DISCUSSING ORIGINAL CLASSES

About the name, I was going to call him Scholar, Mime, Psychologist and then Phylosophist (I don't think that this is how you spell it...) but I though Poet was better, because his abilities come from understanding and sensivity - he thinks as if he were his allies / friends in order to "understand" their motives (skillsets) & weaknesses (their stats) =D (Now to mention that I think of it he could have a !Poetry command...)

That's EXACTLY why "Interpret" wouldn't be an useless command =D
I used the Dragon example because it's common, for example, in the FF series, for the Party to use Dragon Blue Magic and Items that affect strength & Lv.
Dragons themselves rarely use so. AND his skills don't need to base in elements, either. Say, he's fighting a White Elemental. His White ability could be some sort of (less powerful but battle-lasting) Shell, and his offensive ability could be, say, WhisperCharm (deals Mp damage to one enemy, damage dealt spread through the party! =D)

So, since the skillset name is "interpret", that's exactly what he does. He interprets the enemy. Sometimes making his versions of their abilities, sometimes creating abilities based off them, but that they don't use at all =D

Of course, it's not like you're gonna have Blizzagaja8 while fighting Lv.1 bombs. But, if their self-destruct is tick-based, why not a Slowga spell? =D this is actually another factor for balancing your enemies. If you made that bomb punishing enough, you could, say, give Antipodegaja24 to the Poet. It'd deal Fire & Ice damage (because giving Blizzard would be awkward) effectively hitting its weakness.

Also @Enker,1 damage makes that ability pretty lame, but if his attack were, for example, half of the average fighter, it would be reasonable. And depending on his skillset... =D

Well, the reason no one was listing very commonly seen archetypes was probably because they are very commonly seen. Ten classes at once is way too many to respond to with any sort of intelligent reply anyway, so I'll just give feedback on two of them.

Your thief class has no rhythm, and isn't very good at what it does. You gain the ability to steal exp in exchange for losing the ability to actually get strong after gaining exp; lame. Then it steals MP but can't use MP. Stealing items and equipment makes more sense, because you're sacrificing the ability for the thief to do anything useful now in exchange for gaining the ability for all your characters to be better later. It has some punch when you steal equipment, but the rest of the class doesn't seem to have much to do with that punch. By punch I don't mean offensive power; I just mean something that makes you think "Hey, cool, that was useful, this class is good for something." And what I mean by rhythm is to give it some buildup and tension to get to that punch point, or at least give it some control over when it happens and make sure different things are happening on different rounds that lead into each-other. So overall it's not bad but there are better ways to make a thief; try either building on the true purpose of the class (sacrificing short-term power for long-term gain) or figuring out what the point of the other abilities is and making them more interesting, and I think it'll be more fun.

Meanwhile spellsword is a ridiculously shitty and boring class, all it will ever do is normal attacks. Ugh. Just delete this one, and move its three meaningful skills to another class. No one will miss it.

We need more Guitaromancers up in here.

author=LockeZ
Some of doomed2die's classes look possibly good on the surface, but it's too much information for me to process all at once, especially without any explanation as to the thought process or purpose behind any of it. I did suggest people actually give detailed explanations for their stuff like in the boss battle topic, right?

author=Craze
has there ever been a game where having more than four damage elements was meaningful or worthwhile or anything other than fucking stupid

SMT games have five! Don't tell me you don't like SMT games, I know you have a hard-on for them. That's different from stupid FF elements though, since it's got two physical and three magical elements.

I don't think the eight elements in mana games are poorly done. Granted, it's really seven, because gold element never has any damage spells. It helps that every single enemy has a weakness, and also helps that you have to actually pick a specific element to specialize in and you get several other non-damaging spells based on which one you choose. So elements are almost like classes. Kinda. Maybe. Specializations, at least. Elements are far more interesting when they have more actual differences, and also when the player has to pick one long-term instead of just picking one every round.

