What classes would you like to see?

[Monte Carlo]

I think that the era described by Sawyer, ie high-medieval, lends itself to:

 

• Mountebank --- A rogue class with trading / storytelling / negotiation and thief skills. Might also dabble in tech. Provides skill monkey / bardic / jack of all trades class that can easily be moulded into pure thief if player wishes.

 

• Master-of-Arms --- A gentleman soldier but not a knight, this professional soldier specialises in melee combat but is also versed in the use of firearms. He can use his tactical nous to inspire colleagues. Some will also dabble in healing magics, an essential skill for any combatant, whilst others concentrate on parleying or scouting. This provides a versatile warrior class with quasi-paladin powaz without the goody-goody BS.

 

I do not intend to discuss spellcasters as without more knowledge of the setting it is pointleSs.

[Playgu]

Loved the warlock from NwN2, he wasn't very strong (I think) but I loved the concept.

[horocaust]

I wanted to give my take on the classes, but then I stopped and thought that there's no point. I enjoy games the dev team made in past for the story, characters and atmosphere. Behind the Great Chinese Wall of Text of Torment I didn't notice the game even had gameplay. So yeah, when PE comes out I'll take the class with which pacifist run makes the most sense and roll with it.

[Shevek]

I want multiclasses like all the 2E Infinity Engine titles

[Shevek]

I want multiclasses like all the 2E Infinity Engine titles

[curryinahurry]

I'm glad a lot of people are mentioning an artificer type character; one that is good at alchemy, tech, making objects, etc.

 

Most of the concepts mentioned in this thread thus far could be developed from one of the traditional 3 starting classes & I would be fine with that as long as long as we can create unique builds like some of you have listed.

 

One of my personal character types in any party is the utility character that isn't truly great at anything but can provide an extra push for the party in any given effort.

[leshy]

Survivalist

I'd like class that is based on avoiding trouble. Someone who travels a lot and knows when to fight, but most importantly when to run.

 

Engineer / Chemist

A class that is based on crafting stuff and using it as weapons, tools or buffs.

 

Red Mage

A class that by default mixes everything and it's power lies in spreading it's abilities equally and creating combos that nobody else can.

 

 

Also I'd like the magic classes to be VERY specialized. And no monks... I hate monks.

[SirMonkeyMonk]

I don't like good or bad only classes (altough we don't know if we'll have alignment). What I do like are good and bad only classes. I don't think you should have a paladin without having a god dark champion equivalant. Their powers might be some different, but they have a similar dedication to their god or cause.

When thinking about the DnD alignment grid, I liked how druid couldn't be any of the extremes, monks had to be lawful and bards couldn't be. It does represent the right mind set required to develop certain skills. Restrictions purely on the good evil axis usually make less sense, imo.

[Galdegir]

Generally I would like to play as an evil character so each class should have tree skills like borderlands 2 to chose from that would determin youre abilities. That way for example if the player plays a warrior he could have three trees: paladin, berserker and death knight where paladin would be the good fighter able to use a little holy magic, berserker a barbarian king of fighter and death knight an evil knight.

A rogue could develop into an assassin (evil) thief (chaotic) or ranger (good)

A cleric could develop into a priest (good), shaman (chaotic) or dark priest (evil)

A mage could develop into a wizard (good), sorcerer (chaotic) or necmronacer (evil)

[TimB99]

Don't know if it's been mentioned already, but I'm not sure I would like to see classes (in the traditional sense, that is) at all...

 

I've commented in another thread about Skyrim's skill system, and that, to me, felt like it had much more options for customizing (and therefore ROLEPLAYING). Basically how Skyrim's skill system works, for anyone who doesn't know, is as such: you DO NOT have a class, but EVERYONE would have EVERY SINGLE skill that was in the game instead (one-handed weaponry, destructive magic, archery, heavy armor,etc), which you could advance in rank/experience levels by DOING stuff with it. So if you used destructive magic a lot, you would 'level up' in destructive magic, and therefore you would end up as a 'mage, prestige class destructorzorz', if you liked the destruction magic so much that it became your standard play-style, so to say.

