Skill Based System.

[Snowreap]

Asheron's Call did a very good job with a skill-based system.

first, you had access to only a limited number of 'skill points'. you could spend these skill points to 'train' in a skill, or to 'specialize' in it (originally, specialization could only be done at character creation). specializing in a skill cost more points, but made it easier to level that skill up. some skills cost more than others. in some cases, a *lot* more.

second, nearly every skill had a counter. attack skills had a corresponding defense skill. crafting skills were countered by 'difficulty' of recipes; spells cast on yourself were countered by spell difficulty. defense skills were typically more expensive to level up than attack skills. every attack resulted in a 'skill check', where your attack skill was compared to your target's defense skill. if both were equal, your attack had a 50% chance of succeeding. if your attack skill was significantly higher than your target's defense skill, your attack would have a much better chance of succeeding. if your attack skill was significantly lower, your would miss most of the time.

third, you leveled up a skill primarily by spending XP points. the amount of XP needed for your next point increased rapidly. you could only level up a skill that you had trained or specialized. untrained skills couldn't be leveled up. certain skills (the spellcasting skills) couldn't be used at all if they were untrained. this is what made the system work -- it was not practical to 'practice' a skill to raise it; it took far too long (with some exceptions). the fastest way to raise a skill was to kill things to earn XP, then spend the XP to raise the skill. your ability to raise your skills was limited by your ability to earn XP.

the other thing that made it work was the scarcity of skill points. there simply weren't enough of them available for you to reasonably specialize in more than 1 or 2 skills.

scarcity of points was also used to effectively limit other behaviors. for example, it was possible for a mage to wear plate armor. but you never saw it in practice, because plate was too heavy and mages rarely had much strength, electing to put their character points into willpower and intelligence instead (which gave a bonus to spell casting skill). but warriors frequently wore plate because they always had plenty of strength (because strength gave a bonus to melee skills). like skill points, raising character points also cost XP, and became more and more expensive the higher you got.

the game had flaws of course, but the skill system worked remarkably well.

-ken