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An XP-less, class-less and level-less CRPG system

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I've been wondering if that would be an interesting thing to implement in a CRPG (where the computer would take on the numerical heavy lifting). I would imagine it would go somewhat like this (some things are fairly similar to the Elder Scrolls system):

Characters have:
* A set of ability scores, STR, DEX etc.
* A hit point max value, likely influenced by a CON score or such.
* Ranks in a number of skills, e.g. Swords, Heavy armor, Evocation magic etc.

Progress would be made by "successful use" of abilities, skills and even the hit point max. Basically for each value in the character sheet there is a progress counter, which is incremented with every successful use. For skills that is obviously every time a successful check for that skill is made. The next skill rank is reached after passing some limit of the progress counter.

For abilities successful use would have to be tied to whatever actions involve that specific ability, so skill use would also increase the progress counter for the relevant ability a bit. But stuff like attacks would increase the STR and/or DEX counters too, magic use would increase the INT counter etc.

Even for hitpoints there would be a counter that increases every time the character when he gets damaged, i.e. "successfully avoids death".

This makes quest rewards a bit more complicated of course, since you can not just dump a bunch of nonexistant XP on the party. And of course balancing the progress amounts (and likely putting in some limits to avoid characters becoming ridiculous) would be a lot of work.

What do you think?
 

Turisas

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Sounds a lot like some of the Morrowind leveling mods. And those were p. cool, so :thumbsup: to this.
 

Random

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I'm very interested in this concept, because it's similar to what I was thinking. Monitoring this thread.
 

baturinsky

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Is it necessary to separate attributes and skills? May be "Dexterity" is just another skill? And when you do some action you add up a lot of different skills at once - dexterity + one-handed weapons + bladed weapons + combat + heavy armor + orcs to hit an orc in cuirass with a sword, for example?
 
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The difference between skills and abilities would be pretty minor in this system yes. I haven't thought this all the way through but I suspect that there may be some fundamental reason to keep the "real" abilities separate that is not apparent yet. But could go either way really.

Apart from that the way you describe is how im making it right now pretty much.
 

Tytus

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Why not make abilities the base from which you start when choosing a class. For example you want to play a soldier/warrior/fighter so you are a character that has some sort of backstory why you are a soldier. You get a set of abilities when choosing a class that you cannot change and skills are a set of traits you can acquire during the game but, there are based on the set of your starting abilities. For example when you were trained to be a warrior since childhood you won't suddenly become a mage. So the set of skills you can get reflects your class. Let's say a fighter can choose what kind of fighter he wants to be, but he is still a fighter. The same goes with a mage - you get your set of abilities that describes you mana levels, casting time etc - but through skills you decide what kind of mage you want to be - will you be a mage that constantly slings fireballs at people or does area effect spells, or throws buffs. In this system even spells could count as skills. I know it's very limiting but I really didn't like Elder Scrolls system where you can basically become everything at once.
 
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The Elder Scroll-like way has the drawback of "master of all guilds" being possible as you say but I think that is more due to the way the limits in the Bethesda games were implemented rather than a problem due to the basic idea. The way I imagine it it would be just about impossible to become an archmage and a legendary fighter at the same time due to the limitations that working powerful magic imposes making sure that you are extremely vulnerable standing in the thick of a melee, so it simply would not happen unless you cheat. Your suggestions of making skills choosable sounds like extra work for the developer and I think it would be more sensible to make sure the system as a whole avoids some of the mentioned pitfalls.

Also, I am not even sure how magic would work in this system yet apart from requiring skill checks. The question remains how you get spells to cast in the first place, how you learn new spells etc.
 

baturinsky

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Degrade skills only as other skill grow, and let player decide himself what skills to degrade. He can choose none, but then growth will be slower, proportionally to sum of ALL skills (or something like that)
 
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It seems too early to think about how to stop players from being greedy bastards really. But I agree that skill degradation is a good and sensible way to limit power creep.
 

Tytus

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It seems too early to think about how to stop players from being greedy bastards really. But I agree that skill degradation is a good and sensible way to limit power creep.

