A Case Against Leveling Systems

[Anderas]

In my ideal world, the best combo would involve someone evolving into the elf skills, someone evolving into the warrior skills, someone evolving into the dwarf skills and someone evolving into the wizardry - and that be the best just because the combination of the four heroes is stronger than any one of them alone.

It's missing today in Heroquest, you can take apart the group and replace parts without noticing.

A combination that works best if... dunno

the dwarf makes a ballista for the elf to shoot; to give the wizard some kind of focus lens, to give the barbarian some made-up shield.
the elf provides some extra power for a spell of the wizard, to dance around the barbarian to kill the one goblin on his backside, to enchant some dwarfen woodstuff into living better woodstuff
the wizard making the barbarian going nuts, the elf flying and the dwarf trap finding skill better
the barbarian lending out a shield-hand for the elf to fire his bow anytime, to fight an enemy over the head of the dwarf together with him, to protect the wizard...

You know, this kind of stuff where everybody is best off if they help each other, as buyable, expensive skill. And a super-ninia-turtle-skill for all of them together. Whatever that may be. Like that, the best combination would be directly on the front cover of the game box.

[knightkrawler]

I agree.
So, each skill twice, with staggered pricing for all four heroes.
Let's say, +1 on attacks against orthogonally adjacent squares. Warrior has that one from the get-go, Sojourner/Dwarf can buy it for 800 moneys, Adept/Elf for 2100 moneys, Wizard for 5500 moneys. That's just an example for a staggering along the lines of the Fibonacci sequence with zeroes.
I need to start playing again to get an idea on how much money heroes make before offering those skills before, say, quest pack number 5 or 6 (my QP's only have 4 quests on average before the 5th or 6th) or when equipment is threatening to max out.


Any other concrete ideas on how to avoid built-in problems with the system?
One could also write quests that implement situations where having a certain comination of skills makes for some easiert getting through. Even more so if the whole group shares a combination of skills among them.

[Goblin-King]

Have a single skill tree or skill grid with several starting points. You can buy from warrior towards wizard, but must do so in a way that the skills connect. A bit hard to explain without visuals. Did I make sense?
I could also imagine a skill tree which lets you start in the middle and branches out in all directions. Each general direction corresponds to a hero archetype.

You could also have certain skills be "master skills" or whatever. Dwarf can buy elf or wizard skills, but the elf and wizard master skills are off limits.
Being allowed to pick 3 spell decks for a quest would be a wizard master skill. If you want that kind of spell power you can't pick the barbarians multi-hit-cleave master skill as well. But a lesser skill like attacking diagonally could still be bought by the wizard even though it's a fighter oriented skill.

[knightkrawler]

Have a single skill tree or skill grid with several starting points. You can buy from warrior towards wizard, but must do so in a way that the skills connect. A bit hard to explain without visuals. Did I make sense?

Yes, I know exactly what you mean.

I could also imagine a skill tree which lets you start in the middle and branches out in all directions. Each general direction corresponds to a hero archetype.

You could also have certain skills be "master skills" or whatever. Dwarf can buy elf or wizard skills, but the elf and wizard master skills are off limits.
Being allowed to pick 3 spell decks for a quest would be a wizard master skill. If you want that kind of spell power you can't pick the barbarians multi-hit-cleave master skill as well. But a lesser skill like attacking diagonally could still be bought by the wizard even though it's a fighter oriented skill.

Some nice ideas right there, thanks!

[torilen]

Look way back to the basic D&D game for what could be the ideal group of heroes.

Typically, the designers of the game thought there should be one, sometimes two,
good fighters...high Body Points, heavy attack, good defense. There should be one
good at stealth, lock picking, and disabling traps. There should be one good at
offensive magic use. And there should be one good at defensive and/or healing
magic use.

How that would translate into HQ, I'm not sure. The barbarian, of course, is the
fighter...the dwarf would be closest to the stealth, lock picking, and disabling
traps...but can also fight well. The wizard would be closest to the magic use...
but there would be a disconnect for offensive vs. defensive/healing magic.

Really, I would say give the elf some offensive magic and let him/her use that
along with the fighting skills, and let the wizard have the defensive/healing magic
with just a bit of offensive magic.

But this leads to one of the big complaints from players in D&D...the cleric/priest/
healer doesn't get a lot of good play until characters need healing. You could develop
a means of turning undead, similar to D&D, and let the wizard use that...sort of a
good necromancy kind of skill...and then they would get some good play.

[Goblin-King]

Forgot to write... The whole idea with "master skills" is that once you pick your first one; that's the moment you lock down on your main focus.
So you can level up in fighter and magic skills equally, but once it's time to pick one of the really good ones you make a bit more of a commitment.

I think it's a fairly elegant way to control power combos.

[The Admiral]

You could develop a means of turning undead, similar to D&D, and let the wizard use that...sort of a
good necromancy kind of skill...and then they would get some good play.

Here is my Cleric with my take on Turn Undead.

[Anderas]

I like the idea of turning a hero to undead.
"Your hero was not healed, he is now undead. Finish this quest with a Mummy instead of a Hero model. Start the next quest with a zombie. After that one, play with a skeleton for the rest of your eternal non-life" If you decide to learn magic-use, play with the model of the witch lord instead.

Darklight has a "Revenant" as a hero model. He must regularly sacrifice the souls of his killed enemies to stay alive.

Goblin King, one question -
In your model you start with a neutral hero and buy some skills until you are a master.

->

Or was it you start with a model and then everybody can develop himself to be what he wants?

-> -> -> -> -> ->

What about use it or you lose it: If you develop too much in one direction, you lose skills of another specialization?

[Goblin-King]

Think of it this way. There are several skill trees. You can buy your way up through a single tree or put points in two or even all four.
Some of the skills are marked as master skills (or class skills or whatever). Master skills are NOT the final, ultimate end-character skills!
So if you pick one of the master skills from the fighter tree, you can still keep investing in the magic tree, but now you can only buy master skills from the fighter tree.

I see a couple of problems with "use it or lose it".
Why even allow to put points in a different tree if you are later specifically punished for doing so?
And what if I put all my points in the fighter tree, but near the end put a couple of points in the magic tree. Then the result would be the same, but now I've "cheated" to circumvent the rule?

But somehow this gave me another idea.
Imagine a skill tree with a lot of branches. To buy any given skill you must always have bought the skill leading up till that one.
Now in this system a hero only ever have 5 (or whatever) skill points. The first 5 are by the book. Earn one and place it in a legal skill. But once you earn what would have been your 6th point, instead of actually gaining a point, you may replace one of your first 5 points.
Typically you would remove one of the early skills and place it on top of your currently highest level skill.
This would have the benefit of a whole lot of skill based leveling - And you would not clutter your character with tonnes of small abilities.

[Anderas]

Yes perfect! I had a similar thing in mind, just no words today at 6 o clock. Thank you for telereading my mind and generating the words.