Solo Class

[Osvir]

I'm doing some Project Eternity research on their Official wikia and came across this:

http://eternity.gamepedia.com/Class

 

Notice that it says "multi-classing is also under construction" (also note that the last revision was February 2013). Something to simply consider, doesn't mean that Multi-Classing will be in PE but merely that Obsidian might think about ways for a single Class be able to do a "Multitude" of things within their own Class.

[Sacred_Path]

it says under consideration, not under construction. Subtle difference there. Needless to say I hope they will let even the "consideration" part fall under the table

[Osvir]

it says under consideration, not under construction. Subtle difference there. Needless to say I hope they will let even the "consideration" part fall under the table

Error on my part. Thanks for spotting it ^^ reading too fast+reacting to it without "consideration" is a bad idea

[bonarbill]

To each his own, but I've never quite understood the appeal of wanting to ignore the companions and go about your business all by yourself. It seems to me that you're missing out on much of the most meaningful aspect of a cRPG--roleplaying your character via interactions with fellow party members.

 

Considering how there are MANY CRPGs out there without party members, I wouldn't really call it the most "meaningful" aspect of a CRPG.  In fact, party interaction with your party members wasn't that popular until Torment and BG2 came out (lets be honest, there were many party based CRPGs before, but your party members were mostly mutes).

Edited June 26, 2013 by bonarbill

[Nirgal]

I can understand going for a solo-run of the game after you've played through the game once (or several times), and you want to sort of test yourself, see if you can beat all the challenges by minute planning and preperation.

personally though, i don't think i would do it...perhaps when i was younger, but i simply don't have time for it now.

I really only play one game a year. So even though, I also have a lot less time than only a couple of years ago, I can still replay a single game more than a couple of times. This way makes more sense now since there aren't all that many games that I like, and the ones I do play I can get to know fully.

[Lephys]

Needless to say I hope they will let even the "consideration" part fall under the table

I don't see why. I'd much rather have a development team who arrives at decisions after actual consideration, than one who simply foregoes consideration of possibilities all-together and simply goes with the first thing they think of.

 

That's like... the foundation of concepts. A concept artist will draw 10 or 20 or 30 variants of a "troll" or "orc" or some creature they're designing. Then, they can objectively look at those variants side-by-side, and say "yes, those ears WERE too goofy-looking," and "hmm, it needs to look less sinister and more natural," etc.

 

I'd hate for them to just think up how a creature should look, draw that one thing, then call it a day.

The same goes for the class system.

[Sacred_Path]

 

Needless to say I hope they will let even the "consideration" part fall under the table

I don't see why. I'd much rather have a development team who arrives at decisions after actual consideration, than one who simply foregoes consideration of possibilities all-together and simply goes with the first thing they think of.

 

Weeeell... this team is rather experienced in matters of multiclassing. It's a DnD staple after all. So they know it never really worked, it just allowed one character to fill two or three positions at no real cost because of the rapid level gain in CRPGs and opportunities to grind for XP. So I'd applaud them if they were like "you know there's one trope and DnD reference that we could avoid, and it's that of the Fighter/Mage/Thief". I'd much rather the game were balanced around single class characters and the system were flexible enough to create characters like the one I described, which basically should satisfy all the needs of someone who wants a multiclass character, with the one critical difference that this one character will never be as powerful a spellcaster as a single class wizard, not as good a warrior as a single class fighter and not as a good a thief as a single class rogue. And that's how it should be, amirite?

[Lephys]

^ Fair enough. I wasn't criticizing your take on it, or suggesting that "No, dude... multiclassing is GOOD!"

 

I'd just rather them (figuratively) call to see if the store's closed, rather than just assuming it's closed and failing to make use of it for the day. I trust them not to spend 7 straight months of development resources, just to fiddle around with the idea of multi-classing. They were probably done considering it like a week after that "under consideration" was posted.

 

My point is just that, no matter how much it seems so obvious that multi-classing couldn't work in any way, shape, or fashion, it's pretty silly not to even give it so much as a quick glance when:

 

A) You're dealing with your very own new "ruleset," built exactly how you want it, and

 

B) It's unlikely that every possible prototype of a multi-class system has been attempted, even under well-established rulesets.

 

It's kind of like that whole "Umm... that city's impenetrable. Everyone and their mother has tried to invade it, and haven't even made ANY progress" scenario. If no one, at that point, ever considered trying to figure out a way to take that city, then those cities pretty much would've never fallen in history, ever. And yet they always do, .