 

The traditional 'Classes' could therefore be implemented simply by assigning some starting ranks in say unarmed combat (for a monk), magic (for a mage), archery (for an archer), one-handed weaponry and shields (for a fighter), for example, and 'leveling up' as you develop, choose, and engage in your preferred gameplay style of unarmed martial arts, magic, archery and one-handed weaponry and shields, respectively.

But on the other hand, if you feel like becoming some sort of spell-sword, you could choose to advance in magic AND swordsmanship at the same time, for example, instead of waiting for some prestige class to unlock at level 10.

 

Looking at it this way, traditional classes could be seen as simply the initial main skill-selecitons, and the more exotic classes are actually a way of working AROUND the class system to give people more options of roleplaying the things they'd ACTUALLY want to play. Again, think the spellsword: I bet it was created because people didn't JUST want to be a mage OR a fighter, but a combination of both. So why not just go all the way and just go with the classless skill-based system. Example: what if I want to be, instead of a magic/fighter combo, a magic/archer combo? Or a archer/alchemist combo? Traditional classes would then have to account for EVERY possible combination a player would want (which they often do, resulting in an absolutely RIDICULOUS amount of classes; or they could choose not to, of course, but that would go against the fundamental idea of the ROLE PLAYING GAME in which you could CHOOSE your own identity.

 

So, if it were up to me, I would honestly have Project Eternity adopt that system in favor of the classical 'this is your class, these X things are all you can do well... have fun!' ideas.

 

 

JM2C... Thoughts?

 

- Tim

Edited September 25, 2012 by TimB99

[Gecimen]

-Summoner

-Mage with fire/electric attacks (I'd prefer if this was separate from the one who can cast cat's grace and all sorts of boring spells)

-Monk

-Paladin sort of healer fighter.

-Barbarian or berserker or any two axe/mace wielder

[Luckmann]

First of all, I want kits. I like kits. Lots of them. Big and small.

Secondly, I think that kits shouldn't be optional. They should be specializations of the class, with bonuses and penalties. In effect, there should be no selectable base classes.

Thirdly, there doesn't need to be an arbitrary number of kits for each class. Some might have 12, like mages, others might have 4, 3 or 8. The effect of kits should likewise vary greatly between the classes. For example, the multitude of Orders for a Knight would all have minor effects, while the four Cardinals of the Alchemist would be incredibly defining.

 

Knight - Basic combat class, a mix between a traditional Fighter and Paladin, utilizing supernatural-ish martial feats reminiscent of that of a Monk, just without the kung-fu/unarmed sillyness. Utilizes primarily Sword-and-board or two-handed weapons, but are also proficient in ranged weapons - some Orders excelling at it.

• Order of the Branch - Nature-centric, ranger-paladin order. Can only use medium armour, receives a multitude of minor druidic-like powers. Can use bows as well as any melee weapon. Gets Duelist Proficiency instead of Shield Proficiency and starts as trained in Bows instead of Two-handed weapons (but nothing prevents progression in the latter).
  
• The Green Flame - An infernal order that manipulates the souls of others, instead of solely utilizing and training their own. Gets a wide range of spell-like abilities and rituals. Rumoured to consort with daemons and practice ritual sacrifices or torture in secret; a rumour they are quick to abuse, whether it's true or not. Gets a bonus to all fire damage, or can manipulate flames to cause additional effects.
  
• The Obsidian Order - The barbed bulwark. The black rock. The eternal vigil. Great bonuses to heavy armour, but doesn't get Duelist or Shield proficiencies, specializing in two-handed weapons; Greatsword, Sledgehammer, Halberd, Fullmace. Specializes in temporal manipulation, including haste, slow, and time stop-like abilities. Regularly refers to themselves as "Of Eternity".
  
• The Order of the White - Dresses entirely in white, always masked in white. Specializes in martial prowess above all else, imbuing every attack with the essence of their souls. Gets virtually no "magic", instead focusing on self-buffs or imbuing their weapons with effects, or powers that either cripple their opponents or shatter their defences. Vastly the most "monk-like", excepting the use of weapons and armour.
  

Alchemist - Creation imbues every object with a fraction of the maker's soul. A stonemason puts his soul into the bricks he lays, a leatherworker in every armour, a blacksmith in every sword. An alchemist uses - or abuses - this to it's extreme. They 'cheat', not using magic that tears the mana or strength from oneself or others and twists it into supernatural effects, but instead uses basic incantations and tricks to produce potions, ointments, powders or solvents with extraordinary effects. The schools of alchemical thought is divided into four doctrines.

