Goals of the new skill system

When we started throwing around ideas about the new skill system, a few things came up often in the discussions. Firstly, every character level gained should feel special. Essentially this means that every skillpoint spent should improve the character in some way. In contrast the skill system of Grimrock 1 was designed so that you get a benefit every time you crossed a threshold in a skill. If you spent points in multiple skills, or otherwise didn’t reach the threshold, the character did not really advance at that character level. Combined with the fact that skills were very deep (maxed out at level 50), this resulted in a situation where optimal strategy is to pump all skill points into very few skills. Especially with magic skills, this resulted in mages specializing in one or two schools of spells, which resulted in fewer spells to be available to mage. Fewer spells = less fun to the player. Also at higher levels, spending skillpoints became almost automatic and there was less decision making involved.

With LoG2 skill system we want to have more diversity and every level up should present an important choice to the player. After talking about this for a while, we realized that a minor tweak to the system is not enough. A major redesign was required.

Shorter skill trees

In LoG2 when you gain a level, you are rewarded with only one skillpoint. To counterbalance this the skill trees are much shorter. This way, every skillpoint spent matters now and there aren’t any intermediate skill levels. In fact, most skills are only 1-3 levels deep and there are many on/off kind of perks that you can buy. Some skills have other skills as prerequisites. For example, the Shield Expert skill requires that you have spent at least one point in Armors.

Technically speaking, the skills available to your character form “a forest of short skill trees”. Shorter skill trees mean that you can max out a skill with a few level ups (assuming that you meet the prerequisites), so this should encourage spreading points in multiple skills.

The skill system is also connected to the secondary actions of items described in an earlier post: some secondary actions are only available if you have enough points in a skill. For example, all characters can wield any axe found in the game, but only Fighters that have at least 1 point in Axes, can use the Devastating Cleave secondary attack of the Great Axe.

The skills available to your character are based on your character’s class. Every class has its own skill tree, but some skills are also shared by multiple classes. But there’s more to this! We have folded races into this same system, so that every race has a mini skill tree with unique race specific skills and perks! Some racial skills are automatic (e.g. all Ratling’s automatically get the Plagued skill), other skills you can choose how and when to advance. Insectoids can develop a thicker shell by spending points in the Chitin Armor skill and so on.

A nice feature of this is that it unifies traditional skills, perks and racial traits under the same system. So adding a new skill or trait is exactly the same and we have to maintain only one system.
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