KickStarter Monomyth - A first person action RPG/dungeon crawler - now available on Early Access

[Excommunicator]

How should players be punished for breaking doors?

I would take a step back even further and ask why are doors breakable to begin with? What do you want to achieve ?

 

[RatTower]

I believe certain doors should be breakable to offer an alternative to finding a key.
Since it is the "easy" solution it should come at a potential cost, that makes up for some of the effort you just saved. Because otherwise everyone would just break every door.
Which is where we get to "risk and reward". If there is a certain risk in breaking that door, you might reconsider it. Taking that risk is the fun part.
And then you gotta ask yourself, how to design that risk and/or potential punishment appropriately.

You could say "It will attract enemies" and for a Thief that might be a risk.
But what if you play a warrior? Then enemies might not be such a problem.
So you gotta add some extra spice to the whole situation.
So your weapon could break, or you could take damage from hitting too hard, or you could give doors extra defense so it takes really long, or you could damage the door in a way that it doesn't open anymore at all, etc etc.

Looking at it closely, breaking doors is definitely a gimmicky feature - but it's been part of fantasy games (especially tabletop RPGs) for such a long time, that it's just become commonplace.

 

[Siveon]

How should players be punished for breaking doors?

Lose health upon hit. Make a really loud noise that enemies attracts farther away then you initially had it, maybe a chance to spawn mini-bosses? There's no logical reason for that but it's an appropriate consequence.

 

[RatTower]

AI is making some good progress:



Both melee and ranged combat are working now.
Enemies can use several different attacks that can go in any direction.
So when you stand behind an enemy, it might quickly attack while turning around.

Attack selection still needs weighting.
With that I'll also integrate spell-based attacks aka magic.
After that I'll take a look at support actions (enemies healing/buffing). Then animation will be the next big topic.

I'm testing all of this on regular slimes, which are surprisingly deadly in groups.

 

[Jack Dandy]

Again, I really like what I'm seeing.
I hope the combat will "Keep you on your feet", get you thinking about what you're going up against, having to be aware of possible incoming attacks and such.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

So RatTower, migth be soon to ask but what's the main idea behind the character development mechanics (skills, stats, their affects on gameplay, how to evolve them, etc...)?

 

[RatTower]

It's relatively simple: There are 6 Attributes (+3 derived values)

• Strength (breaking doors, lifting objects, using melee weapons, adds damage, etc)
• Dexterity (picking locks, using bows)
• Intelligence (casting and memorizing spells)
• Vitality (determines Health)
• Endurance (determines Stamina)
• Focus (determines Mana)

The effects of these are not final. Currently there are no skills, so ever non-combat action is a stat check that is either a success or a failure (so, no chances atm).
You can raise those 6 attributes by visiting a shrine and spending experience points on them.

At the moment experience is gained by:

• defeating enemies (currently there is limited respawn - i.e. if you clear out a region, monsters will respawn after you "re-enter" it - however only a couple of them, so you can slip past them if you don't wanna fight)
• conversation (e.g. completing a "quest")
• exploration (in some places you'll find "Adventurer's Memory", which is basically a small amount of collected XP. I'm still deciding whether these will have a narrative component (like an audio log))

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Simple yet deep and effective. It has a lot of potential.



RatTower since you have stat checks you could add a Willpower Stat to determine how well the player resists some events and magical forces (like being seduced, cast an ilusion, etc...).

Also since your stat's already act as "skills" of sorts, for the actual Skills they could act as perks.
And those Skills, while few in number, would enact considerable changes to the playstyle of the player. For example: a skill that allowed the character to comprehend an ancient language; one giving the ability to wall run/jump; or even alter the character body to make him immune to disease; etc...
And the ways to learn those Skills could range from having the right stat levels, an item, completing an event/quest, being taught by an NPC, etc...

 

[PrettyDeadman]

It's relatively simple: There are 6 Attributes (+3 derived values)

• Strength (breaking doors, lifting objects, using melee weapons, adds damage, etc)
• Dexterity (picking locks, using bows)
• Intelligence (casting and memorizing spells)
• Vitality (determines Health)
• Endurance (determines Stamina)
• Focus (determines Mana)

The effects of these are not final. Currently there are no skills, so ever non-combat action is a stat check that is either a success or a failure (so, no chances atm).
You can raise those 6 attributes by visiting a shrine and spending experience points on them.

