I don't want to directly rip off any certain system, but realize it's very difficult to completely try and create one's own role-playing system from the ground up.

So far I'm thinking of a 8 statistic system. I put in the 6 basic D&D statistics(hesitantly included charisma as it is mostly ignored by players of MUD's and online RPG's, but figured it could atleast play some role in nature/beast taming magic/feats) and decided on an extra 2... I figured 3 mainly physical stats, 3 mainly mental stats, 2 supplemental to either stats. Here's what I'm thinking so far...

STRENGTH
CONSTITUTION
DEXTERITY
INTELLIGENCE
WISDOM
CHARISMA
DISCIPLINE
AURA

Now after deciding that these may be an appropriate range of stats to have, I've been thinking rather than stay in low numbers like D&D I'd rather go with stats maxing out at 100 which means class based growth rates so not everyone maxes out their stats quickly.

But before getting into all the complexity of that, I've been trying to decide what exactly I want each stat to effect. I've been looking at many other MUD/RPG's but think that really it should be partially unique(as unique as the same old stat types that we've all seen for years can be). I'd really appreciate any and all of your input in what exactly you think each of these stats represents and what role it would play in a text-based rpg. Hopefully I'll get a lot of board members opinions and afterwards I'll toss in my own vision of each stat and how I see it panning out.

Thanks,
Me

If you read that, it kind of gives you the impression that you will be able to increase spells through usage, but also able to alter their effects and settings through specialized training. I'm thinking the discipline stat would play a roll in training points and such, but also in your ability to learn and specialize abilities/spells proficiently.

I would talk more but I'm incapable.

Later I'll post some ideas and info.

STRENGTH - Really important... For physical attacks...
CONSTITUTION - huh? No idea on what this is.
DEXTERITY - I prefer agility myself... Important for determining if a monster hits you or not.
INTELLIGENCE - Needed for spell's. I prefer Magic Power myself.
WISDOM - same as intelligence?
CHARISMA - I personally don't see this as needed... But it could be used, as DarkAng3l said to change game events accordingly...
DISCIPLINE - I don't see what this could be used for.
AURA - Aura? No idea of this.

Now personally I think a "stat" is based on the player's status... So this should basically be:
Health (HP) ... Can be a percentage or an ammount. The game should use the ammount while the player can see the percentage and/or the ammount.
Magic (MP) ... This can be general or specific - but with mostly any system there would be some way to limit the ammount of magic the player uses.
Hit % ... The probability the player would have to hit the enemy. This can be general and/or weapon specific - it could even apply to magic, although I would prefer the effect on the monster to differ rather then the probability.
Defense ... This can be physical (ie defense against ALL physical hits), magical, elemental, weapon (ie sword or rifle or stick) specific. As you can see - Physical is the general form - while weapon's are the specific physical form... The same with Magical (gen) and Elemental (spec).
Speed ... If it's purely turn-based you don't need this. But I would rather have a boss that needed me to "level-up" to get faster so we were turn-based or I had 2 moves to his 1 move.

That's the basic's I think, any others may be game-specific.

As DarkAng3l brang up in his post, skill's... Now I have only played (about) 3 games which used skill's for magic and/or weapons (one I'm playing now is FF2). These are very good due to you using the magic to get it's power up. This also means you have a stat for the magics and weapons making an old weapon better then a new weapon at first BUT when you level your new weapon up you'll have a better weapon. This can also challenge the player due to one sword being pretty weak at first but levelling up makes it the best sword in the game - the same with magic, a flame magic which can only light matches in the beginning can turn out to be an atomic blast at the end. It gives so much versatility.

There are my views on everything...

Initially I'd have to be honest it would be a world where only a max of three people are online simultaneously(because of course QuestNet limits you to that). People could randomly log in, create a character explore, perhaps meet others(the two others who could possibly be logged on at the same time). People could create characters and hunt monsters in a small area initially, learn the magic & skill systems, have fun, roleplay with the other couple people online. During this phase seeing as things would be small, I would probably write up quests in my spare time, create npc's to propose them to the players, and sort of DM the 3 people in game through an intimate little quest. I think that would be great, sort of like online table top D&D game of sorts.

Eventually after QuestNet has been improved and upgraded by the talented alex, I would like to escalate the game to a persistent world, where multiple users can be online at a time, create societies of their own, buy/sell/trade things, be at odds against others in game. Of course this can't happen untill a few other things happen, the first of which questnet advancing, the second me getting a cable modem again(2 weeks tops), third me getting atleast a gig of ram(month and a half or so from now). Ultimately I'd like an online world of a few cities, numerous, vast wilds, and quite a few player made societies and what-not. Yes this is far off and the game/code will undoubtedly change numerous times. There may be slumps in production, systems re-written, and there still is about 40 kilos of code to be written(I had no better way to write a lot of code).

