A few thoughts about combat, not much else

Attempt at buying a house + crazy baby = not much time to code. It's almost to the point where I'm a little worried that i'll forget what I was doing last. :/

In the meantime I'm designing a combat system on pen and paper. Well, in notepad in my email anyway, for portability. It's going to be some sort of blend of dice rolls that are affected by your stats and skills and item stats, I think. I'm going to handle evasion with a toHit roll that will be modified by your stats, skills, items and effects (like say enchantments or potions) and damage with a weapon range that you will roll on. If your roll falls in a certain range, you'll do x% of the total possible damage, with small modifiers added via your skills and stats.

At first you'll gain a couple of stat points faster, so they'll have a larger effect, but in the later game the stat gain requirements will increase exponentially and you'll be focusing your effort on improving your skills (through usage and possibly reading tomes, or finding a trainer), finding better items, and obtaining enchantments and such. I think it'll work, but it's all very initial. I haven't even run any paper scenarios yet, so it's all very tentative for now. Still, brainstorming (as long as you put something down) is better than no progress at all.