[Scrymud] Changes to Scry

[gingon at wanfear.com]

Hello all.
   A few of us have be talking about major changes to Scry over aim the last 
few weeks. I'm gonna try to explain them here and hopefully get some useful 
feedback on the ideas from you guys.

   First thing, We've been considering removing classess. The reasons are 
pretty simple, classess are an outdated concept. Classess are generally used to 
enforce limitations. But here they are largely not needed. The players should 
be able to choose what they want to be simply by which skills they choose to 
use.

   Learning skills is primary limited by the number of practices a player 
recieves. This itself is a good limiting factor. Take the thief class for 
example, when they hit lvl 30, they will rarely have every possible skill a 
thief can learn. This means that, without a class system, if someone wants to 
be a thief, they'd have to spend a large amount on only thief skills, limiting 
the use of non-thief skills heavily. 

   It also allows for peope to play a type of character that isn't explicitely 
allowed by the code.

   Of course, an obvious side effect to having no classes is that you can't 
class remort.
---
   Second thing, We've also been talking about remove the lvl system as well. 
Basically, a player would have free xp and total xp. The player can use the 
free xp to directly improve skills, the total xp is mainly for book keeping and 
tracking who can remort.
   
This would make hunting at a high lvl far less boring, instead of hunting for 
days to raise a skill by a large amount, you can achieve a more natural, 
gradual increase in skills by being able to use xp imediatly.

Death would be handled differantly also, the player would lose all of their 
free xp in addition the the usual death results.

   The cost to raise skills would increase as the % learned in that skill 
increases. This would tend to create people who specialize in a small number of 
skill, causing an increase in the diversity of the player population.
---
   Third change: 2 new magic systems: Runic and Pattern.

   Generally, runic is only used for enhancing equipment. To use it you figure 
out the runes you want to use, and inscribe them on the item. The combination 
of runes determines the exact result.

   Pattern magic on the other hand is somewhat differant. Using pattern magic 
you can recreate any of the existing spells, but also create totally dynamic 
new ones. Pattern magic works by combining a series of patterns into a complete 
spell, which is then stored in a spell book. Each pattern controls a single 
aspect of the spell, and each pattern has an associated cost in mana.

   Learning to use either system well will require the user to do some research 
and figure out how each component comnbines with other ones. They would also be 
able to buy some spells and find other in arcane libraries scattered about the 
would.

   There are some interesting possible benefits to this system that aren't 
directly related to the casting system. A spell formula trade economy could 
develope. A wizard would more fit what I feel a wizard should be in scry, he'd 
be a possesser of unknown power, a master of the arcane arts.
---

These are all large changes, requiring a large amount of change to the existing 
code. But I feel that these changes would greatly improve Scry. 

that's all for now.
   --Gingon