All that being said let me share some of my notes with you. These are clipped straight from my growing collection so if some seem scattered brained and odd, just trust me and try and read through any nonsense.

3 Tiered(Or Possibly More) Skill System -
-------------------------------------------------------------
Level Based Tier - Require experience be gained to advance in levels. Give MTP/PTP's for training in skills(Armor, Weapons, Shield, etc) after appropriate amount of experience is gained.

Skill Based Tier - The more a skill/spell is practiced(No idea what VERBS to use for this, could even be dependent on the skill/spell...IE:MEDITATE on CONCENTRATION, PRACTICE) the more effective it is. Not necessarily by using the skill/spell itself as that would cancel out needing to level, but supporting skills in a sense.

This was my very primitive idea for how things would sort of be. I've kind of extended on it so it's like, you train to earn levels, with each level you earn a certain amount of physical and mental training points(dependant on stats and factors yet to be named...Discipline would most likely be a big part of this). After earning the experience to train to the next level you visit your guild or trainer and use the training points to train in different skills, most likely some relative to your class but others relative to all classes. Training in weapons, fighting styles, combat skills, armor use, shield use etc., increases your defense and attack according to how you specified using the style and weapon you trained in. Also with leveling/training your stats can increase from where you initially placed them thus also possibly increasing your defense, attack, resistance to stuns, magic and all other sorts of things. I'm not explaining it too well maybe, here's some notes on classes/skills.

CLASS NOTES
----------------------------------------------------
Ok, so there are classes and sub-classes. Classes are
your basic, Warrior, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric, etc. All
classes have their own Type-Class based on overall
Lawful-Neutral-Unlawful alignment. Different degrees
of alignment have of course different titles associated
with them. Most likely you will be able to choose to
hide your Class title, but, you will not be able to
change it without altering your alignment. This would
promote roleplaying a constant figure if you wanted to
stay a soul keep or warlock or whatever. Perhaps do not
allow people to turn off their titles and have others
free to react to them by their titles, which for a change
will have a meaning. The overall alignment could be
based on lawful-neutral-unlawful and good-neutral-evil
much like D&D.

Example:
Profession: Warrior Rogue Cleric
Lawful: Knight Locksmith Priest
Neutral: Warrior Rogue Cleric
Unlawful: Marauder Thief Soul Keeper

Sub-classes will be specializations of professions.
Rogues can be assassins, bounty hunters, etc.. While
warriors could be, berserkers, etc... Certain sub-classes
will be only available to certain classes who have trained
a certain way, others to any class who trains a particular
way. Some will be restricted to only certain classes.

For physical characters(warriors, rogues, etc.), sub-classes
will mainly present themselves in the form of guilds, some
hidden, some very open about their existence. Some aligned
lawfully/unlawfully, some good/evil, some neutral for the
most part and others truly neutral.

For magic users sub-classes present themselves through a
combination of their own good/neutral/evil alignment and
through their alignment to nature and the elements. This
will lead to immense specialization variables for spell
casters.

Clerics sub-classes present themselves in a similar manner
as regular magic users, but combines the clerics good/evil
alignment with the alignment of the god they worship.

That elaborates a little on the class system. The given examples were just stuff off the top of my head at the time nothing even close to set in stone and tiny numbers. I'm guessing in my head, that for each class it would only be reasonable to have 10 sub-classes or so. I say this because with the different schools/elements of magic I'm interested in, magic users should be VERY customizable. IE: Woodmages, necromancers, illusionists, enchanters, etc. Even if some are similar to others, they may have a different alignment which would result in their skills being different in effect/style. Example: Bounty hunters may have skills that enable them to capture a bountied foe or render him unconscious while Assassins skills may be similar but kill the bountied foe and bring his hand as proof(or perhaps poison the foe, forcing it to come along or die). Maybe that was a bad example.

Oh well, the notes continue, here's part of my unfinished ideas of roles stats play in character ability.

Stats
--------------------------------------------------------------
STRENGTH - determines attack base, encumberance, swingtime
CONSTITUTION - determines hit points, physical damage resistance
DEXTERITY - determines physical defense base, magic bolt defense
INTELLIGENCE - determines experience gain, magic strength
WISDOM -
CHARISMA -
AURA - spiritual link to the mana around you, determines mana, mana regeneration, perhaps defense against some spells(dark aligned characters aura may help against light aligned spells and vice versa)
DISCIPLINE - Used to determine training points, gained experience per kill, effects rate of learning for secondary skills(ie: skills that the more you use them the better you get at them)

Those are some of the ideas I had for what stats would mean as far as effecting character abilities. I'm not set in stone at all and I'm going to be refining them based on what seems most logical and most well-balanced. Stats would have growth rates based on classes, and perhaps the growth rates may be modified by certain races, IE even though the giant is a wizard, his strength increases to somewhat compensate that he learns intelligence(perhaps an important wizard stat) slower than an elf. I don't know I'm still completely in planning and trying to figure out numbers and what would seem fair, balanced, and logical.

