Coding skills

i have a pen and paper rpg that im converting to a mud in mysql and php
but ive hit a wall with how to design the skills db

the system has 3 main types of skills
Direct effect - ie fire ball, swald slash, etc these have a to hit, dammge/effect, range, etc component
Bonus/Penelty - they are buff skill such as "5% bonus to all sword skill to hits, character takes no pentry from using weaposn he has no formal training in"
and afinity
"cheemen gain no exp penelty (but all exp bonuses) for any one class."

lil insight?

Hmm - sounds like a player table, a character table, a weapon table, a armor table, modifier table. weapons table holds all the possible weapons base values, same with armor. Modifier table holds all the possible modifications to the weapons/armor abilities (+5,-5, -2,+10). then you can make a bridge table that connects the character to the weapon/armor and the modifier (if the weapon isn't listed on the character - the deafult is no training). The experience points can be a simple attribute of the character.

How's that?

Well its a start...im gonn tinker on it...

figured i post soem of the game rules, give you a idea of whats the kidna stuff im trying to convert over

Chemens
Class Affinity: Any, pick one at game start.
Inherent: Pick one class and disregard any negative exp. penalties it has on a stat.
Purity Effects
Hero Effect: At every 10 levels they can rise their maximum stat in one category by 3, but they must delimitate a flaw. Sampson had his hair, Achilles had his heel.
Wonderlust: At level 30 a Chemen gains the uncanny ability of natural compass.
Flawless: At 50 the Hero Effect limit is removed.

Innen
Inherent: Leute vision is exceptional at night. It’s night vision; extensive peripheral vision; and binocular vision enable it to accurately judge distances. Daylight vision is not as good they can see movement much more easily than detail, and are see through a limited range of colors.
Hearing is quite sensitive, reaching into the ultrasonic range. But their ears are less sensitive to lower frequencies, For this reason they are more responsive to female voices than male voices. Due to the shape of their ears, resembeling their feline ancestery, they can turn them to face any sound.
As with they’re eyes they’re nose is also more similar to felines then humanoids and as such their sense of smell is highly developed, which is vital in finding food and in reproduction. Many of the social signals of Innen take the form of scents; for example, males can smell a female who is receptive to males from a distance of hundreds of meters/yards.
The sense of taste is peculiarly specialized: it has little ability to detect sweetness, but is extremely sensitive to slight variations in the taste of water. The tongue is covered with rough protuberances, or papillae, that it uses to rasp meat from bones. It also uses it’s tongue to groom itself.
The cat's whiskers, or vibrissae, are extremely sensitive to the slightest touch, and are used for testing obstacles and sensing changes in the environment. In extremely dim light Innen may find their way by using their whiskers.
Purity Effects
Pheromones: At 10 the Innen gains a 5% to all social roles as long as someone can smell their pheromones.
Danger Sense: At level 30 Innen gain a instinctive sense that gives then a 5% bonus to all awareness rolls.
9 Lives: At 50 on a successful lock roll they can escape a lethal event.
Purr: At 10 they can emit a soothing noise, a purr that has a calming effect on those around them.
Scratch: At 50 they can sharpen their claws by expending 20 MP, one for each digit, these sharpened claws do double there normal damage but dull after 3 strikes.
Lick: At 99 they can lick closed any wound, each pass of the tongue grows a patch of fur the color of the Innen. When they completely cover the wound the fur remains for a week after which it can be pealed off like a bandage to reveal not even scar tissue.

Svert Lorian
Inherent: suffer half the effect from extreme heat as long as their ears are uncovered.
Purity Effects
Hide: At 10 they gain a 5% bonus to hiding/stealth attempts.
Danger Sense: At level 30they can sore food in their bodies to provide them with nourishment for 5 days per 10 points of purity.
Tough Skin: At 50 double their soak vs. environmental effects.

Fidget: At 10 the are so wound up for running that they can’t stand still for long, they gain a extra action per 10 levels to perform a second task.
Regenerate: At 50 they can use their saliva to heal, the process is slow but when you’re a race on the run and your hurt the faster you back up the better.
Accelerate: At 99 they move so fast that normal motion is a blur, making them hard to target in battle due to their blurred form.

Stine
Purity Effects
Masonry: At level 10 they gain the ability to craft stone into elaborate shape in ¼ the normal time.
Magical Anvil: At 30 their own magical essence is imbued into objects giving them a tempered/treated effect without actually tempering the material.
Stone Steel: At 50 they can craft Gold into Mythril.

Merc
Inherent: The Merc does not suffer the 5% penalty for wielding a weapon he is untrained in.

Magus
Inherent: 5% buff for the effect of an artifact.

Thief
Inherent: 5% bonus to appraisal rolls and it takes 20% less time.

Medic/Doctor
Inherent: 5% bonus to heal magic.

you have to accurately capture all the math of the game AND how that math interacts with other tables.

you need a table that has items and anothe table that holds all the properties of each item. so that something could have a +10% to this or -15% to xxx abilty or yyyy effect.

you can do this with a table with lots of columns but you'll have lots of empty fields which is bad db design.

this is not a small task, it's very complex to implement all the interactions between, races, classes, skills, powers, abilities, items, magic etc.

ya i know its big that why im trying to figure out where to start.

shoud i have a seperate table for things liek spell (to hit, dmg, etc), buffs, etc?

how am i goign to referxing this mixed groups for the class and race tables, shou ii create a nother table that links to the seperate tables, and then reference that table so i dont need to references 3 tables in the class generator?

you have two choices when implementing a race or an item.

one is to have a table like this:
race_id
race_name
race description

with lots of fields for every conceivable modifier.

INT_mod
WIS_mod
missile_bonus
sword_bonus
magic_bonus

I think the way to go is to have the modifiers in their own table so that you won't have a million blank fields. this table could have all the modifiers for each race and even each creature. things like resistance to certain types of attacks, modifiers to saves vs certain types of attacks etc. etc.

I would probably go with a 3 field table
modifiers
=========
race_id
modifier
type

where the type field would tell your code how to process the modifier. +10% can't be treated the same as +2 to hit with missile weapons.

same thing for an items abilities. Some itmes might give protection from various attacks or even penalties vs certain types of attacks.

thanks, im gonn need to tinker around a bit more i think

some races and classes share the same skill sets as others so i wantto reference the skills from the race table not the race from the skills table

I say normalize it as highly as possible. Seperate everything out if you have to. Granted the joins may be a bitch to write but it will scale well and will take full advantage of your DB.

working on my race db and noticed something

stats are split into sub catagories

original my race Db had just stregth as a field wich i was planing to set a explodable varble into for the base values and sub skills

ie

Mobility
-dodge
-speed
-flexability
-minimum 1
-statting 25
-max 50

but the stats (dodg,e speed, flex) would be the same for every race so maybei shoud treat them as a skill then just reference the StatSubSkill ID that way i can add and remove them at will

but ashoud i keep the stats a exlodable varible or make 3 fields for each stat (StatNameMin, StatNameStarting, StatNameMax)?