At the moment experience is gained by:

• defeating enemies (currently there is limited respawn - i.e. if you clear out a region, monsters will respawn after you "re-enter" it - however only a couple of them, so you can slip past them if you don't wanna fight)
• conversation (e.g. completing a "quest")
• exploration (in some places you'll find "Adventurer's Memory", which is basically a small amount of collected XP. I'm still deciding whether these will have a narrative component (like an audio log))

Add some resistances to stats. It feels kinda bad/primitive when one stat only does one thing. Make one stat affect millions of other parametrs and used in as much formulas as possible. Give player information only about half or less of what stats actually do.

 

[RatTower]

There are some resistances corresponding to magic castes (Divine/Aura/Cosmic - i dropped Demonic for now), but they're currently not influenced by stats (they barely have an impact at all right now - that's also why they aren't listed). I could imagine adding Willpower and combining it with Vitality/Endurance/Focus to calculate resistance values on a stat basis (so for example Willpower X Vitality = divine resistance, Willpower X Endurance = aura resistance, Willpower X Focus = cosmic resistance). So then resistances are both impacted by stats and equipment. I'll take a look at that when I work over attributes again

I also thought about adding Wisdom, which would then be required for Divine spells. This could be used for clerics.
Druid types could use willpower for Aura spells. Then it all adds up nicely again.

I also like the idea of passive skills/perks being taught by certain NPCs. Reminds me of the Gazebos in Might & Magic. Will definitely think about that.
I will put these things on my ToDo list. Will probably not make it into the alpha but I could rework the datastructures and deactivate the new stats for the moment.

Give player information only about half or less of what stats actually do.

Got it. I'll announce a manual and never release it

 

[hello friend]

Why not just roll Willpower into Focus? Both the development of the capacity and the activity thereof require willpower anyway. Having a stat that only boosts resists devalues the choice - you're gonna take it almost no matter what, especially if it scales off everything else.

A little tangential, but care should be taken not to make every stat relevant to every character, as sometimes happens when people get the synergies wrong. If every stat is essential, you're not making a choice. Depends on encounter design too obv, but if every warrior is gonna want to keep up his INT and FOC scores to avoid being instantly disabled in every fight post mid game, every warrior is going to feel samey - although it's cool if oddball builds relying on the same are viable.

 

[RatTower]

Why not just roll Willpower into Focus? Both the development of the capacity and the activity thereof require willpower anyway. Having a stat that only boosts resists devalues the choice - you're gonna take it almost no matter what, especially if it scales off everything else.

I'd say that depends on the maximum amount of points you can invest in the end. If level ups are rare and your archetype has very specific primary and secondary stats, investing in willpower might be a third-rate decision. Take for example a warrior. The main stat is obviously STR and most games treat VIT as a secondary one. So if you had 10 levels and started out with each attribute at 10 you'd probably end up with something like a STR16/VIT14 character. Of course you could also go STR16/VIT12/WILL12 and throw a little Aura magic in there too.
But the warrior playstyle requires STR to equip certain weapons. Likewise other playstyles require at least one primary stat.
Currently that's DEX for bows and INT for spells. If WILL and WIS are added, then INT would be for cosmic spells (mage), WILL for aura spells (druids) and WIS for divine spells (priest).

With secondary stats experimentation starts. Naturally you'll want to invest into STAM/VIT as a warrior/thief or into FOC as a caster.
But depending on how many points you have available you can also start building up another playstyle's primary attribute.
So if there were lets say 20 instead of 10 levels and the best weapons are already available at STR20 you might end up with something like STR20/WIS15/VIT15, which would be something like a cleric.
Or maybe you'd pass on the strongest weapon and go with some WIS17 spell instead. What I'm trying to say is, that even if WILL had a very nice effect, people would still invest in their primary stat - especially if level ups are rare.

The only unfair advantage you get with a system like that, is that for example Druids would have naturally high resistance values. But you can counter that by scaling their spell requirements properly. Which also has the effect that Druids will never wear much armor because they'll likely lack the funds to invest into STR. But those are already second-level-implications so I still gotta think about that.

As a side note: Resistance values are also (how I imagined it mainly) depending on equipment. WILL would just add some flavor. Coincidentially this falls well into line with the Druid/Armor thing.

