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Do you want any tweaking by the characters of thier rolls?

Is the emphasis on skills or on stats?

I like a stat and skill linked mechanism.

How many skills - and do we need to handle character creation too.

If you can answer these questions (and genre would be nice too) I should have something for you pretty quickly.

Mike

I'm not ENTIRELY sure as to your stats vs skills question though. I have a slight idea but you never know.

From my point of view, the game IS skill emphasized. Skills will be passive (and in some cases active) abilities that enhance a character's fighting ability. For example, the Counter ability will give a chance of counterattacking an incoming attack.
There will be active abilities called Techniques which will perform the fancy attacks/abilities such as special attacks.

The game won't focus on stat tweaking as many/most RPGs tend to do *cough*baldur's gate*cough*, however it isn't simplified to the point of Paper Mario for gamecube. At experience levels, a character will gain +1 in certain stats but it'll be more on the random side. For example, theres a chance that a character could gain +1 in all stats and theres a chance they'll gain no bonuses. To balance this, experience levels won't be the far and few style as games like FF have. Instead it'll cost the same amount of experience to level up from 2->3 as it will 6->7.

The combat system itself should account for misses as well as parries/deflection (these chances will be increased by having a skill that boosts this).

Sorry this is a bit scatter but i'm going by memory here.

oh yeah, the main fighting ability factor will be the character's Weapon Skill with the currently used weapon. This is increased by using the weapon more often but levels won't be as common as with the character's stat level.
The game won't have strict character classes, but instead it'll have "roles". These aren't meant to channel players into slim roles such as "Mages can't use swords or armour" (also there isn't magic in this game, but theres a sneaky replacement that i think is awesome). Instead the roles will give bonuses to using certain weapons and give Skills and/or techniques at certain levels. The roles can be switched and so any skills/techniques/bonuses will be lost and gained accordingly.

Sorry some of this is vague, but some of it is part of the design itself which i don't want to post on here. Also i may have said too much in some parts so if that's the case please pretend you didn't hear it

Also, again this was from the top of my head so please excuse the holes in it.

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2 twenty sided dice plus skill to beat a difficulty factor

or 2 100 sided dices that way your single +1's take a while to add up to something significant.

Your techniques might remove some of the elements that add to the difficulty

For example sniper might reduce the range penalty by 1/2

As for the removal of the "difficulty", the system isn't meant to be the same as traditional RPGs (spending hours to level up characters to get to the next boss fight). Instead it's more tactics and character driven. The difficulty is in choosing the proper strategy, tactics and characters for a mission. Also, there are several other game mechanics that will add to the system and also the difficulty but i won't put them here as they add to the USPs of the design.
I don't intend on making a difficult to play/beat game which may turn off many hardcore RPGers. I'm more targeting an audience such as myself that doesn't always have the opportunity or even motivation to sit down and play a game through. Instead you tend to play in chunks of time which may even be spaced apart; so i find it REALLY sucks to play for an hour but all you've accomplished is wandering around a field and leveling up your party once.

That being said, please don't flame me I've enjoyed many-a-RPG along those lines and theres nothing wrong with them, but this is just a target for this project.
Also, thanks 2-bros-soft. that has given me a pretty good starting point actually. I never know where to start when i make game mechanics. I used to design table-top wargames and choosing a working system that supports all my requirements has never been my strongpoint

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Visit my portfolio (and check out my projects):
www.JestermaxStudios.com