• Earth - Focusing on the imbuing of effects, or the disintegration of, on mundane objects. Transmutative potions, strengthening or weakening the drinker, turning flesh into wood, wood into stone, or stone to sand. Hardens steel to mithril strength, or turns gold to platinum.
  
• Wind - Manipulates aetherial circumstances. Snow in a bottle, lightning from a rod, bending light and wind with an ointment, or an explosive gust of wind from a ceramic bomb. If Earth imbues single targets, buffs and debuffs, Wind is the one to change battlefield conditions for better or worse.
  
• Fire - Bombs. Fires. Explosions. Kindling the flames in others, scorching or burning them. Straight-forward damage-dealing. Capable of doing fire-damage in a number of ways even to those immune to regular or magical fire, as well as putting out the flames of those using or consisting of them themselves.
  
• Water - Master of potions. Healing potions, regenerative potions, mana potions - anything drinkable. In addition, can manipulate water around them or in others, including turning it poisonous or acidic, capable of throwing or spraying such substances wherever they please.
  

I had more ideas, but I seem to have forgotten them for now. Oh well.

[lankyplonker]

I'm a fan of the concept of a nature based fighter - light armour, staves/club type proficiency, mostly melee but with some nature magic to supplement. Kind of like a melee, non shifting druid, or very similar to the order of the branch concept mentioned above

[Fire13ringer]

I'd like Diplomat to be an optional rogue class. A filthy, conniving politician with a silver tongue and a lot of charisma, not a very strong fighter, but at least decent with short swords and bows and capable of hanging on to party members and get almost every quest in the game regardless of their alignment (the same way there's often one character in many fantasy worlds that can convince a paladin to burn down a village because it's "necessary evil"). Basically, I'd like to be able to play as Xanatos/Vetinari/Kerrigan/any-other-character-inspired-by-the-works-of-Machiavelli and take over the world of Eternity one gambit at a time. [Drums fingers thoughtfully] I love it when a plan comes together.

[Umberlin]

I'd like to see Magic users that concentrate on the far less typically used areas of magic, the weird stuff, we've seen the Elemental magic user, the Fireball throwing guy countless times. For me the really interesting Wizards were always the Transmutation, Illusion and even Divination. Heck even Enchantment. Obviously I'm not talking about actual DnD and the actual schools but types of magic users concentrated around these sorts of things.

 

I know Evocation and Conjuration, Adjuration and their ilk can be done well but how many times have you seen the pyromancer, the elementalist and their type over and over? They're the default. Even Necromancer we've seen done a hundred or more different ways.

 

But Transmutation and Illusion? Especially Divination. Magic users fully concentrated on those types of magics? It's a rare thing to see these types of magic users as the base that you have to concentrate around. These are very powerful types of magic to pull inspiration from, and I always felt too many games have had it so success as a magic user in a game meant the Evocation/Conjuration types. It'd be really something to see a game where something like transmutation was really, really well supported for all aspects of the game, not even the combat, the combat too but take schools like Transmutation, Enchantment, Divination and Illusion and apply them to the non-combat. Think about it for a second and think of how much more interesting that is than . . .

 

"I shoot it with fire."

 

Conjuration I'm being a bit hard on, it actually has a lot of potential especially if made well and implemented well. Think of the character that needs information and actually putting your conjuration abilities to use to get that information. There's untapped potential there beyond, "I summon this think to kill my enemy" because there are a lot of contractual and dealing and talking aspects to conjuration that are so readily ignored.

 

Again I'm not talking about reusing the DnD type schools as much as just the idea of that magic user that uses their magic to change themselves, others, objects and the world around them. Transmutation is always such a terribly under used school by first time players. They jump at the fireballs and fire storms and ignore the school that lets you reverse gravty, reincarnate, control weather, animate different objects or materials, levitate, fly (I can't tell you how useful that is), alter yourself, stop bloody time and so much more. There's so much potential there. And, yeah, it's all to easy to ignore or overlook in comparison to the usual 'oh look I can shoot fire!', but they also have access to horribly destructive magics. Disintegrate. Destruction.

