Starr Long recently posted a massive information dump in the Shroud of the Avatar forums, giving us a look at the inner workings of the game’s combat, crafting, and magic systems.

As we have described previously we want Shroud of the Avatar to be a classless system that allows players to define and play any role they choose. We also want a clear path for growth and specialization while also maintaining opportunities for competition and cooperation. This is our current thinking on how to accomplish those goals. Remember this is just current thinking and we will probably change many of these details. Note that we use the term “skill” to cover all player abilities including spells, combat moves, etc.

NOTE: This post is not going to delve into our combat system but we will be posting more information about that soon.

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

That is just the introduction to the post; it goes on to look at each system, and each component of each system, in some detail; click on through for charty goodness and further analysis.

I will be updating the Ultima Codex’s Shroud of the Avatar subdomain with the information that Long has made available in the near future. I was able to adapt his information about the magic system today; click on through to the Magic reference page here (and its new, linked sub-pages) for all the details.