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Class stat modifier vs stat growth

So after reading the wiki on stat growth and how it relates to both classes and races I am wondering if these will be a baked-in modifier or if it will be a growth mechanic. What do I mean?

There is a bit of rambling before I get to my main point. It'll be noted

In many games a character grows in certain ways. More mechanically intensive rpg games have small intricacies that affect the stat growth of your character. 

This could include:
  • Race
  • Gender
  • Class
  • Professions
  • Activities
  • Skill ups
  • Environment
  • Et cetera
Usually these are compounded per level or they go character level-less and have everything on a separate leveling system that grows your stats that way. An example would be a player mining to increase their stamina and strength, sprinting to increase their agility and stamina, reading to increase intelligence and wisdom, and practicing swordsmanship to increase their strength with longswords and bastard swords or dexterity with rapier and daggers. These systems usually work really well because you earn your power and are passively rewarded for doing what you are doing. These work best with character level-less systems. Armor often is just to reduce damage and does not contribute to your power. Weapons usually only do damage and occasionally are imbued or enchanted to do elemental or poison damage.

A game like morrowind would boost your character's stats depending on which skills you raised during that leveling period. So often, you'd want to raise skills that would be pertinent to your gameplay style without bloating irrelevant stats with irrelevant skills. Other rpgs would require you to plan out your entire leveling path to get the best stats. This could be something like I need to level samurai for 4 levels because they get and A rating in the dodge stat growth followed by 2 levels in tank to get my endurance and defence up to a certain level, and finish it up with gladiator so I can get that S rating strength and stamina growth. As long as there is a hard cap to your skill growth, it was important to level them in a very specific manner.

Then we have what is popular in mmos:
  • Character level
  • Equipment
  • Professions (uncommon)
These are a bit less fun or rewarding. Your player is basically a little sack of organs inside a magically imbued rail gun. Professions are just for money and don't affect your growth. Boring and uninspired imo. These are usually to allow tight control on player performance because everyone had the same allocation of stats and it didn't matter how you leveled. This is a more alt friendly approach as there is a ramp in power per time invested. This is a lazier design that doesn't reward investment.

There is plenty of games in the middle that dabble with growth elements while deriving your power largely from your gear. I personally would rather have just the first and be able to invest tons of time into my character. With a cap on skills this would allow the player to have direct control over their stat growth while also leaving it open to exploring additional avenues for more stat growth.

My main question and concern is the secondary class and how it affects your character. So we know we are going to have character levels and we are going to be locked to our primary class. That's fine. We also have some comments on how our stats will be modified by race and classes for each level. If this is the case then, depending on what percentage class growth stats are to your overall stats, the first secondary class could be very important to your endgame power.

My scenario: I level a dwarven fighter-mage to cap. That means my intellect grew because of the mage choice. If I were to reroll my secondary to a fighter-fighter then I'd be weaker than a player that leveled just fighter-fighter from the start. Because I'm at cap and I no longer can grow my stats. 

I have two solutions to even this out. You can either add a separate leveling progression for each secondary class to unlock all the abilities and build up your stat modifier. This could go at an accelerated rate or a catch up mechanic til it is the same level as your main. Or you can just have the secondary class have a flat modifier to your stats (this could be something like a percent bonus to relevant stats that will change with your secondary class selection).

I know that people will delete their characters and reroll them if they feel they could get that 1% gain. If leveling mage grew your mana pool and intellect and you instead leveled as summoner/summoner for a int and health bonus... some person out there will reroll them just to get off that one extra cast. I think if you have the secondary class have static bonuses... it'll help players feel unique while preventing players from feeling insecure about it.

Sorry about the meandering thoughts. Thank you for any feedback and I look forward to any discussions or thoughts that stem from this. All-in-all people will be people. Min-maxers will always have that compulsion and honestly, if they want to have leveling imbue permanent stat growths, that's something I can live with. I'll probably reroll a couple of characters out of sheer compulsion but that is my own shortcomings.