 

[hello friend]

Makes more sense to base bows off STR and melee off DEX.

If WILL is also a casting stat, as you suggest, that immediately makes it more interesting than just +res

 

[Gorn]

How should players be punished for breaking doors?

I would take a step back even further and ask why are doors breakable to begin with? What do you want to achieve ?

Being able to break down doors, force chests and brute force things in general should be left as a reward for going all-in into STR. To compensate, metal/fortified should require a higher STR stat thus impenetrable to low-level PC ruffians, a few others (an ethereal barrier door? a gelatinous-cube type door that makes heavy things bounce off or - better - consumes them?) may not even be physically breakable, period. As for rogues, while they should be able to overcome most locked things (else why would one pick a rogue?), a few "locked from the other side" doors or sturdier things like solid rock would only be overcome with a solid punch or a disintegration spell. Gameplay variety for different builds is good as long as there are choices and consequences.

There are traps, too. Kicking the door down or using a 'knock-knock' spell sounds an alarm that wakes up an ogre (who you would have easily sneaked around otherwise, or crit-stabbed in the eye while he was sleeping). Triggering a trap turns floor to acid corroding the player's armor, the way back to the potion merchant gets cut off, a peaceful NPC turns hostile - you get the gist.

Bottom line is, make the "bash everything" player wish he were playing a rogue or a mage (and vice versa) without handicapping him in ways that feel unnatural.

 

[RatTower]

Traps sound pretty reasonable. I also added a strength requirement for breaking doors.

Talking of which, forget what I said about Willpower/Wisdom not being in the alpha. I worked over defense values for combat and added those two right away.



(UI is of course not final)

Currently the effects are as follows:

STR = Breaking doors, Melee Weapons, adds phys. Damage
DEX = Lockpicking, Bows, adds defense against phys. damage
INT = Cosmic Spells, Resisting divine
WILL = Aura Spells, Resisting aura
WIS = Divine Spells, Resisting cosmic
VIT = Health
END = Stamina
FOC = Mana, Spell Slots

I split up magic resistances between the three castes.
Divine and cosmic are counterparts resisting each other.
Aura is neutral.

Instead of giving Willpower general elemental defense I gave Dexterity the same effect but to counter physical damage. Mostly against stabs though (arrows). This is mostly for thiefs. Natural defense is currently capped at 30%. Equipment can push defense up to 90%. This is still experimental, since it kinda implies that late game enemies have to dish out massive damage to actually bother you. Talking of late game: Level cap is currently 40, so you'll have some room to experiment. I might allow reskills. Not sure about that yet. Either way it'll only be possible by paying lots and lots of gold.
I might still add some elemental/physical defense to willpower. Depends on how I'll balance Aura spells.

I might also add equipment weight having an effect on movement speed (that was actually something I had in a super early build). Perhaps the carry capacity could be increased through endurance.

 

[RatTower]

I added a little gimmick to the attribute system:

Depending on you character's primary attributes (STR, DEX, INT, WIS, WILL) the character menu will display a certain class + a short description.
Classes are ranked, so if you invest a lot of exp into strength, you are first a mercenary, then a soldier, then an elite soldier etc.
In total there are 25 classes (5 classes/ranks per attribute). I call this a gimmick because it has no real gameplay effect. It's just there to give you a bit of background information on the world.

However - and it's too early to decide on that - this gimmick also opens the door for late game prestige class quests (e.g. attaining knighthood, becoming a high druid etc).
That concept is pretty common in jRPGs. KF1 also had it. The ranks were Soldier, High Soldier, Mage, Magefighter, Swordsman, Wizard and Swordmaster. Being a Swordmaster then allowed you to open certain gates with the strongest equipment behind (also you learned sword magic at that rank - without it the last boss was pretty tough).

It's a matter of game design whether these quests go in or not, but I think it's certainly a nice idea. For now classes are just there for the lore and to have something documenting your character's development.

