Combat design to balance magic vs. melee

[Jackolantern]

I just thought of this idea, and it is really unlike anything I have seen before. Maybe there is a reason for that, though

A constant challenge in classless games is how to manage magic vs. melee. If players build their own characters, they will stack up the most powerful offensive spells, the most powerful healing spells, and the most powerful defensive melee, or other similar solo-focused powerhouse builds.

What I was thinking is what if players had to balance several different "attributes" during combat? For example, there could be Rage, Thoughtfulness, Focus, Bloodthirst, etc. Depending on the spec of the player's build, they enter combat with a certain default values for these attributes. These attributes effect what skills and spells will work best, with spells requiring more mind-based attributes (such as Healing requiring Thoughtfulness, Fireballs requiring Focus, etc.) while melee skills would require more physical skills (such as a blade-flury requiring Bloodthirst, etc.). But the difference is that what they do during combat alters them in real time. For example, a strong offensive attack may relieve some of the player's Rage while building up Focus to replace it. Or, the reverse, casting a strong spell may cause the player to lose Focus and build up instinctive Rage. The stronger the ability, the more change it causes in the attributes. So players could theoretically keep the status-quo by casting small spells over and over, although this would probably only work for mindless encounters far below the player's current ability. Maybe even some natural things that happen during combat change the attributes as well, such as being mind-fried by a spell or being critically hit by a melee attack.

The benefits that I think this gives is that it makes player's builds move dynamically as they play. You can just horde powerful abilities and sit back and hit the same 3 hotkeys all day. I think it could really make it very skill-based, because players would have to really pay attention to what is going on in combat, and be able to react immediately and even think ahead about where they are building their attributes to, what they want to use, and how they will recover after they do it while keeping damage output or healing up. Strategy could get to chess-type depths in PvP or group-based boss battles as well lol. It could make for a very dynamic combat system.

What do you think?

EDIT: Ohh, and to support pure-casters or pure-melee characters, there could be "bridge" skills/spells that instantly translate amounts of attributes to a desired location, while perhaps requiring large amounts of mana or something like that. It would need to have some kind of limitation of penalty to keep players from keeping all their attributes right where they want them constantly.

[hallsofvallhalla]

wow i like it. It also can be a great way to limit ability and spell use instead of spell points or mana. The more times you cast fireball the less focus you have and once you hit a critical point you can no longer cast that but can fire on a another spell that could balance it and once you lose all focus you are at a negative at skills and things.

Very kewl I like it and may have to steal it then say it was my idea hahaha

[Jackolantern]

I say go for it! Glad you like it

It would also be very do-able in a PBBG. Each combat attribute would just become another MySQL column like Strength, Intelligence, etc. Then maybe when combat starts (or even when it ends), you could set them back to their default values.

[Callan S.]

Jack,

Yeah, I think your describing the difference between playing with a buch of previously decided choices, and starting play with no choices having been made and deciding your build for that battle. Have you ever played the card game 'lunch money'? Great game! You get a hand of cards and it's often a matter of trying to sit on some cards to build up a combo and discard or use others in the meantime.

I think what your describing is really more like actual gameplay, because your not sitting on a choice you made a week or a month ago, your sitting on a choice you may have made a second ago and might change again. Eg, I'm not sure talent trees in wow are actually gameplay at all - once it's set, you don't make any more choices about it. So when you get into a fight, it's really not part of that fight.

Perhaps your advancement system is how high you can raise a stat to, in combat? Like you have int 9, you advance and can now can raise it up to int 10. But you might not use int ten in every battle - in each battle you might assign your points elsewhere. But now that you have int ten, when you really critically need to pour all your points into it, you've got access to it. So it is an advance in power - power that comes from expanded flexibility!

[Jackolantern]

I watched a group play Lunch Money years ago, but I honestly don't remember much about it beyond the fact that they really enjoyed it hehe

And that sounds pretty interesting. I do think a system where advancement = more flexibility could work well with a combat system like this.

I also agree with your assessment that it is almost like a second-by-second build. Obviously successful players will create long-term strategies for how they want their character to perform as a whole, but my main goals were to be able to balance hybrid magic and melee users (something many players like making in classless games since classed games either don't support it or heavily penalize hybrid classes), and also to break the cycle players get in to of jamming the same hotkeys over and over, and truly creating a dynamic combat system where each battle evolves on its own.