 

But, yeah, for what it's worth, I definitely don't want to see D&D multiclassing tacked onto the P:E mechanics. I think the reason they're most likely not going to do straight-up "multiclassing" is that they've already sort of spread out the overly-restrictive things about classes so that they're no longer class-restricted. So, now, you don't have that quite-reasonable desire to take a level of Rogue/Thief, just so you can pick locks, etc. So, I would say that their consideration of multi-classing was most useful in P:E's design, even though they didn't end up actually including it, technically. They opted to go ahead and make it obsolete.

[Sacred_Path]

B) It's unlikely that every possible prototype of a multi-class system has been attempted, even under well-established rulesets.

I'm p. sure it's easier to do it the other way round. As in, we have this class based system, does it allow for a variety of builds? If so, does it lack anything we want to accomplish? If not, multiclassing is probably not necessary.

[Lephys]

*shrug*. Seems like not giving any consideration to the possibility of multi-classing mechanics until AFTER you've built all your class mechanics would guarantee a terrible multi-classing implementation as the only option, other than no-multi-classing, even when it was viable for the given system.

 

Like I said, it is probably via their consideration for multi-classing that they guaranteed a system in which it would be both unnecessary AND go un-missed.

 

I'm simply glad they actually come to such design conclusions through consideration, and not assumption.

[Sacred_Path]

*shrug*. Seems like not giving any consideration to the possibility of multi-classing mechanics until AFTER you've built all your class mechanics would guarantee a terrible multi-classing implementation as the only option, other than no-multi-classing, even when it was viable for the given system.

Except you don't really lose anything. Allowing for multiclassing means more work for the devs foremost, for not much gain. I haven't seen any game being advertised with "NOW WITH 200% MORE MULTICLASSING!". A very flexible class system OTOH, oh boy, that's sure to attract several types of gamers at once.

[Lephys]

It's simply two ways to handle the exact same thing.

 

"Hmmm, maybe every class should have access to that ability."

 

Well, if it's restricted to a class, and you can multi-class to some extent, then you gain access to that ability (while still remaining different from other classes, since you only get access to a limited quantity/subset of other classes' abilities).

 

If you put all those abilities into their own non-restricted-by-class group, then everyone has access to them.

 

It's not like we're choosing between "Should everyone get allabilities?" and "Should people only get certain abilities?".

 

Look at the Godlike. "OMG, MULTI-RACING!" No, it's simply an additional aspect to race. Just like multi-classing is simply an additional aspect to class building. There are OODLES of ways in which to do it. They're not all inherently terrible, obviously-stupid ideas.

 

A better way to look at it would be to say they were considering class flexibility, and found out that they could accomplish their goal, in the context of the rest of their game design, without actually providing "select multiple classes" mechanics. I don't think they thought about multi-classing and individual class flexibility in two completely separate brain sessions.

[Sacred_Path]

It's simply two ways to handle the exact same thing.

Maybe, but one seems superior.

 

People who aren't into complexity will find multiclassing off putting (yes people I knew were irritated over BG's multiclasses). People who like complexity will prefer a classless system. The lack of elegance of multiclassing seems instantly recognizable, and I'd guess that's why it's rarely advertised. "Here, we have the Pacifist. Great healing abilities and may wear heavy armor. Over there, we have the lethal Berserker (may use all weapons). And of course, if you can't choose, why not go with a Pacifist Berserker!".

[Dianjabla]

I personally had a lot of fun doing solo runs through the BGT as a F/M/T. Got a little insane in ToB, took a lot of prep to survive in places. Yet to try it in IWD. I also enjoyed making a party of tripple class characters (FMT & FCM) and running through the saga that way. I would dearly love to have multiclassing in PE like there was in BG & IWD. But game mechanics might not support it. Pitty.

[Lephys]

Maybe, but one seems superior.

 

People who aren't into complexity will find multiclassing off putting (yes people I knew were irritated over BG's multiclasses). People who like complexity will prefer a classless system. The lack of elegance of multiclassing seems instantly recognizable, and I'd guess that's why it's rarely advertised. "Here, we have the Pacifist. Great healing abilities and may wear heavy armor. Over there, we have the lethal Berserker (may use all weapons). And of course, if you can't choose, why not go with a Pacifist Berserker!".

I just try to think of it in a broader sense, I suppose. Like the different schools of magic in D&D rules, and how you can either specialize in certain ones for extra effect/focus, or take the accessibility/effectiveness tradeoff of going unspecialized. It's simply the nature of people to dabble. Just because you love necromancy doesn't mean you can't possibly study some Illusion magic, also. A 10-year soldier can have his army disbanded and wind up doing wetwork in the streets for ne'er-do-wells. Would not he bear some qualities of a Rogue?

