   Leveling and weapon damage
  A lot of games deal with weapon damage very differently. Some games you need to boost a characters attribute (strength for a lot of games), which will increase either the total possible damage you can inflict (via some formula), or it will increase the minimum and/or maximum damage via straight up numbers (i.e. +1 damage, +1 to minimum damage or +1 to maximum damage).  Other games instead use some kind of a scaling system when leveling your character (these games typically have some kind of weapon skill system) where the higher your skill, the higher the maximum damage you can do (i.e. with a Sword skill of 55, you can do say 73% of the maximum damage the sword can do, while when using a Club with a club skill of 23 may only result in say 51% of the maximum damage).  While both of the systems offer differences and reasonings as to why more damage is done, I was wondering which one really is more practical in a game. Both and neither of these offer [a] solution to melee characters having to constantly "farm" or worry about their equipment first and foremost.  In most games imo (please don't go off topic about this, this is besides the point) a lot of RPGs seem to be that the Mage/Wizard/Sorcerer/etc is as good as their spells and attributes while melee/ranged characters are solely as good as the equipment they are wearing.The 1st option (from first paragraph) is more of a "my strength increased! yeah! Good thing I have the same skill with this weapon as a mage!" Just because your strength increases doesn't necessarily mean that you can deal more damage (although I will admit that it DOES help).  In this case, it seems that everyone can deal damage without regard to the skill or their knowledge of the weapon they are currently using.The 2nd method seems almost degrading; "ugh..my sword skill is so low I can barely do any damage with it. I need to go grind some more monsters to increase it".  It does make sense, seeing how a person using a sword all the time learns how to swing better, knows where to hit armor and in general knows how to be more lethal with their "chosen" weapon.  I am curious to what other people have to say about this.  Is there a better alternative to separate/remove this trend of melee characters being so dependent &#111;n their equipment that it can remove the fun from the game?   
  I like a gentle mix - skill providing the bulk of ability, with 'raw' stats like strength providing a bonus both to the ease of performing the skill, and to results that are a factor of the raw stat.   ;  lately, I've been toying with the idea of having not more damage done, because that's just ridiculous, reality-wise, given that no one, at ANY level of skill in anything, can survive a headshot, or someone slicing his head. But on the other hand, learning new tricks MAY help.Now, let's say that your basic fight is just "pick a move from your moves pool". Such a system would be neither interesting nor exciting. But if your move depended both on your previous move and that of the opponent, strategy would play a part. And if it included moving your character on hexes to corner your opponent, then another layer of strategy might be added. A third and last layer could be added through the management of personnal energy and combat winning side, provided the first connecting hit gave the victory.Now, let's say that each move is like a card that you can play after another, but can only play again after some turns, maybe (equal to cooldown effect). the equivalent of levelling could be attained by earning more cards of one type, therefore hitting again faster, since each "card" has a personnal "cooldown time". And it certainly would create more styles of fighting than anything in "Guild Wars" or in "WoW"... making for a funnier game, I hope.;  As always, everything depends of the type of game you are writting :A brainless manslaughter only needs a one number statistic called "damage".The classical hack'n slash rpg requires the full batch of stats : min damage, max damage, skill, strength, agility... A FPS does only consider the weapon type and the hit location.I am currently coding a little personal project. A kind of hack'n slash RPG where it would be very easy to die (considering you have a whole familiy of potentially infinite members it is not such a big deal). I am considering the following system for damage calculations : The maximum damage one can deal depends only on the weapon, the minimum damage depends on the skill. That means that a novice can deal the maximum damage but cannot bet on this each time. I plan to make almost every weapon able to kill an unarmoured enemy within one strike. Piercing good armor however, will require a better weapon, as armour is substracted from the maximum damage. There will also be a special attack one can choose that allows to do critical damage.Of course this system will (hopefully) work well within my game, I wouldn't recommend it in your classical diablo-like MMORPG.   ;  ok, im a noob and im brainstorming how to make my first text based rpg. NOT A MMORPG, i have common sense. I use python. I was wondering about the damage system. Heres my thoughts on how to program it. Please tell me if im way off base. Python uses dictionaries, If i had "short sword: 6" then can i have an equation saying add baseDamage + attackBonus + whateverElseModifierIUse + short sword= 10. Then have another function called with that argument(10) and run a rand 1-10 and return that number for how much damage is issued.P.S. I just got off work and its hard to collect my thoughts sorry if im not making sense   ;  I'm just thinking out loud here. Strengt and weapon type should play a role in how much damage it's possible to inflict (maximum damage) since a sharp sword might inflict more damage than a dull - and a really weak person isn't really able to do much damage at all (let alone carry the weapon). Minimum damage should perhaps be adjusted by a skill modifier. A person proficient with at two handed sword will deal more damage in average then a person who's not and he'll also seldom miss. This brings up the point of critical hits and misses which is a good way to add meaning to skills. A skilled person would be better to se possibilities in a fight and therefore be able to use them to inflict serious wounds (critical hit) where an unskilled person is likely to mess things up for himself (critical miss) and perhaps loose his weapon, hurt himself, fall or something similar.This also got me thinking of how bows are handled in your common RPG. Why aren't there any strength modifiers on bows? A longbow requires a really strong person to use it!   ;Quote:Original post by Yvanhoe...The maximum damage one can deal depends only on the weapon, the minimum damage depends on the skill. That means that a novice can deal the maximum damage but cannot bet on this each time. I plan to make almost every weapon able to kill an unarmoured enemy within one strike. Piercing good armor however, will require a better weapon, as armour is substracted from the maximum damage. There will also be a special attack one can choose that allows to do critical damage.You mean the armour is subtracted from the 'rolled' damage, surely? Small daggers can easily kill someone in plate armour if you know precisely where to hit and and what angle, which I guess is your skill factor.The system we use allows skills used (success threshold) to modify damage and damage type - letting us throw in 'option skills' like 'strike to injure' (increased critical) and 'strike to stun' (stun damage) as well as the usual range of weapon 'to hit' skills.;Quote:Original post by _winterdyne_You mean the armour is subtracted from the 'rolled' damage, surely? Small daggers can easily kill someone in plate armour if you know precisely where to hit and and what angle, which I guess is your skill factor.No, from the maximum. I consider it is a "hardware problem" to know if a certain weapon can pierce a certain armor. Otherwise, doubling your max damage in order to pierce a doubled armor would require you to double your skill too.Quote:Original post by _winterdyne_The system we use allows skills used (success threshold) to modify damage and damage type - letting us throw in 'option skills' like 'strike to injure' (increased critical) and 'strike to stun' (stun damage) as well as the usual range of weapon 'to hit' skills.Yes it is possible but hard. I plan it to make possible to choose a different attack that would fail most of the time but could kill in one strike, bypassing the armor. The success would depend on the attacker skill, the creature style and the armor cover, not the armor strength, something like 50% of protection for a chainmail, 65% if you had in an helmet, 90% for a full plate, etc...;  The normal hitpoint system isn't really realistic at all and not very good. When thinking a bit about it I think I'd add a stamina counter. During a fight you get tired and the more tired you get, the easier it is to hurt you. Killing a person - or making him unable to fight back can be achieved in a single blow but you're not necessarily able to pull off a hit like that unless you're skilled, the person is unskilled or the person is fatigued.   ;  Well, as pointed in numerous threads, medical simulation and stamina limitations are more realistic but are no fun at all. After all, the goal is to make you "slow down" make sure the pace of the game isn't suffering of that.I don't like hitpoints either mainly because I find it irrealistic in a world where someone can have 20 or 200 hitpoints. But remember that this is 'just' an abstraction mechanism. I prefer to have a health percentage (with everyone having the same amount) and numerous flags (ill, stunned, hallucinating, etc...) but all in all it is just a matter of counting how many strikes will be needed to bring you down.   