Hi,
My idea is that:
- Character has several attributes as in standard pen and paper (strength, hp, agility,...)
- Selecting role at beginning of game adds a bit to attributes, depending on role selected (fighter +1 strength, hacker +1 intellect, ..)
- Player can do any action, that does not require specialized knowledge - he can normally jump, speak, fight, shoot, ...
- Specialized actions - e.g. hacking, parkour, using bombs - require talents spend
- There are 4 talent trees - Mercenary (weapons tree), Brainiac (technology tree), Adept (stealth, communication), Corporator (dunno now )
- Single talent is earned by leveling up; with exception described in edited section below
EDIT:
- attributes are increased automatically by doing some actions often; as done in skyrim (e.g. hit somebody = +1 strength)
- sum of all attributes caps depending on level - to prevent "attributes hunting" by doing every action possible
- attributes are used for calculations about actions - e.g. how far player jumps/can jump = agility*(current_speed),...
- Some quests have defined something called "major actions" which binds to talent trees. If player does major action, he gets bonus talent point
(e.g. If there is quest for player to decide what to do with some prisoners; and he kills them all cold-blooded, he gets Military talent)
With these combinations, player can mix class with talents and play e.g. Journalist-Brainiac and so on..