LegendaryAvenger wrote...
Can anyone point me to the best vendor for soul gems?
I don't know who's the best
individual vendor, but definitely check out the College. Most of the senior Mages double as Mage vendors, so you've got access to a whole bunch of soul gems at once, not to mention the best Magic trainers.
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Okay, I've got it and this is very spotty on the whole "is it possible?" factor, but I've never liked the idea of Attributes being reduced to Health, Magicka and Stamina. The skills and Perk system is fine, but there is quite a bit they leave out which can be messed around with in terms of using Attributes to define a character.
I tend to think of
Attributes as the intrinsic qualities of a character, while
Skills represent how good they are at carrying out certain tasks. Perks fill the role of special abilities and bonuses that come as a result of proficiency in those skills.To that end, I've come up with a broad character system concept that's loosely inspired on the Storytelling System as seen in Vampires: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. It's not particularly close to how it works, but I liked the idea of categorizing at least.
On level up, instead of picking from Health, Magicka and Stamina, you pick from a variety of choices that bleed into the Skill system and a lot of aspects of your character.
You first pick a
Facet of your character you want to develop:
- Physical: +12 HP, +8 SP, +2% Movement Speed, +10 Carry Weight.
- Mental: +20 MP, +10% to MP Regen, +5% to HP/MP Regen.
- Social: -10% to Bounty Prices, -10% to Training Costs, I'll also see if I can get reductions for House Prices and scale up gold rewards for quests too.
Once you pick a
Facet to develop, you then pick a
Specialization to define your area of expertise.
- Combat
- Magic
- Stealth
When you've picked that
Specialization, you add a small bonus to the relevant
Skills within the
Specialization that correspond with each
Facet.
For example, if you pick the
Mental Facet and choose to
Specialize in Combat, you'll gain an extra 2 points in the
Block and
Heavy Armor Skills. If you choose the
Social Facet with the
Stealth Specialization, you get an extra 2 points in
Speech and
Alchemy. I've got it all mapped out already.
To counterbalance getting skills and stats up too quickly (spamming Mental + Combat Growth would make for an OP Alteration/Destruction Mage early on), I plan to make it so that you can only choose
Facets and Specializations to develop
every two levels, not every level. This is designed concurrently with
Perk selection every two levels.
So, one level, you'd choose a
Facet and Specialization, then the next, you'd choose a
Perk. To support this (and not having underpowered characters), I also plan to overhaul the Perk system so that there's less
X is 25% more powerful type
Perks meaning that the
Perk Tree is filled with
You can now do X or Y that you couldn't do before type
Perks instead. This would be accomplished by making
Skills more dominant in doing the basic things: Damage, Armor, etc
[/i] to make up for cutting the +20% type Perks.
To add to that, I'd also add Perks as rewards for completing certain questlines, such as the factional questlines, or becoming a Thane. This would bring the amount of Perks closer to equilibrium with the vanilla version (though still less overall) and rewards people who actually go out and do important stuff rather than people who just grind on Iron Daggers.
Finally, you get an extra 5 [i]Perk Points on Character Creation, along with maybe a wad of gold after Helgen. Possibly changes to the Racial bonuses to make them more useful. Perhaps bonuses to HP/MP/SP. The early levels would probably be tough, so it would be best to make things easier on that part.
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Now, I know for global settings, I can already do most of the above. I can set Bounty Rates, or Training Cost Rates, or Carry Weight Rates or adjust how the skills scale in doing basic things. The challenge is somehow getting it all to work within the context of a repeatable level-up sequence, without totally ****ing up game balance, or game stability. Which honestly, I don't have the slightest clue how to do.
In the end, it's not perfect but it's closer to what I want for how the character system works.
Skills that define how good you are at doing something, Perks that are exactly that: Perks, rewards and bonuses for your hard work in doing X or Y. All that, combined with not necessarily Attributes, but a way to better define the character with some depth rather than the very gamey Health, Magicka and Stamina.
Any thoughts, opinions, suggestions?
Modifié par mrcrusty, 22 décembre 2011 - 04:30 .