It seems incredibly silly to try and balance professions that have starting skills, starting items, starting traits (addictions), and starting bionics (broken or working). And if an RP’r wants a particular backstory, they shouldn’t have to pay for it.
The point system is tricky because there are typically very low numbers of points, so swinging something by 1 or 2 points is actually a huge change. The increments are just too large. Maybe multiply all the numbers by 10 so that we can have more precise balancing.
Basically I’d do something more like a combo of DF:Adventure and DF:Fortress modes, where you can start with a huge array of different items (but not very high quality or very advanced items), but you pay for each individual item out of a large point pool. (Obviously customizable as it is now, so that you can do a X point character, a Y point character, etc.)
Skills and stats would work the same (as they already do in DF) where you pay for skills and they’re more expensive the higher you level them, but the scale would be different to accommodate more differentiate and the purchasing of items.
The perks, addictions, etc should all be individually pickable. Like what if I want to have a mobster with a heroin problem? Can’t do that right now. It’s either mobster or heroin addict, can’t do both.
Let backstory just be a matter of the player writing it in after picking all the desired traits, equipment, etc. As it is now there is such a marginal difference between some of the backstories… there’s really no point to half of them either.
And then let us export them more easily so they can be shared on the forums.
If I had more time I’d mock it all up but I’m still in the process of moving apartments…
