUI:
====

The gui allows viewing and changing variables (when levelling up). Most
constrains we have would be implemented through the gui. It would
possibly nice if each stat, property, attribute and skill would have an
accompaning icon (possibly b&w, but overlaid with a color denoting the
group it belongs to). It also should have a tooltip the displays
information what it does when selected. Possibly the same as given in
the rules document, where that is fitting. How the gui will actually
look like is another matter. Guess I leave that to James :).

One thing I was wondering was whether any gui should be completely mouse
controlled, with gamepad or keyboard moving the cursor via
direction keys. But then again, maybe not ;).


Luck:
=====

I think the luck skill is different from any other skills. I don't
really know whether we should have any specific test for luck. Instead I
would suggest that luck effects all other skills in some way.

Either, each rank of luck will add one point to the outcome of other
skill tests. That means, a luck of 5 would always give 5 point bonus to
every other skill, which might be a little too much.

A weaker thing might be that for every rank of luck, one dice would be
numbered from 2 to 7 instead of 1 to 6. In that case, even a rank of 5
in luck wouldn't help much if one has few ranks only in the skill that
is tested. (Because more dice could be affected by luck than are
actually thrown).

A thing in between the two is that the rank of the skill tested limits
the bonus given by luck. E.g. even with a luck of 5, only 1 point would
be added if the skill used has rank 1 only. But that point would be for
sure.


Errors:
=======

In the property dependencies and calculation table, "ranged damage" is
missing.


NPC attitute:
=============

We have a number of variables that influence NPC's attitute towards the
player. Most notably alignment stat and charm skill, but the race of
player and NPC plays a role as well. Then there are 'personal' factors
as well, e.g. helping NPCs, admiring or insulting them (through certain
dialogue options).

I think all those factors should be forged into a single number that can
then be used for all kind of things:

* reaction of NPC in dialogue
* offering of quests/training/etc. through dialogue
* modifier for prices charged for services the NPC offers
* ...

For that it is essential that there is a single value we can query. (Of
course, certain descisions can still be base on a specific attribute
like race of alignment where this becomes necessary)

A number of things are clarified by the rules doc yet, for example how
NPC and player alignment interact. Put in a formula, it could read

        10 - abs (player_alignment - npc_alignment)

If player and NPC alignment match, the value will be 10, the more they
differ, the lower the value will be. Directly opposite alignments will
result in a value of 0.

The next thing is charm. I imagine that can simply be added to the
result of the value above. So that'd add a value between 0 and 5.

For the races I would suggest a fixed table that determines how much
each race likes the others. Possibly also on a scale between 0 and 5.
The benefit of such a table is that not every NPC needs a variable
telling how much he likes either of the races. However, we could allow
optional modifiers for individual NPCs that change the values given by
the table.

Remains the personal component. Guess that would be a on a range between
0 and 10, starting with a value of 5.

If you add up all of these, you'd end with an NPC attitude somewhere
between 0 (hates the player) and 25 (would give his life for the
player).  Such a value would be easy to work with and very useful, I'd
say.


Well, that's all for now. Please let me know what you think!

Kai