Aquiring new Skills

Fenrir-Lunaris · **WUT** Joined: 03 Feb 2003 Posts: 1747

Having to actually level-up characters to get their newer spells works for games such as ff4. Personally I dislike the idea. I've been kicking around some newer ability aquiring methods for Vikings, in hopes of spicing it up further.

Option 1 - Abilities are learned after battles by having heroes equip various weapons. There would be a weapon chart, where EVERY equip-able weapon has 2 or 3 spells it can teach, at various random % chances. So a longsword may teach Spinstrike with a 10% success rate, while the Falchion may have it at 50%. This plays very similar to FF9's ability learning system, except you only have to fight so many battles to aquire the skill by chance. This also has the added benefit of limiting various skills to each area, so you can't get something game-breaking like INSTANT DEATH SPELLS in the first area. The downside is that the after-battle scripts would be HUGE.

Option 2 - A gamelong subquest that involves obtaining various gods' blessings by performing tasks (bring Thor a replacement hammer from the blacksmith, give Odin some horseshoes for his horse). After completing these tasks, the gods simply bestow these spells on the party. Again, the quests involved could be tied to various areas of the game, so you can only aquire them as the game progresses. This method would also reward exploration of the game's areas.

Option 3 - Buy them in towns, possibly from a sage in the alchemists' shops. I personally hate this method but it could be very easily done, and is more interesting than simply gaining them from leveling up.

JSH357 · Joined: 02 Feb 2003 Posts: 1705

Option 2 will take the most work, but will fit the game better IMO. You could also have some fun mythological/community references.

DragonBlood · Joined: 07 Apr 2008 Posts: 83 Location: Prattville, AL

I agree with JSH.
Option two will be the hardest to to, but not only will it add an interesting way to acquire skills, but more gameplay!

Scython reaper · Posted: Fri May 09, 2008 8:54 pm Post subject:

Option 2 would be like making a whole new game.

Just leveling up to get spells isn't bad, because it's a good way to
make your players want to train with random encounters.

AJHunter · Posted: Mon Dec 21, 2009 12:07 am Post subject:

try a mix of all 3 options, along with the current system mixed in for good measure! Like, you could buy an instant death spell for $<big number> at an alchemy shop, a set of mini-quests for various gods, which give you spells related to that god's abilities, and that ff9-like thing, but you can also get some weaker spells by leveling up!