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Every Clan gets a number of 'levels' (I was thinking something like 5+#members to start) to divide between their members, The number of levels a character has determines his/her relative strength and the number of spells that character can use. The spells stay the same, but the way you get them is slightly different. If you want to use a spell of a higher level, you first need to have the spells that lead to it.

For example: An Air character wants to use Hurricane. Since Hurricane is made out of Rain and Cloud, the character would need to be at least level 3 (1 for Rain, 1 for Cloud, and 1 for Hurricane). Once a spell is chosen, it can't be traded in for another spell. Characters can gain levels for more spells. This way it takes a bit longer to get to the really strong 4th level spells, and it also gives a bit more strategic options. Will someone choose to get higher level spells ASAP, or first collect all low-level spells?

The initial few levels will be divided by the Clans (or Clan leaders). However, new levels can only be gained by roleplaying. At the end of a quest, a character will receive a set amount of XP for finishing the quest and an amount of XP depending on the quality of roleplaying and the actions of the character in the quest. When the XP hits a certain point, the character goes up in level and gets to choose a new spell.

Anyway, what I was thinking about the battle system is maybe when PvPing, when someone RP's an attack, they generate a random number between 1 and 100. This is simply used as a guideline, and there's no defence roll. So say I attack Kuja and since I'm awesome I get a 75. Now, I don't automatically hit and Kuja gets some freedom of what happens, but the general implication is that I hit him. Say I get a 50, Kuja gets to decide whether or not based completely on his own RPing spirit. This has the bonus of taking away godmoding or cheating risks (that aren't really much of a problem anyway) and also adding structure and balance to the battle, but is much more lenient than the other system and requires almost no work at all.

Here it is. Unless specified otherwise, the energy cost is MP per casting. These values are based on an energy reserve of 100MP at level 1, with a 20MP increase per level. It also assumes that the spell system as described in the first post is used. With these values, the costs should allow a user at the minimum level for a certain spell to cast that spell approximately as many times as the description states.

According to Darkfyre's system, theoretically one could choose whether they would want to get all of the level one spells first or go for the higher level ones immediately, right? But when you think about it, why would you choose to get a level one spell when you could just as easily get a level two spell? Level two spells are just more powerful, and there are very few reasons why people would choose not to get them in turn for a weaker one. What if, instead of requiring more XP to advance basic levels, it took more experience to learn higher level spells and less experience to learn lower level ones? For example, it might take 1000 to learn undead, 2000 to learn necromancy, 4000 to learn lich, and 8000 to learn death.

I'd prefer the first choice: "We could always base combat proficiency on raw experience". That would give an indication of who is stronger, while still leaving almost complete freeform freedom. Though putting it in the sig isn't a good idea... we'd better just create a seperate topic/post to keep track of people's XP and available spells, because it would only change at the end of a quest anyway.

XP / level values have yet to be decided, but the number of XP needed to advance a level will grow with every level gained. If it will double every time I don't know yet, though. Quest XP will probably be a base amount of XP for finishing the quest (set by me or the mods before the quest starts, and equal for all clans), and several (small) bonuses for things like exceptional RPing or finding out special things during the quest. The maximum amount bonuses will also be set before the quest starts. The mods will of course decide who gets what bonuses, but I assume that all mods can be trusted to be good judges.