OT: Making a Game System (part 2)

[Omnirizon]

OK. thanks for all input so far. here's the next section...

for a recap. recall 'threat' is an abstract amount of threat the weapon poses that forces a defender to expend 'vitality' to parry, avoid, or whatever. I think I will now begin calling threat 'attack', because it sticks somewhat with naming conventions, and is easier to abbreviate.

at the core, the attack and defense system works like this:

attack/defense = vitality loss

I am choosing this model because then there is always some vitality loss for the act of defending one's self; basically defending one's self is stressing. with skills, experience, and stats that stress becomes easier to handle, more natural, fewer mistakes are made, ect, and vitality loss and the ratio of vitality loss will be lowered.


been discussed so far is how to determine the attack and defense values. I'm leaning towards some kind of average of values drawn from stats, skills, arms, ect; I'm desiring some kind of average that will penalize over-specialization (such as harmonic or geometric). Lokean and others suggest that harmonic means are too severely skewed towards smaller values, and also are not conceptually "correct" in my system. Lokean suggested geometric means are more suited, so I think they will be used.

at the moment, I am looking at the following going into an attack value:

perception
psyche
skills
arms

perception and psyche are base stats
skills are skills (ZOMG!)
arms is the bonus to attack provided by equipment.

these values may be weighted, but we will worry with this later
strength and dexterity are moderated through arms. basically, arms have a minimum str and dex value. they can be used with less than this value, but then suffer to their 'arms' value contribution to the attack average. also, if the user has higher str or dex then required, an additional bonus is provided. I will take the difference of required stat minus actual stat, and then get the natural exponent of this. The 'arms' value of the weapon is multiplied by this result, and that product is what goes into the 'arms' portion of the attack average. (I am using all this math for a reason! I want diminishing returns and curvilinear models, I think those are most accurate for what we are dealing with here.)

so basically...

exp(reqstat - stat) * armsvalue

this will have the effect of severely penalizing a deficient stat, while providing a diminishing bonus for excessive one. also, this can be used to make some weapons more deadly with dexterity, and others with strength, making character design more personal. The very strong but clumsy character will have a really good reason to use an iron club rather than a rapier for example.


thoughts?

EDIT: wait, exp(x) wouldn't be working right, ln(x) would be right, but doesn't have the pleasant quality of being a 1 when stats = reqstats. but maybe people can see the idea I'm going for. will have to work on the formula a bit. maybe:

ln(e + (stat - reqstat))
?