 

Yeah sure put in the usual evokation and elemental styled magic users, fine, but put in those weird magic users that weild the strange energies, warp the fabric of reality, fool their opponents and that sort. The less obvious. The less direct.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Umberlin

[Sensuki]

Something that embodies Varys the Spider / Littlefinger style of play would be cool too.

[Gromnir]

classes is unnecessary... and evil.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Darth Trethon]

New, fresh and creative kinds....no classic mage, warrior/templar or barebones rogue for me.

 

My favorite ways to play are mage, stealth(real stealth like in Alpha Protocol not the garbage stab once and it's open warfare with the remaining 1000 foot soldiers) and sniper so if a combination of these three could be made it would be great. A stealthy sniper mage FTW that can take down legions without ever being seen....not once, not for a thousandth of a billionth of a second with a wide variety of spells and bow&arrows/thrown daggers/sniper rifles.

[Gromnir]

if obsidian needs add the anachronism o' classes, then keep them as few and as simple as possible. Less class-specific abilities and More customization.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Gorth]

Ooh, class warfare!

 

(I know, bad pun).

 

The only classless game I remember from top of my head is Oblivion. Not sure if I really like their approach to specialisation and skills. Not sure either what would be a better alternative. Something like VMBL's "backgrounds" which gave you starting traits/feats/whatever? Maybe it is just irrational fear of that blank slate in front of me that needs filling out.

[Aedelric]

I would like something different.

 

Each companion should have a class, but our main character not, at least at first. I want our class to be determined by our actions in the game and the traits/skills we earn or invest in, so slowly we become a mage or warrior. Dual classing could be taken into account from the start, I will say the last thing I want is a D&D clone with the same classes (Apart from traditional archetypes) and system.

 

As for what kind of classes, all the basics, mage, warrior, rogue ranger, bard. Then more advanced specializations which are unique to the game setting, seems we know little about the setting their is not much to say about what those could be.

[Ratimir]

No classes required.

 

They're just a holdover from D&D, and along with random character generation, levels, alignments and hitpoint bloat, they're something which RPGs should have left behind in the dark ages.

[Luckmann]

No classes required.

 

They're just a holdover from D&D, and along with random character generation, levels, alignments and hitpoint bloat, they're something which RPGs should have left behind in the dark ages.

Some of us, including me, enjoy the borders and definitions classes endow us with, as a focus for our characters. I wouldn't call it a holdover from DnD either; there are many, many systems with classes & careers.

[Theomen712]

I'd like to see an Archer specialisation somewhere in the fighter classes, then depending on the nature of mage classes, a class specialising in each element(fire, water, etc.), then in the thief department, perhaps something like a Spy class, dedicated to avoiding combat completely.

I like where you were going with the Archer class, in D&D i preferred the Ranger and Thief roads. But the whole avoiding combat thing as a thief bothers me. Its like this in every RPG where the thief is either there JUST to pick locks and stop traps or if the thief does have fighting capabilities its one of the harder classes to make effective in combat. They are the backstabber or they do no damage. BG 2 sort of got it right in how a thief isn't as good as his dagger, he's as good as his wittiness, and planning. they allowed the Bounty hunter class in which your traps destroyed enemies before they even came near. And it was balanced because you could only use so many at a time. And when you hit EPIC level (20) you had access to the most devastating crowd control and massive AOE damage traps I've ever seen implemented in a game. Its made the thief class not so boring anymore and i would love something like this. If you allow planning before battle why not allow the player to use what they've picked up here and there to set a trap for some enemies or the boss, instead of the player always being the one who walks into the trap?

[Theomen712]

Generally I would like to play as an evil character so each class should have tree skills like borderlands 2 to chose from that would determin youre abilities. That way for example if the player plays a warrior he could have three trees: paladin, berserker and death knight where paladin would be the good fighter able to use a little holy magic, berserker a barbarian king of fighter and death knight an evil knight.

A rogue could develop into an assassin (evil) thief (chaotic) or ranger (good)

A cleric could develop into a priest (good), shaman (chaotic) or dark priest (evil)

A mage could develop into a wizard (good), sorcerer (chaotic) or necmronacer (evil)

 

Great idea right here. We only have 5 classes right now, but this approach would make for 15 subclasses overall Good thinking