Combat Skills & The Military Camp
I'm planning a melee combat skill system for Runelight.
The Military Camp, one of the points of interest hidden in the Darkness, will introduce players to combat techniques. Through its quests, players will obtain a Book of Combat Knowledge and gradually unlock more slots for skill pages.
The idea is simple at first: find skill pages, place them in your book, and use their abilities with swords, axes, spears, maces, daggers, or shields.
But things get much more interesting later.
Each page can have directional connections to neighboring pages. Passive pages can modify active skills, react to combat events, accumulate effects, or automatically trigger other abilities.
For example:
- Dash → Surrounded → Whirlwind: charge into a group and automatically strike surrounding enemies.
- Block → Accumulate → Counterattack: build up successful blocks to unleash a powerful counterattack.
- Crushing Blow → Weaken → Finisher: break an enemy's defenses before delivering a heavy strike.
The book starts with just 2 slots and can eventually expand into a 3×3 grid, allowing players to build their own combat combinations.
Pages will be physical, tradable items with different properties and connection directions. Each weapon type can have its own build.
The goal is to make combat easy to learn but offer enormous freedom for experimentation.
Instead of choosing a predefined class, you'll build your own fighting style.
(not ingame image, just example)
The main task of skills is to minimize costs (equipment wear) in battle, since powerful equipment does not give the player invulnerability even from weak creatures.