 

[RatTower]

Quick update: I finalized character attributes for the moment. To summarize:

Now there are 8 attributes + 5 calculated values + 3 elemental/physical attacks respectively resistances

• Strength: Required for breaking doors & equipping melee weapons; raises physical damage (slash/stab/strike) depending on how much you are above the required value (up to x1.5)
• Dexterity: Required for lockpicking & equipping ranged weapons; very slightly raises physical resitance with a focus on stab attacks (arrows)
• Intelligence: Required for cosmic spells & modifies their effectiveness; raises resistance against divine spells
• Wisdom: Required for divine spells & modifies their effectiveness; raises resistance against cosmic spells
• Willpower: Required for aura spells & modifies their effectiveness, also raises resistance aura spells
• Vitality: Raises health
• Endurance: Raises stamina & carry capacity
• Focus: Raises mana & increases your amount of available spellslots

Abouty carry capacity: This was already a feature in a very old build but I haven't reintroduced it during the code rework.
Basically every piece of equipment has weight. But it only really matters when you wear it on your body (so the weight of inventory slots doesn't make a difference, only the stuff you equip).
It's not one of those systems where you are completely paralyzed once you carry too much. However both your movement and stamina regeneration is affected. Also dodging and jumping is more exhausting/costs more stamina.
I have not added any weight modifiers to stamina costs for attacks. Currently weight only influences your ability to reposition yourself during combat.

Then there are also classes which are affected by your attributes, but as mentioned before that's just background information for now.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

Want an idea?
I am assuming by it's description and increases Dexterity is like the character's hand-eye coordination. Instead of it being a requirement for equipping weapons, what it could do is increase the player's accuracy - like the higher the Dexterity the smaller and tighter will be the crosshair when aiming with (cross)bows.

But overall your system is just

I hope manage to fare much better than Underworld

 

[Thal]

Want an idea?
I am assuming by it's description and increases Dexterity is like the character's hand-eye coordination. Instead of it being a requirement for equipping weapons, what it could do is increase the player's accuracy - like the higher the Dexterity the smaller and tighter will be the crosshair when aiming with (cross)bows. But overall your system is just

When I first read this my inclination was to be against it. Because while the real life justification for this is strong, it might mean that if you wanted to be an thief type...a stealth archer, you'd have to pump strength to meet the requirements, putting you at an disadvantage. But what if there is no str requirement at all?

 

[RatTower]

I was thinking about that as well a bit, with dexterity determining how well you can aim a bow (you know, with the cursor going all over the place during aiming and such) and that does seem like a nice idea, but the question is how to balance this whole thing properly. So here is another idea:

Strength: Determines whether you can carry a weapon at all
Dexterity: Determines how effectively you can use that weapon

So to have a simple example: A morningstar would require STR:11/DEX:7, while a bow would require STR:7/DEX:11
If a character with STR:10/DEX:10 would try both weapons he'd not be able to equip the morningstar at all and use the bow ineffectively.
This way the warrior still gets something out of raising STR and the thief could focus on pushing DEX without pumping strength (too much).
Being under the DEX requirement could also cut your damage. So if a character with STR:11/DEX:4 equips the morningstar he'd be using it with reduced damage for being so clumsy.

That should be possible in the current setup.
Just requires restructuring checks on equipment (basically just throwing out the DEX requirement) and adapting damage calculation (maybe something like StrengthAdjustedDamage * (CharacterDEX / RequiredDEX) depending on how harsh the penalty for equipping under DEX requirements should be). Then you could also add that DEX penalty to aiming, which would be an isolated feature. I'd have to look into that.

The only problem I see, is that Archers would only have very slight equipment restrictions via strength as opposed to the warrior who has hard requirements. It's a matter of balancing.
Though it poses the question whether players wouldn't end up generally prefering ranged weapons for their lack of hard requirements. I suppose that could be counteracted by dishing out a solid DEX penality. Then it is a matter of communicating that. Ideally of course through shaky aiming.

But generally I like the idea. Because warriors who only focus on STR still wouldn't be able to properly use bows. Then of course you have your multi-classes (so people who'd push both STR/DEX) but they'd have to cut back on Vitality/Endurance.

What do you think of that?

 

[Thal]

It's a matter of balancing.
Though it poses the question whether players wouldn't end up generally prefering ranged weapons for their lack of hard requirements. I suppose that could be counteracted by dishing out a solid DEX penality. Then it is a matter of communicating that. Ideally of course through shaky aiming.

Ultimately it's about making all different archetypes viable. Perfect balance, imo, isn't something to strive for in a single player rpg. The thing I like about nethack for example is that different classes have different power progressions and trade offs which can translate to different difficulty levels. Ascending a tourist takes a lot more than ascending a valkyrie.

