[FrankTrollman]

Certainly one relatively easy way to program that would be to have each ability have something thatads to its chances of showing up. So the more MR you have, the bigger a chance you have of getting Iron Will. The more hit points you have, the more chance you have of getting Toughness. And so on and so on.

That way Extraordinary Researcher s never going to happen on an Ulmish Commander, but has a noticeable chance of showing up on a Wizard - your number of chances to get the ability is simply your Research value.

This way, everyone has a chance of getting the basic common ones, because everyone has MR, Strength, Attack, and Defense scores, everybody has some number of hit points. Furthermore, this way the game doesn't automatically shunt a Queen of Water into not getting Toughness just because technically she is a mage.

Some of the weirder abilities can have one chance of showing up basically and then add some obscure amount. So every 25 full points of undead leadership gets you one more chance to get Necromancy. Every path of blood you have gets you an additional chance to get Demonology. But these skills would show up occassionally on other characters as well.

So your chance of getting any particular ability would be:

(Number of Chances to get that ability)
-------------------------
(Total Number of Chances for all possible abilities)

And everyone is walking in there with a bunch of chances for the standards: Toughness (hit points), Heroic Strength (strength), Extraordinary Precision (Presicion), Lightning Reflexes (Defense)...

And some people are walking in there with chances for weird powers: Sorcery (total paths in Sorcery), Great Wealth (total upkeep cost, rounded down), Battle Bellow (total kills), Extraordinary Researcher (total Research), etc. etc.

-Frank