Developer Diary: The Skill System

Master Creating´s Creative Director Jan Beuck gives an insight into the development process of their upcoming action-RPG Legend - Hand of God

The Skills System

In LEGEND: Hand of God you don’t choose a class because you always embody Targon, the last surviving member of the Order of the Holy Flame. This, however, doesn’t mean that you have to do with less variety than other action RPGs offer – quite the contrary! You’ll start with a selection of 2 out of 5 skill trees (we call them ‘paths’); two paths combined form one of ten possible classes.

We put emphasis on reasonable combinations. Choosing the path of magic and the path of light, for example, will result in an archmage character. If you choose the path of magic and the path of the warrior, you’ll get a battlemage. Some skills adapt to the chosen tree: the battlemage’s flame blade will become a flame arrow if you combine the path of magic with the path of wilderness.

All skills make sense, and all are unique – there are no alternate names or visual effects for skills which are practically the same. The complicated part is getting the balancing right, but we have a special system for this which proved to be invaluable during the design of [Master Creating´s last game] Restricted Area. This system is based on complex formulas and algorithms… which I can’t tell you about, of course. Anyway, it saves a lot of time, and we don’t have to patch the balancing all the time, which can be quite annoying.

Another specialty of LEGEND: you get two skill points for levelling up, one for each of your skill trees. This should prevent you from investing all your skill point in the same skill tree or even the same skill, and can often lead to an interesting character.

A frequently asked question: Can you create an unusable character by investing in the ‘wrong’ skills? Answer: Yes and no! The system may be quite easy to grasp, but it’s just as difficult to truly master it.
Apart from skills, there are attributes in LEGEND as well: strength, dexterity, constitution and willpower. But that’s a different story… ;-)