There has been a common theme in several of my posts regarding the way that skills and attributes are set up in D:OS. I'm sure this idea will be controversial because I know we all love the status quo, but here goes...
First of all, lets look at how the skills and abilities are distributed
Primary attribute: Strength
Man at Arms
heavy armour
standard weapons
Primary attribute: Dexterity
Expert Marksman (requires bow)
Scoundrel (requires daggers)
light armour
bows & daggers
Primary attribute: Intelligence
Aerothurge
Geomancer
Pyrokinetic
Hydrosophist
Witchcraft
staffs and wands
You can effectively mix-and-match intelligence skills such as Aerothurge & Geomancer. However, you can't mix-and-match between different primary attributes (or different weapon requirements), so non-intelligence-based skills are too boring. Adding additional skill groups that could be used together with Man At Arms would be cool.
Another problem is that if I want to build a constitution-focused warrior-tank, I still have to put attribute points into strength AND put ability points in heavy armour just so I can effectively use the best armour and fulfil my role as a tank. Also, I noticed that by using a sword and shield, my warrior is actually really slow, but this means having to split points into speed as well. My warrior-tank is a failure. When I put attribute points in strength, intelligence or dexterity, I'm not really customising my character. It's generally a forced choice.
But I have a better idea. Instead of having attributes, why not make the builds entirely ability-based? Remove the strength requirement for heavy armour and just rely on the heavy armour ability. Maybe you want your warrior to be a bit more agile? Put points into light armour instead and enjoy. Maybe you just want to inflict massive damage? Screw the armour abilities and invest everything into offensive abilities. The opportunities are pretty exciting.
I think that when you want to encourage specific builds, you could introduce incentives/penalties for certain combinations. For example, maybe learning water magic actually becomes more expensive after learning fire magic, but there are plenty of different ways to achieve this.
But I don't think you need to try too hard overall. The fact is that a wizard, for example, is naturally long-range and squishy so they're naturally unlikely to equip heavy armour and rush to the front lines. But honestly that still sounds pretty cool to me .