 

The restriction is inherent: If he didn't already soldier about for 10 years, then he wouldn't be much of a soldier. If I study magic for 5 months, you probably wouldn't call me a "Mage." Yet, I can study it for 5 years, THEN change my studies to something else.

 

It's just-plain feasible. So, yes, while it often isn't really needed in a lot of games' systems, I hardly find it in any way blatantly preposterous to consider. It's not as if it's just some silly thing that was spawned up out of game mechanics.

 

If there's a class-less system, and there's a classed system, then obviously there's a viable range in between that. There's no reason to simply pretend it's not there, just because you aren't going to use it for a particular game design.

 

What's sillier: Forbidding a Berzerker from ever learning any healing techniques, because those are ONLY for people who decided back when they were young that they were going to become healers, or allowing a Berzerker to learn SOME amount of healing techniques at the cost of forgoing the progression of his Barbarization techniques with those resources spent?

 

I will agree that a multi-classing system should really be a lot better designed than they usually are. It shouldn't just be "You totally are like a level 7 Barbarian and a Level 1 Healer mashed together." You should be something else entirely if you're studying Healing from a seasoned Barbarian's perspective. And you should only have so large of a secondary role-knowledge bucket to fill. You know... roughly 75/25 or something.

 

Like I said... the fact that P:E is taking all those typically-class-specific skills/abilities and putting them into a common pool pretty much handles this exact issue. But, what's the difference between leaving all those things as class-specific and allowing access to them via multi-classing, and taking them out and putting them in a non-class-specific pool to be accessed by all classes? Functionally? Nothing.

 

If I take Lockpicking as a non-class skill, OR I multi-class to Thief/Rogue so that I can gain Lockpicking, there is no difference. Not between the methods, at least. In other words, the only difference is the labeling: whether or not that skill was considered to be owned by another class. Either way it's not part of my class, and either way I've got access to it.

Edited June 29, 2013 by Lephys

[Sacred_Path]

The restriction is inherent: If he didn't already soldier about for 10 years, then he wouldn't be much of a soldier. If I study magic for 5 months, you probably wouldn't call me a "Mage." Yet, I can study it for 5 years, THEN change my studies to something else.

 

It's just-plain feasible. So, yes, while it often isn't really needed in a lot of games' systems, I hardly find it in any way blatantly preposterous to consider.

I ain't gunna read all dat **** I think it is. If you were already an accomplished mage, would you suddenly feel the urge to put on greasy heavy armor, swing a heavy warhammer, crawl through puddles of mud and sleep in cold field beds to learn how to live the life of a fighter? I don't think so. I think most explanations of multiclassing outside of game terms fall flat.

[PrimeJunta]

IMO the very existence of multi-classing indicates that something's broken about the classes themselves. If you can't have satisfying gameplay within the classes you've set up, why not do away with them altogether and just let you pick abilities from ability trees as your character develops?

 

AD&D was almost but not quite fatally broken as a system. D&D3 was entirely workable, but still riddled with patches and kludges thrown in to work around its failures. Multiclassing (and the kludges associated with it, like XP penalties) are just one such example.

 

I prefer P:E's approach. I would like a classless and XP-less system even better. Just award character points directly as you go, and let the player spend them on abilities. Then throw in a few trainers with some special gameplay – quests, for example – that lets you open up new ability trees. More or less like The Witcher or VtM: Bloodlines, only minus the XP, and with a broader scope. It would even be totally feasible to base this on D&D mechanics, with feats, spells, skills, hit dice, saves, and so on. Just assign a point price to each of those and set them up in nice hierarchies and you're golden. 

[Lephys]

I ain't gunna read all dat **** I think it is. If you were already an accomplished mage, would you suddenly feel the urge to put on greasy heavy armor, swing a heavy warhammer, crawl through puddles of mud and sleep in cold field beds to learn how to live the life of a fighter? I don't think so. I think most explanations of multiclassing outside of game terms fall flat.

I don't imagine you'd suddenly feel the arbitrary urge to don heavy armor and abandon your magery.