I really like the idea. You want to be a brutish fighter that uses strength as their main focus? You choose the specific skill like let's say "musclebound" which degrades starting speed/agility/flexiness abilities. You want a have a high fortitude to back up high strenght? Cool, you choose "Cardio" ;) but that degrades some other ability, for example - "Musclebound" and "Cardio" means you can fight longer or larger groups of enemies but you also burn more calories because of your bigger mass. So you have to buy more food, also you are bigger, so ther armor, chainmail have to be bigger too - so they cost more money etc. Also because you are bigger and can withstand more punishment your sneaking skills go down (because of lower agility/speed/flexiness)

I would also love to see a full plate armor lowering awerness - because while you are a tank, you don't see as good as the guy without the helmet.
 

Absalom

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So Betrayal at Krondor then? Sounds good to me I loved that skill system. Skill degradation would be good in theory but I'm not sure if it's going to see much effect. Most people create a party with specific roles and won't care as much if their mage loses dexterity (or whatever.)
 

Tytus

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So Betrayal at Krondor then? Sounds good to me I loved that skill system. Skill degradation would be good in theory but I'm not sure if it's going to see much effect. Most people create a party with specific roles and won't care as much if their mage loses dexterity (or whatever.)

True, that system would work a lot better with RPGs without a party. And I don't really know how to avoid the problem of people ignoring the degradation because they for example want their mage/cleric to spam buffs all the time.
 

Absalom

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So Betrayal at Krondor then? Sounds good to me I loved that skill system. Skill degradation would be good in theory but I'm not sure if it's going to see much effect. Most people create a party with specific roles and won't care as much if their mage loses dexterity (or whatever.)

True, that system would work a lot better with RPGs without a party. And I don't really know how to avoid the problem of people ignoring the degradation because they for example want their mage/cleric to spam buffs all the time.
Limit the number of buffs? I never really liked the idea of them anyway. One or two good ones, sure, but I shouldn't have a checklist of shit I have to do before a fight.
 

deuxhero

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I always found the idea of merging money and XP (or rather, ditching XP while making money used for training in additional to the standard uses) interesting.

You'd need to pair it with a system that doesn't encourage you selling everything that isn't nailed down though, and that's another thread.
 

tuluse

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Serpent in the Staglands Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Age of Decadence is XP-less, classless and level-less.

Though really skill points are essentially XP. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines also comes close, but clans function a lot like classes, and you get XP, but not traditional XP.
 

J1M

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You learn more through failure than you do through success. Why are you rewarding someone for doing something they already know how to do?
 

Telengard

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Computer quirk. If people can fail and earn more experience by doing so, then people set up a series of auto-fails and force failure until they max out everything.And since the computer can't recognize that they were trying to fail instead of trying to succeed, they get rewarded for trying to fail.
 

Absalom

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Computer quirk. If people can fail and earn more experience by doing so, then people set up a series of auto-fails and force failure until they max out everything.And since the computer can't recognize that they were trying to fail instead of trying to succeed, they get rewarded for trying to fail.
Best example of this is Quest for Glory 1 - you could "pick" (attempt lock picking) your nose indefinitely until you had maxed out lock picking. Sure, it was a funny joke at first, but people being people would quickly abuse it.
 

deuxhero

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Just make it based on failed situations not actions (you get XP for failing to hit slime 1, not for each failure to hit slime 1, but you do get XP for failing to hit slime 2)
 

Telengard

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And in a hand-made world with a fixed number of enemies and no wandering monsters, you're golden. But in a dynamically generated world (such as the mentioned Morrowind), by this system, when playing I am instead incentivized to grab up my trusty cursed sword of hit-nothingness and run around the map in a huge circle over and over, striking a single time at every creature that appears in order to get my miss experience and then running away.

Hell, I could stick a cursed sword in one hand and a real sword in the other, and get experience for both hitting and purposefully missing at the same time.

When I am being rewarded more for missing, it becomes in my best interest to ensure that I miss.
 
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What Telengard said about why rewarding success is the better, if counterintuitive way when a computer is DMing.

Also, "XP-less" is a bit of a lie here really, since the XP is sort of split up into progress counters for every skill now. There's just no explicit XP any more.
 

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