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RED SAGSkills
hardGame Developer interview question

Design a flexible ability and buff system for an RPG with hundreds of skills.

What the interviewer wants to hear

  • Data-driven abilities built from reusable effects
  • Attributes with modifiers: add, multiply, override, with stacking rules
  • Tags to handle conditions, immunities and cooldowns
  • Clear order of calculation and events
  • Networking and prediction if multiplayer
  • Debugging tools and performance

Model answer

With hundreds of skills, hard-coding each one would be impossible to maintain, so I would make the system data-driven and composable. An ability is data: costs, cooldown, targeting and a list of effects. Effects are small reusable building blocks, like deal damage, apply a modifier, spawn a projectile or add a tag. Characters have attributes such as health and attack, and effects apply modifiers that add, multiply or override, with defined stacking rules and a fixed calculation order. Gameplay tags handle states like Stunned, immunities and cooldowns, so conditions are simple queries. The system raises events, like on hit, so passive skills can react. In Unreal I would build on the Gameplay Ability System, which also handles network prediction. I would add a debug view showing active effects on any character.

Can you answer it under time pressure?

Take a timed hard round and get scored on every answer.

Start mock interview

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