Comments

  • Interesting thoughts that I spent most of my time for many years struggling with:
    1. fighter fighter > fighter mage
    2. 1% better is still better and the only choice (aka non choice Meta)
    3. all aspects of a players build must influence the effect of that build.
    4. Higher level > Lower level instead of an ever more refined niche with diminishing return.
    5. Social separation of players through power creep.

    Step 1 is to convert individual magnitude to collective differential through an infinitely scalable system:
    • STR = 5
    • INT = 7
    • DEX = 3
    • TOTAL = 3+5+7 = 15.
    Therefore:
    • STR = 5/15 = 33%
    • INT = 7/15 = 47%
    • DEX = 3/15 = 20%
    • TOTAL = 100%
    Now we have defined the true nature of our character in a unitary way, these can become our multipliers. You could add a padding value to limit the range or scope of power differential.
    • STR = 5/20 = 25%
    • INT = 7/20 = 35%
    • DEX = 3/20 = 15%
    • PADDING = 5/20 = 25%
    • TOTAL = 100%
    But all you did was clip 25% off the top rather than create a 12.5% ~87.5% range. And when you realise that, you see what you should be using is 50% +-X%.

    Step 2 in essence then, is to allow a datum build at 50% and let players swing from above or below that value, in multiple ways. But how can you do that in a balanced way? You need to add 2-way duality or multi-way distribution to the system. So that 1% better becomes 1% better at one thing and 1% worse at its opposite thing. Alternatively, 3% better at 1 thing requires 1% worse at 3 other things. Thus there is no 1% better and thus no best. There is instead gain vs loss to go with risk vs reward.

    Player 1 (+DD +CC -TANK - HEAL)
    • Damage = +7 (offensive)
    • Healing mitigation = +3 (offensive)
    • Damage mitigation = -5 (defensive)
    • Healing = -5 (defensive)
    • Total = 0

    Player 2 (-DD +CC -TANK +HEAL)
    • Damage = -3 (offensive)
    • Healing mitigation = +4 (offensive)
    • Damage mitigation = -5 (defensive)
    • Healing = +4 (defensive)
    • Total = 0

    Player 1 vs Player 2
    • Damage vs Healing = +7 - +4 = +3
    • Healing mitigation vs Damage mitigation = +3 - -5 = +8
    • Damage mitigation vs Healing mitigation = -5 - +4 = -9
    • Healing vs Damage = -5 - -3 = -2
    • Net = 0

    Player 2 vs Player 1
    • Damage vs Healing = -3 - -5 = +2
    • Healing mitigation vs Damage mitigation = +4 - -5 = +9
    • Damage mitigation vs Healing mitigation = -5 - +3 = -8
    • Healing vs Damage = +4 - +7 = -3
    • Net = 0

    The question then becomes, how can you mitigate more incoming damage or outgoing healing than what is delivered by the skill....unless you reflect it or absorb it ?

    On the static/passive vs transient/modifiers, you essentially have to slice each stat column into multiple stacked % influencers. And each stacked influencer must impact every stat column as the same balanced distributed system. The only requirement is that each influencer is a compulsory item....armour/weapon/race/archetype/subclass.
    • Fighter/Fighter ~ +DPS/+DPS
    • Fighter/Tank ~ +DPS/-DPS
    • Fighter/Rogue ~ +DPS/-HPS
    • Fighter/Ranger ~ +DPS/+HPS
    • Tank/Fighter ~ -DPS/+DPS
    • Tank/Tank ~ -DPS/-DPS
    • Tank/Rogue ~ -DPS/-HPS
    • Tank/Ranger ~ -DPS/+HPS
    • Rogue/Fighter ~ -HPS/+DPS
    • Rogue/Tank ~ -HPS/-DPS
    • Rogue/Rogue ~ -HPS/-HPS
    • Rogue/Ranger ~ -HPS/+HPS
    • Ranger/Fighter ~ +HPS/+DPS
    • Ranger/Tank ~ +HPS/-DPS
    • Ranger/Rogue ~ +HPS/-HPS
    • Ranger/Ranger ~ +HPS/+HPS

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