Combat system is something I'm working on currently. This came about because the first set of mechanics numbers I tried to figure out was, what would determine how hard you attack. I've been thinking really hard about it all and it makes sense to me what I'm thinking, but I haven't been around any people that know rpg's/mud's very well to bounce the ideas off of... But here it is.

COMBAT/WEAPON SYSTEM NOTES
----------------------------------
Ok, system is comprised of four factors

WEAPON SKILL - This is the overall attack
boost yielded from training in a particular
weapon style and from training in combat
manuevers. It is a mechanics term and will
not be thrown around in gameplay(I hope).

WEAPON STYLE - These are the actual types
of weapons used, blunt, edged, etc. You
can train up to twice in as many weapon
styles you choose as long as you don't
mind sacrificing training in other fields.
Weapon style alone will not increase your
attack strength but must be partnered with
combat manuevers training. Doubling in a
weapon style but not training in combat
manuevers will increase your proficiency
within the style but leave you unable to
use the proficiency in an attack. Weapon
style training will still effect your
defensive capabilities if you train in a
fighting style.

COMBAT MANUEVERS - Combat Manuevers is your
actual ability to take what you know of a
weapon style and translate it into fighting
ability. If you do not train in combat man-
uevers you will not yield any added attack
strength no matter how much you train in a
weapon style.

FIGHTING STYLE - Fighting style is how your
character chooses to act in combat. Does the
character wear a shield and weild a weapon,
swing one weapon leaving a free hand, attack
with a single weapon gripped with both hands,
or wield a weapon in each hand? Fighting style
gives an attack/defense boost in conjunction
with weapon style training when using the trained
in fighting style.

EXAMPLE: Training in EDGED WEAPONS STYLE and
training in SINGLE WEAPON FIGHTING STYLE would
give you a defensive boost relative to your
EDGED WEAPONS STYLE proficiency when using an
edged weapon with your off-hand free. It would
also give you a boost when using any type of
weapon with your off-hand free, but the boost
would be relative to your proficiency in that
weapon style and if no proficiency was found
the boost would be a low flat boost per ranks
had in the fighting style.

I hope that sort of explains what I'm forseeing, and I hope it also makes sense or atleast seems to make sense. It did to me when I was thinking it up and continues to as I make progress on it. I'm currently designing an excel spreadsheet(and almost done right now) for calculating my proposed formulas for attack/defense strengths and also for weight, stat growth, and weapon skill growth as they progress. I feel this will help me see how characters would compare to others of different races/classes at higher levels allowing me to see if any particulars are overwhelmingly powerful.

In closing here's some crappy notes on weapon styles, there is a mistake which is I listed two-weapon style as a weapon style when it would actually be a fighting style. Fighting styles are going to be something that will give players a bit more attack ability as they become more proficient in their style, may change messaging for attacking/defending dependant on skill and opponents skill/style, but also to give players who choose to not wear a shield, not keep a hand free, wield a weapon with both hands(not just two-handed weapons either), or wield two weapons bit of a defensive boost. Of course the boost wouldn't be very comparable to the boost a shield user would gain(sword and shield style would be a fighting style as well, and probably a very popular one), but it would be something allowing characters to still be viable despite low defense. Perhaps secondary skills related to fighting styles could be created that would allow for someone to use their free off-hand to throw dirt in an attackers eyes when on the ground. This is just babbling, I haven't put thought into that at all, here's the crappy notes.

WEAPON STYLE NOTES
----------------------------------
Max of 2 ranks per weapon style per train, but,
you can double train in multiple weapon styles
per level if points allow it.

WEAPON STYLES
----------------------------------
EDGED WEAPONS
BLUNT WEAPONS
2-HANDED WEAPONS
BRAWLING
2-WEAPON STYLE (EVENTUALLY)
RANGED (EVENTUALLY)

FIGHTING STYLES
---------------------------------
Sword & Shield Style
Single Weapon Style
Two-Handed Weapon Style
Two-Weapon Style
Bare Fisted(some sort of martial arts or something, defense would have to be ample as brawlers with no weapon or shield to guard, monks probably no armor, would need a reasonable defense boost)

Well that's some of my notes for now, I left out formulas because I don't want all that shared. I'm still worried about people jacking my ideas from this, but felt if there was a community I could trust it was this one. Hopefully people respect all of this as my intellectual property, which is actually BS since everything is influenced by some outside source making all things public domain, but you get my drift.

Any input would be great. Even better would be if we could have a thread that doesn't die out pitifully.

Well, I'd certainly be very interested in how you convert all your RPG theories & ideas into code. I'm quite sure there are a lot of potential intricacies involved even if I have got only a vague idea of how it would all slot together.

