As of now, the TRPG player starts with a set of stats and those are modified by the buffs on items in the inventory. There needs to be some for of leveling at least, and some way for players to choose how their character advances.
Levels:
Giving Players a level would be an important first step, but it also makes sense to give Monsters levels also. If NPC merchants are ever added, a level on items would be convenient for determining what items a merchant should be carrying at a given time. Basically, the whole Item class needs a Level field.
Items, and by extension Monsters, already have an Experience field. The intention was that killing a Monster or picking up an Item would impart that experience to the Player. Unfortunately, there's no means to translate this experience to a level. In theory, once experience gets above a certain value, it resets to 0 and the player increases in level. The experience required per level would probably be "A + B * (level + C)^D", where A, B, C, and D are loaded from an XML file or given reasonable defaults. This way game designers can define a linear progression or exponential.
Skills:
This would probably need to be similar to Buffs, or possibly an expansion to Buffs. This would involve things like melee weapon use, ranged weapon use, magic use, crafting, enchanting, defense, etc., which would be taken into consideration for actions and combat. Expanding Buffs would probably be the most flexible solution, and would mean moving some fields like Health and Defense out of the Item class and into the Buffs class. I am starting to think Buffs should be renamed Stats. This will require an annoying refactor.
As of now, the TRPG player starts with a set of stats and those are modified by the buffs on items in the inventory. There needs to be some for of leveling at least, and some way for players to choose how their character advances.
Levels:
Skills: