I have this idea for a time, just wanted to get some feedback from the community. It can be really stupid or genious, i am conflicted. Get this; How about the number of skills you can take is adjusted by the game difficulty? let say, easy gives you 8 skill slots, medium 7 (like now), and hard 6. additionally, how about this option can be turned on and off? maybe with a checkbox called "scale" on the skills window, when you check it and select hard, you get 6 skills, but gameplay gets a little easier to keep the current "hard" gameplay. would it break the game or make it more fun? would it bring more depth to the concept of difficulty or create a rift? also, is there a possibility to make a mod like this? (i doubt it) please state your opinions, also, there is a poll about this, so vote if you can=)
I will say that this would break the game. Right now you only get the 6 main character stats when you level up a skill. This would effectively lower the maximum level for GR by between 5-7 depending what skill you decide not to take. This would be a huge hit and make the game impossible to finish(its hard enough on the final couple floors if you havent hit max level yet)
I'm pretty sure we discussed this really early on and dismissed it. Thing is, number of skills is about the potential cap more than player power especially as the game goes on. And the difficulty curve would be skewed toward the beginning (and very much to the end when/if the skill cap was hit). A "hard" player needs only gain two levels to get stats equal to an "easy" player -- not terribly difficult on the first dungeon level. Sure, advancement is slower (aka more grindy) but it already is for hard vs. easy to a degree if you check the relevant xml file. But that's all academic -- it's not especially reasonable to make this change now and with nothing gained from the possibility I can say pretty solidly that it's going to stay in the realm of the hypothetical.
I'm strongly against this idea. Making the game harder by making enemies stronger? Awesome. Making the game harder by making the player character suck more? I'm really against that in general, it makes the game less fun.
I had to click the first option in the poll because it told you to die. I honestly think it would be a neat idea to mess around with, but like others have said more eloquently, it would ruin the game entirely. I would sometimes like to have a ludicrous number of skills. And other times I prefer a challenge. For the latter I just take a skill or two that is worthless, but that is not the same. Most playthroughs I never max all skills anyway. So taking Shield Bearer and Dual Wield is an obvious choice to negate one skill mostly. For another, if playing a caster, pick maces or swords. You will almost always be using shields and Staves anyway if playing a caster. (I rather like Dual Staves, except when using mods that ad some useful shields/orbs.)
I think a more interesting way to do what you want must be voluntary. Add useless skills to the game via mods. Take them when you want less skills. (I mean useless, even Swords skill gives some benefit to those not using swords.)
While I'm not worried about the reductions to a player's maximum level cap (I've killed Dredmor at CL 26 on GRPD RotDG) loosing one whole skill at the beginning of the game means the loss of a total of 9 stat points, which really hurts. It also means fewer options on hand at any given point. As others have said, why make the game less interesting to make it harder?
