[MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs

[D. B. Brown]

-----Original Message-----
From: Adam Wiggins <adam at angel.com>
To: mud-dev at kanga.nu <mud-dev at kanga.nu>
Date: Tuesday, June 16, 1998 9:39 PM
Subject: [MUD-Dev] Re: Levelless MUDs


>For example: you don't want mages wielding the might Axe of Instant
>Decaptitation.  So you make it really heavy.  Along comes a mage with a
>high str, wearing plenty of +str gear, who can wield it.  Now make the axe
>-10 int, and see if they'll continue to try to use it.  (Although this
>assumes that you actually check their int during spellfail rolls.)

To me, that's just as arbitrary.  Why does the axe give a -10 to
its user's intelligence?


Personally, I think that just leaving it with skills/stats is the way
to go.

On my mud, we assume that members of a guild 'practice' a certain set
of skill related to the guild, and depending on the focus can have 
modifiers to learning (and more importantly, the atrophy rate of) 
other skills.  A mage could take the greataxe, but probably won't have
the strength to wield it, and even if the mage did, he or she would be
swinging the weapon considerably slower than a high-strength fighter-type
character.  Furthermore, the skill is hard to develop for the mage, as
all of his 'practice time' is spent in magic-related skills.

As a sidenote, on my mud we have pretty static stats -- +/- stat equipment
is very rare (generally relegated to 'rings of strength' and the like), and
even when it exists, the effect is not great (best non-artifact stat mod
availible is about +25%, and mods to stats are not cumulative).  The rarity
of stat modifications combined with the fact that stat mods are percentage
based and not additive makes starting stats much more important as well
as providing a modicum of balance:  a character made to be a good mage
simply doesn't have enough stats to go around to be good at being a 
fighter as well.

D. B. Brown (between mail clients and currently sigless)