So, I mentioned to Andy K. quite some time ago, that I had wanted to do some kind of Dragon Quest inspired fantasy game, with an emphasis on that sort of light fantasy and simplicity of mechanics.

I've been thinking about it a lot lately, as I've been reading a bit through the old red box, and Palladium 1e.  

One of the big things I wanted to do was to make it very, very quick to level up, so that it was something you could do in game in as much time as it would take to run a combat round, or less, and thus be able to handle such on the fly.

Right now, what I'm think of, is classes defining specific mathematical intervals upon which stats improve, allowing a simple bit of checking multiples, and being in keeping with the escalating stats common to JRPGs.

So for example, a Thief's Strength stat might be defined as improving every second level, while a Fighter's would improve every level, and a Wizard's would improve every 4th level.  

So to level up, you'd just look at the number of the new level, and determine if it was a multiple of any of the factors needed for each stat, and if so, improve that stat by 1 point.

For hit points, I'm thinking the classic D&D usage of the hit die would work well, ditto for magic points.  For spells/abilities, learning X spell at X level works well enough.

I'm still debating the inclusion of a mundane skill system, however, as well as trying to ponder vectors of customization that will allow one to tweak one's character to one's liking without being too over complex.

Combat I would like to keep to single-roll resolution somehow.  Possibly simply a matter of comparing attack and defense factors, with an appropriate die roll, and the difference being applied as damage, while a negative damage amount would simply indicate a miss.  I'm still not sure what dice are going to be involved, however, and how they'll be derived.  I'd like them to escalate with levels somehow, I'm just not sure how exactly.  

I'm also gonna need to reach back in my brain a bit and pull up the setting feel I wanted to go for.  Maybe I should play DQ5 again . . .

So not like the Dragonquest (tabletop) RPG, where you had skill blocks?

Darn. Ah well, so explain this in more detail

Don't most JRPG's use spell points? I know spells are often limited you learn X spell at such and such a point, but then they use spell points to control how often it is cast? (Understand I've played only a handful of JRPG's, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy 2 and 7, Final Fantasy Tactics, Tactics Ogre, Persona )


For some reason I always get the feeling of a "lottery" machine with the few I've played. Imagine 4d6, where you and an opponent both roll--you then compare dice to dice for success/how much damage you do. So if you roll  1,3, 4, 2 and they roll 2, 3, 5, 6   You match the 3 and 2 and do 1/2 max damage. If there are no matches its a "miss", if everything matches you do 100% damage.

Anyway, its just how it always felt to me in those games, not how they necessarily really work.

The DQ spells are straight forward:  Each spell has a level requirement, once you get to that level, you earn that spell.  Spells are cast from a pool of MP, with the MP cost largely based on the strength of the spell. You can cast any spell you know at any time, given sufficient MP.

If I wanted to add a touch more customization though, I suppose I could just instead give a level divisor for spell acquisition, and let the players pick,  though of course, with some limitations, ie. no taking Hurtmore at level 1, that sort of thing.

Further thought, and play of Dragon Quest 8, has left me considering something rather like the game's skills system.  

Basically, every character in the game has a set of 5 skills, 3 of which are various weapons, one is unarmed, the other is some special attribute specific to that character.  Every level you're given skill points to spend that work basically like seperate experience points, with every so many points giving you some new ability (also scaling upwards in a curve), whether a new spell or a bonus to using that particular weapon, etc.  This isn't the only source of new spells however, as some spells are simply learned automatically by character level.

What I was thinking was, taking this system all the way, and essentially building the classes through a combination of stat progression, and which skills are available.  The skills could be relatively standalone, so that building a new class would be as trivial as assigning stat progression and picking X number of skills.  Character customization would then come in deciding where to spend your skill points.  Each level you get a number of skill points, and much like DQ8, upon reaching X number of skill points in a skill, you get some new spell or ability.  The difference would be, that this is the only way to get new abilities, class level alone would only determine stats, hit points, etc.