 

Maybe you've become exiled, and no longer have access to your magerish resources? Maybe people are now on the lookout for someone wielding magic of your description. I didn't say it ALWAYS makes sense no matter what, for any given person, ever, to spontaneously and without reason fully SWITCH to another class. I even already criticized the whole "You are actually a full-on Level 1 Warrior now, AND a full-on Level 7 Mage! 8D" thing. (If you didn't want to read all my stuff, I'd prefer you just leave it at "I didn't read that stuff, so I'm not even going to say anything regarding what I didn't read." Otherwise, what am I suppose to do besides point out what you didn't read that I've already stated? )

 

Maybe you're a Novice Mage, and your teacher dies. Now, you find yourself in a place where your magic isn't effective enough to take people down, but you have no means of very efficiently/effectively furthering your own magical prowess. But some local group needs soldiers, and you're of a mind to help them. So you start actually studying combat moves and techniques. Are you "a fighter" now? Not at all. But you kind of know some of the Fightery stuff.

 

A class simply determines what your character focuses on. It doesn't inherently determine what you can and cannot study/learn/do. Basically, a class just serves to organize focii, and what specific things each one allows you. It doesn't say anything about your ability to switch focii. That's only dictated by time/resources spend, and your voluntary decision to do so.

 

Granted, in P:E, specifically, it actually has another layer (how your soul works/the specific manner in which you derive energy from it).

 

So, yeah, it's great how it works. I love it. That doesn't change the fact that the fundamental concept of multiclassing is the shift of one's focus to learn something outside of one's specific focus (like lockpicking for Rogues). What does P:E do? De-classify lockpicking (and other such commonly class-specific tidbits) so that all classes have access to it. Basically, you have a separate classification of skills/abilities: The non-class-specific class.

 

So, again, this functionally accomplishes the same fundamental goal as multiclassing capability. Multiclassing has just typically been less balanced. And if you can do it without technically having players choose/manage the progression of two specific classes, then awesome possum.

 

I still stand by the value of the consideration of the very notion of multiclassing, as it pertains to the decision of which character-development options to offer to which characters, how to offer them, and what to restrict and when.

[Sacred_Path]

I don't imagine you'd suddenly feel the arbitrary urge to don heavy armor and abandon your magery.

 

Maybe you've become exiled, and no longer have access to your magerish resources? Maybe people are now on the lookout for someone wielding magic of your description.

Anyonce can LARP as much as they want to, but you can't call an approach equally strong if it relies on LARPing to make any sense.

[Lephys]

Anyonce can LARP as much as they want to, but you can't call an approach equally strong if it relies on LARPing to make any sense.

There's no need to overshoot the point. You asked for an example of why, within the lore/world/rules of an RPG world, people would decide to switch the focus of their skillset/role in the world. I provided one.

 

A cRPG is basically taking the place of LARPing/PnP stuff. We developed computers sophisticated enough, and someone said "Hey, I bet we can transpose that experience into an audio/video interaction on this computer!"

 

I expect that, since a cRPG provides you with situations, rather than the player having to just make everything up as he goes (as with LARPing), it could provide you with such a reason for changing your character's focus. That's a pretty reasonable possibility.

 

The unlikelihood of an extremely narrowly-devised example situation (an ultra-accomplished mage deciding to become a melee warrior, instead) does not in any way disprove the idea that there are plenty of reasons for a given character to do so.

[Sacred_Path]

There's no need to overshoot the point. You asked for an example of why, within the lore/world/rules of an RPG world, people would decide to switch the focus of their skillset/role in the world. I provided one.

My point is that if we compare "flexible single class" vs. "multiclass" characters, we have to look at how much sense it makes in a specific game, and there the first will usually trump the latter. I can imagine games where multiclassing makes sense in ingame terms, i.e. a game where many monsters are resistant to magic or where there are areas where magic doesn't work at all. Or a world where magic is outlawed.

[Lephys]

My point is that if we compare "flexible single class" vs. "multiclass" characters, we have to look at how much sense it makes in a specific game, and there the first will usually trump the latter.

"Usually." Without looking, it's impossible to know. That's been my point from the get-go. They're both ways of handling the exact same goal, really. They're simply differences of logistical organization. Labeling, really. "Is Stealth something that we're going to say is part of the Rogue focus set, and give other classes the ability to potentially acquire it by partially shifting focus to the Rogue class (i.e. focusing on things outside their own focus set)? Or is it something that's simply outside of ALL classes' focus sets and we're allowing all classes access to it? Or, does only one class get access to it and that's it?"

 

I agree that multi-classing (at least how it's usually implemented) is generally the more convoluted option, but it' still not inherently crappy or pointless. Therefore, multi-classing, until it's ruled out for a specific game in favor of simply flexiblizing (that's a word now) the individual classes to allow for role/focus variety throughout, is worth considering. At the very least, such consideration provides useful information regarding which options you want which classes to have access to, and how that access will work.