Combination of different attribute reqs discourage dump stats and push you towards certain archetypes (a bit like skill checks in AoD. I like the idea. Also, with multiple reqs, a clever player might be rewarded for his ability to optimise his character effectively. The most important bit is to design the game in such a way that it you are able to do a variety of things while keeping it sufficiently challenging.

 

[V_K]

Quick update: I finalized character attributes for the moment. To summarize:

Now there are 8 attributes + 5 calculated values + 3 elemental/physical attacks respectively resistances

• Strength: Required for breaking doors & equipping melee weapons; raises physical damage (slash/stab/strike) depending on how much you are above the required value (up to x1.5)
• Dexterity: Required for lockpicking & equipping ranged weapons; very slightly raises physical resitance with a focus on stab attacks (arrows)
• Intelligence: Required for cosmic spells & modifies their effectiveness; raises resistance against divine spells
• Wisdom: Required for divine spells & modifies their effectiveness; raises resistance against cosmic spells
• Willpower: Required for aura spells & modifies their effectiveness, also raises resistance aura spells
• Vitality: Raises health
• Endurance: Raises stamina & carry capacity
• Focus: Raises mana & increases your amount of available spellslots

Abouty carry capacity: This was already a feature in a very old build but I haven't reintroduced it during the code rework.
Basically every piece of equipment has weight. But it only really matters when you wear it on your body (so the weight of inventory slots doesn't make a difference, only the stuff you equip).
It's not one of those systems where you are completely paralyzed once you carry too much. However both your movement and stamina regeneration is affected. Also dodging and jumping is more exhausting/costs more stamina.
I have not added any weight modifiers to stamina costs for attacks. Currently weight only influences your ability to reposition yourself during combat.

Then there are also classes which are affected by your attributes, but as mentioned before that's just background information for now.

Tbh I never understood having multiple casting stats that are identical in all but the type of magic they represent. It was redundant in DnD, where Wis was basically Int for priests (and both were dumpstats for non-caster classes), and it's still redundant in any other system. Would be more fun if instead of "raising effectiveness" for a specific spell school, they would improve specific aspects over all spell schools. Like, for example, Int would increase the damage/healing amount of all applicable spellls, Wis - duration, and Will - area of effect.

 

[RatTower]

It's probably redundant in a class based system, as long as the class itself is already restricting available spells/skills.
You could just take intelligence as the general spell requirement attribute. However if you have multi-classing like later D&D (or no classes like Monomyth and other Underworld-likes) the intelligence-equivalent attributes cap your proficiency in their related fields. So there it kinda makes sense if you wanna prevent super-effective allrounder-characters.

The nature of "raising effectiveness" at the moment comes down to spell design. Technically every spell has an INT/WIS/WILL modifier. It's just that two out of three are not taken into account. Of course one could add them for example to damage calculation. I'd imagine that could create a "gray" caster archetype that generally uses lower level spells but at much higher effectiveness. Sounds intriguing to me, but it's probably too early to make decisions like that.

 

[V_K]

It's probably redundant in a class based system, as long as the class itself is already restricting available spells/skills.
You could just take intelligence as the general spell requirement attribute. However if you have multi-classing like later D&D (or no classes like Monomyth and other Underworld-likes) the intelligence-equivalent attributes cap your proficiency in their related fields. So there it kinda makes sense if you wanna prevent super-effective allrounder-characters.

TBH, the redundancy comes in the first place from having multiple casting classes that don't differ mechanically. Like, it's one thing differentiating between Wizards and Sorcerers in 3.5e (or Preservers in Dark Sun setting), since they follow very different casting rules. But Priests and Wizards both have the same casting rules and so much overlap in terms of what their spells do, they might as well be one class.
It arguably becomes even worse in a classless single-character system, because if you have a lot of overlapping between the spell schools, you might as well merge them into one. And if you make the spell schools very different in terms of what they do (e.g. divine only heals, cosmic only deals damage), then the player is just forced to become a jack of all trades.

 

[Black Angel]

Well, damn, I only really notice this just now.

Yet another potential incline added to my list of 'will observe with hopefulness'. Looking forward to see you rise and claim a place among the Pantheons of New Age RPGs