I'd really like to be able to make some meaningful comments on the concepts of your stats & combat systems here, but as I am not an RPG-er myself, I fear my input would be of very little (if any) practical use.

Given that there are people asking about 'combat systems' and 'health' (stats?) issues on this forum, I think it is rather a pity that you want to keep your formulae (code) to yourself. I suggest that what would be VERY useful to a lot of people is a library of RPG routines that could be included and used by those not able to make their own systems.

If I knew enough about RPG's I might take writing a library on myself, but frankly I don't have the background knowledge required, nor the inclination to acquire it.

Perhaps those 'Quest-ers' who would find such a library useful could collaborate and produce one between them?

But there is some difference between MUD style and single player systems.

Personally I'd love to see how he intends to slow certain people down (a player being able to cast flame on another player 10 times in 1 second while the other is a beginner isn't very fair).

I also have some issues myself on working out how hit's are determined (if you have a certain % in agility to miss attacks and they have a certain hit % then how do you determine the answer?). The only way I see around it is turning them into real numbers (1 to 100 or 1000) and using that to compare to the other.

Basically, considering the player properties in questnet is a little haywire, for now I'll be implementing player stats and variables via an object called %userid%-charsheet. This will hold properties for each value designated to a players character. All stats, features, base rolls, etc for the character will be stored in the object. When you first create your character, you'll pick stats, go through an initial training process and then be let into the world. Your stats will determine your offensive and defensive capabilities, as well as other factors such as swingtimes(I guess roundtimes is a more familiar term) and casting times.

So say, 'Player A' a warrior and 'Player B' a wizard are fighting.

'Player A' types 'attack Player B' this runs a default attack script getting the properties...

ATTACK BASE(His default attack power at his current level, calculated from his strength stat.)

WEAPON SKILL(His bonus to attack strength dependant on the amount of training he's done with the particular weapon he's using.)

FIGHTING STYLE(This is a bonus based on the current style the player is using and is calculated by how much he has trained in the particular style... IE: If he has a shield in his off-hand and a sword in his other, and has trained to fight that way, he gets an according boost, if he has just a sword out, but hasn't trained in single weapon style, he would get no boost. So far, I'm thinking fighting style training would be mainly to boost defense, but it may also yield a small boost to attack since that seems logical... To me atleast.)

WEAPON STRENGTH(The extra attack power from the weapon he's using. A long sword may only boost it 1, but a magical long sword may boost it 5. This property would be stored in the weapon of course.)

SWINGTIME + WEAPON WEIGHT(This would be the player's default swingtime..IE: Swinging his bare fist, PLUS the weight of the weapon calculated, I haven't started with this yet, to equal the cost of seconds necessary to attack.

From 'Player A'. The script also aquires the 'Player B' properties...

DEFENSE BASE(The player's base defense reguardless of any armor or protective spells, this is most likely calculated from the player's dexterity stat.)

ARMOR DEFENSE(The defense added by any armor the player is wearing. Basically a defensive version of WEAPON STRENGTH.)

FIGHTING STYLE(My default idea for the defensive boost of the fighting style was that the player would recieve a defensive boost equal to some number based on their training for the style they are in. BUT, the more I think about it, I think perhaps it should figure the style they are using by their wielded equipment, then give a boost relating to the weapon they are using and boost for the off-hand(if any) item they are using relative to their training in the fighting style PLUS the off-hand items defesnive properties(if any). This would allow for shield users to recieve a bonus for their shield PLUS for knowing how to use a shield. I don't know, like I've said before it's still in planning/design.)

EXTRA DEFENSE(This would be any defensive boosts gained by magical spells currently cast on the player. It would also calculate spells cast on the character to lower their defense if such spells were implemented. I still haven't decided on that.)

Then the properties of the respective players would be added together, giving their ATTACK and DEFENSE, then a random 1-100 number would be picked for the Attacker, added to his attack, both sums, compared, and depending on the difference of the sums, damage(if any) would be dealt accordingly.

Of course I left out some of the details but I was just trying to give you an overview of how things would be carried out.

Putting the player in roundtime, thus stopping it from attacking, moving, etc, would be carried out with timers. I'm not sure if they could be made on the fly, so perhaps they would just have to be defined in the code, timers from 2 seconds to 80 seconds or so. All commands that are an "action" except for perhaps, look and say/ask/etc, would have a check to see if the player is in roundtime, and message back "You are unable to move."

I hope all that made sense, again input is always helpful and appreciated, especially ideas about the "fighting styles" and what seems logical for them, because I'm struggling a tiny bit, and want things to be balanced.

say like, your constitution was 16, u may get around 5-8 HP when you next level, but if it was like 18-20, u may get around 10-15 HP when you level. =) and i think aura is mana. wisdom could be how much aura/man you get when you level.