With the consumable changes out of the way, I’ve gone on to fiddle with the skill system a bit. I’ve taken a little inspiration from Dark Souls and added a second spellcasting stat, Faith. Magic users now have to be concerned with both Faith and Intelligence.
I’ve colour-coded all the skills in the game to fit into one of three categories.
- Magic skills have a red border, recharge based on Intelligence and can be instantly recharged with Mana Potions
- Holy skills have a light blue border, recharge based on Faith and can be instantly recharged with Offerings
- Physical skills have a green and gold border and recharge when they feel like it. They aren’t influenced by stats or consumables, so they’re good for characters with low magic stats.
It’s a bit ugly because I’ve just jammed those borders in without adjusting the art, but it gets the point across. 😛
Magic skills include damage-dealing stuff (Fireball), debuffs, unit control (Charm, Polymorph) and teleporting. Holy skills include buffs for yourself, crowd control (Fear, Sleep) and healing. There are only a handful of Physical skills at the moment, but I’m planning to expand that with a broad range of minor or utility skills.
The system adds another dimension of character customisation, asking you to work with the items and skills you find to pick stuff that works together. If you find mostly Magic skills, you’ll have to emphasise Intelligence. Find Holy skills and you’ll have to emphasise Faith. Find a mix and you’ll have to pick which is more important to the playstyle you’re developing with that character.
I’m feeling pretty good about the core systems now! It might be hard to believe, but the recent changes – especially consumables – have made a huge difference to how the game feels. One playtester today had a go and, afterwards, didn’t believe they’d been playing for over an hour. It’s become a much fuller and more diverse game almost overnight; I can’t wait to start rounding things out with more content. 😀