On Magic, Combat & Crafting Skills

A new thread has been created on the Shroud of the Avatar forums that discusses three topics of keen interest to people: Magic, Combat and Crafting and how they will function within the game. The dev team has laid out the basic framework for each of these systems and how they feel they will best be deployed when SotA goes live.

Stats:
There are 3 Base Stats: Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence that work as you would expect. There are 3 Calculated Stats: Health, Defense, and Focus (aka Mana).

Advancement:
Players gain two kinds of experience (Crafting and Adventuring) based on the kind of activities they are doing. Players level up in either Crafting or Adventuring at certain experience point totals. When players level up they get skill points and increases to their stats. The players can use those skill points to learn skills from a trainer. There are no classes so players can spend skill points on any kind of skill as long as they meet the prerequisites (almost always a preceding skill in a tree).

Skills System:
There are Active Skills (yellow) and Innate Skills (white). Active skills are used by the player during combat to produce a desired effect (fireball, heal, parry, etc.). Innate Skills are on all the time and increase the effects (power, range, etc.) of all skills in the school. Adding skill points to an Innate Skill increases the effect of that innate skill. This has the knock off effect of eliminating the need to pump Active Skills. Adding skill points to Active Skills increases the number of copies of that skill the player has therefore increasing the frequency that skill will appear during combat. There are “hidden” Active Skills that can only be used by doing combos with skills during combat.

Damage Types:
There are 6 damage types (with corresponding resistances)

• Physical: Armor provides most protection against. Weapons, Poison, etc.
• Magical: Tends to ignore armor. Encompasses magical damage not covered by an elemental type
• Electrical: Stuns targets. Lightning, static charges, etc.
• Cold: Slows targets. Ice, Snow, etc.
• Heat: Does damage over time. Fire, Radiant energy (like the sun), etc.
• Chaotic: Impossible to resist

The post then details the schools of magic: Life, Death, Sun, Moon, Earth, Air, Water, Fire, Chaos and combinations of the above.

Physical combat schools include: Blades, Polearms, Bludgeons, and Ranged. Defensive schools: Light Armor, Medium Armor, Heavy Armor, and Shields.

Lastly, Crafting is profiled with emphasis on recipes, gathering, refining, production and gives a hint about different types of crafting including carpentry, tailoring, alchemy, and cooking.

Read this comprehensive post on the Shroud of the Avatar forum.