CRPG Skills: Do You Have the Skills to Pay to the Bills?
CRPG Skills – A Tricky Element to Get Right
This is the third in a series of posts where I will be outlining the Broken Staff CRPG system and giving an introduction of how it works.
In a previous post I covered attributes, which if we continue the admittedly poor analogy of our CRPG system as a human body would have attributes be the muscles.
This week we shall be discussing the third element of the system, CRPG skills. Skills are the ligaments in the body. The attributes and skills would be tightly joined to the effects, the skeleton of our system.
How to Handle Skills in a CRPG System
The two games that first made me appreciate the concept of skills and what you could do with them were:
To someone who started with the Gold Box AD&D games the large variety of skills in Daggerfall just blew my mind. I would spend hours fantasizing different character builds to create.
In a different way the skills in Quest for Glory really stood out. There weren’t really a lot of them but they had multiple ways you could affect the world. Combined with how you could use spells to affect the gameworld, Quest for Glory really raised the bar in CRPGs, that even to this day we see few games approach it. And it was just a hybrid CRPG-Adventure game…
In most games skills go from 0-100. In the Broken Staff CRPG system, skills are defined from 0-200 by default and you can increase that number if you need to.
Normally 100 is the base limit for a skill but spells, feats and other situations can improve skills beyond that limit. There is also an optional feat that is implemented that lets exceptional characters or monsters go above that threshold. The goal as always to is keep the system easy to extend and modify to suit different needs.
There are two files used to create the skill sub-system.
SkillGroups.xml
There are currently six CRPG skill groups:
- Combat
- Athletics
- Rogue
- Knowledge
- Magic
- Special
Right now there are no Special skills, but that is where you could add things like the Personal skills in Wizardry 7/8.
<SkillGroup>
<Id>combat</Id>
<Name>Combat</Name>
<Description>Combat</Description>
</SkillGroup>
Just like with attribute types there are just the three standard id, name and description fields.
Skill groups are thus a way to categorize skills.
Don’t worry, the skills are significantly more interesting.
Skills.xml
Skills handle gained knowledge a character has on various subjects and fields.
Combat Skills
Combat skills cover a character’s ability to use weapons or their body to inflict damage on enemies.
There are currently ten Combat Skills:
- Swords
- Axes
- Daggers
- Polearms
- Blunt
- Bows
- Crossbows
- Thrown
- Shield
- Boxing / Hand to Hand
Just from looking at this list a few changes you could make if you wanted:
- Swords could be split into small swords and large swords
- Polearms could be split into spears, halberds and other
- Blunt could be split into maces, hammers and clubs
- Sling could be added and removed from the thrown skill
- Numerous styles of martial arts could be added, each with their own variations
Athletic skills are the next group of skills. They cover both defensive combat abilities as well as physical abilities like running, jumping and climbing.
Athletics Skills
There are currently seven physical skills:
- Running
- Climb
- Swim
- Jump
- Ambidexterity (Dual wielding)
- Dodge
- Parry (Deflect)
The next set of skills are physical in nature but only used by rogues.
Rogue Skills
- Disable Traps
- Lockpick
- Sneak
- Deathstrike (Assassin)
- Pickpocket
Knowledge / Lore Skills
- History / Civilizations
- Mythology (Enemies)
- Artifacts / Item Lore
- Diplomacy
- Bartering
- Alchemy
- Enchanting
- Smithing
Magic Skills
The first six magical skills are the schools of magic. Each spellcasting class chooses one of these skills.
The arcane skill is used by both mages and warlocks.
The divine skill is used by both priests and necromancers.
- Arcane
- Divine
- Nature
- Mind
The last six magical skills focus on specific realms of magic and are used by all spellcasters.
- Fire
- Water
- Earth
- Air
- Mental
- Divine
Looking at a Skill
The example skill we will look at is blunt, a common combat skill that almost any class has access to.
<Skill>
<Id>blunt</Id>
<Name>Blunt</Name>
<!-- mixture of attack and defence -->
<IsUsable>Yes</IsUsable>
<Description>This skill governs fighting with various types of blunt weapons such as clubs, maces and hammers.</Description>
<SkillGroup>combat</SkillGroup>
<Requirements>
<Classes>
<Class>
<Id>fighter</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>berserker</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>ranger</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>paladin</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>blackguard</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>spellsword</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>adventurer</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>thief</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>bard</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>assassin</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>spy</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>swashbuckler</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>necromancer</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>priest</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>druid</Id>
</Class>
<Class>
<Id>psionic</Id>
</Class>
</Classes>
</Requirements>
<Values>
<Value>
<Id>60</Id>
<Effects>
<Effect>
<Id>attackbonus</Id>
<Value>4</Value>
</Effect>
<Effect>
<Id>damagebonus</Id>
<Value>3</Value>
</Effect>
<Effect>
<Id>initiative</Id>
<Value>1</Value>
</Effect>
<Effect>
<Id>extraattacks</Id>
<Value>1</Value>
</Effect>
</Effects>
</Value>
</Values>
</Skill>
You can see the standard id, name and description fields there.
As well there is the skill group field which is tied to one of the six skill groups (a way of organizing the skills in the UI) and a IsUsable field that defaults to yes but can be set to no for skills you only want NPCs or monsters to be able to use.
The next set of fields is for requirements to use the skill. In the default system the only requirement will be having a class but you could modify the system so that you had to be a certain character level or have a certain attribute value to start using a skill.
The next set of fields is the actual values for the skill and what effects they provide the character.
The example value I chose for this demonstration is 60, the first blunt skill level that provides an extra attack.
So you can see that at a skill of 60 you get +4 attack bonus, +3 to damage, +1 initiative and 1 extra attack over someone with a skill of 0.
Adding New Skills
If you wish to add new effects to your game you need to:
- Add a relevant entry in the Skills.xml file. This includes defining the available values for that skill and any effects attributed with that value.
- Next you would include the skill in any of the files that make use of it such as in: items, feats, classes, characters, monsters etc
Do you have any questions? Anyone? Anyone?
One of my next posts will cover another element of the CRPG system and soon there should be the v0.4 release.
Later on once I have finished the overview of the system I’ll come back to discuss skills in more depth including how you can implement them in your own games.
