Good, Old Features in Dark Messiah of Might and Magic

Dark Messiah of Might and Magic was released on 24 October 2006 on PC, according to Wikipedia. I bought it on Steam recently and just played it through. It certainly looks old now, but it has some features some new games unfortunately do not.

The most important of these is that the player is allowed to freely use the basic functions Save Game (As) and Quick Save, as well Load Game and Quick Load. It is mind-boggling, why all games do not have these features.

The second most important feature the game has, is the option to use cheats or "developer's console" as the game calls it. This includes the excellent idea of Buddha mode, which only prevents the player character's death from normal damage (unlike god mode, which presumably makes him invulnerable to damage). This feature should be used in all games. Because of other (bad) features of the game, I used Buddha mode for almost the whole of the second half of the game.

The game also has a pretty nice experience system, in the form of skill points the player is awarded at various points, and can then use to increase skills. The cost to increase a skill, such as Strength, increases the higher it goes (typically up to level 3), and these skills are hierarchically connected so that one has to increase some skills to the maximum level in order to be able to gain new skills connected to them. This is otherwise a nice system, but the player is never warned that the game is short enough and the skill points / experience so rarely awarded that the player can never attain even close to all the skills. 

Alas, I cannot say the game is good. It's good enough to be played through once, but it is completely linear, like most games, I suppose. The only real options the player has, is how to use the aforementioned skill points. The paths is set so hard that there is hardly any difference even between the alternative endings. But at least there's some enjoyment, mostly made possible by the use of the features listed above, which is more than I can say about some more recent games.

Maxing out skills in CoC

In Call of Cthulhu (CoC) horror role playing game (RPG) there is a cap for skills. I don't like such things, but I just thought of a way that might make them better. I would set the cap at 100%. Using my experience check rule, you have to roll the check above the skill to increase the skill, which will then be increased by exactly one point. The difference to the rules as written (RAW) is the amount by which the skill is increased. IIRC, RAW sets the cap for skills at 99%, which makes the cap arbitrary. In my house rule, at least there is the point that one cannot roll over 100% using d100. 

Now, here's the new idea I just had (which I hope would justify using a cap on skills, which I have never done): 

(1) Once a skill has been raised to 100%, gaining further experience checks to the skill would be pointless as the skill can no longer be increased and so, as per RAW, the checks would be lost. So, the new (and untested) idea is that every two checks on the skill can be exchanged to one check on a related skill.

(2) During character creation, the skill(s?) about Own Language start at EDUx5%. For very high EDU characters this obviously means that some skill points will be "lost". According to my rule suggestion here, instead of just limiting the skill at 100%, the character gains a new language skill at half the points that would go over 100% in Own Language. So, an Investigator with EDU 22 would start Own Language at 100%, but gain a new language at 5%. 

OR: This may actually be too harsh, so instead of losing half the exp checks and language skills during creation, it might be better to just give full points. So, the Investigator would start a new language at 10%, and all exp checks in a skill that already is at 100% could be translated to related skills.

What is a related skill would depend on the Keeper's (GM's) discretion, of course. In my experience, it is very rare for skills to get this high in CoC, so this house rule is pretty redundant anyway.

If you do try my house rules, please let me know how it went. 

I have posted about my experience check rule a long time ago here: https://rpgandboardgaming.blogspot.com/2011/05/modified-experience-checks-for-call-of.html