SMTIII has ailments broken down into sub-elements and tells you exactly nothing about what they mean.

Persona 2 has 17 in the first half and 19 in the second half. And none of them mean dick because the Zan and Gry spell lines (almighty) are available throughout the game and SP costs are derived from the Personas themselves, not the spells they know.

DDS 1 and 2 had five, you're correct. Only three of them matter because there are only three things weak to Earth and four things weak to Ice in the entire game. Oops!

I thought the original Pokemon handled the 15 elements thing very well, but that likely has to do with the target audience and the fact that battles were meant to be really simple. It also had a lot going for it outside the battles.

The Elemental Rock/Paper/Scissors thing doesn't create many interesting decisions in most games - you either have the spell you need or you don't. In some games they're extremely lenient (FF7) and in some games you are screwed (Diablo II). It adds battle complexity with little interesting depth.

Meanwhile plenty of games can get by without any sort of elements at all, such as the Mario RPGs or Tales games, but that's because they create depth in other ways.

The greatest * elements are from Star Ocean 2. iirc there's about ten ranging from a white cube to the illuminati eye and fuck knowing what any beyond fire mean. Not that it matters, the element of enemy attacks is totally obscure, there's no feedback when damage is partially resisted or hit a weakness, and there's no reason to care because Crawd can do Super Slash and do more DPS than any spell even before factoring in casting animations and bypass the damage cap.


* worst

open really long tab edit: Original Pokemon is awful, just look at the Psychic type. It was practically the Mary Sue Waifu insert character as an elemental type. It got better in later iterations but the original game was far from any shining beacon of good design.

I don't mind being able to switch when the opponent does but it shouldn't say what they are switching to. It's pretty easy to get a type advantage when the game tells you they are switching to a fire dude (assuming you know the name->type) and you can just free switch to your water/ground/anti-fire pokeman and OHKO what the opponent sends out.

This is all SP stuff, I never did MP much less build any sort of team that wasn't "hey these guys are cool let's use them" which is as far as I'm concerned the best way to play Pokemon.

author=GreatRedSpirit
I don't mind being able to switch when the opponent does but it shouldn't say what they are switching to. It's pretty easy to get a type advantage when the game tells you they are switching to a fire dude (assuming you know the name->type) and you can just free switch to your water/ground/anti-fire pokeman and OHKO what the opponent sends out.

This is all SP stuff, I never did MP much less build any sort of team that wasn't "hey these guys are cool let's use them" which is as far as I'm concerned the best way to play Pokemon.

This is a gameplay setting. It would probably be easier for less explorative players to identify if they labeled these modes "easy" and "hard" instead of "shift" and "set." Playing in set mode makes you appreciate pokemon like Sableye more, lacking a critical weakness.

author=LockeZ
Well, the reason no one was listing very commonly seen archetypes was probably because they are very commonly seen. Ten classes at once is way too many to respond to with any sort of intelligent reply anyway, so I'll just give feedback on two of them.

I was just saying that there are a lot of commonly seen archetypes that should be obvious beyond the warrior/mage/cleric trio that we should address.

Your thief class has no rhythm, and isn't very good at what it does. You gain the ability to steal exp in exchange for losing the ability to actually get strong after gaining exp; lame. Then it steals MP but can't use MP. Stealing items and equipment makes more sense, because you're sacrificing the ability for the thief to do anything useful now in exchange for gaining the ability for all your characters to be better later. It has some punch when you steal equipment, but the rest of the class doesn't seem to have much to do with that punch. By punch I don't mean offensive power; I just mean something that makes you think "Hey, cool, that was useful, this class is good for something." And what I mean by rhythm is to give it some buildup and tension to get to that punch point, or at least give it some control over when it happens and make sure different things are happening on different rounds that lead into each-other. So overall it's not bad but there are better ways to make a thief; try either building on the true purpose of the class (sacrificing short-term power for long-term gain) or figuring out what the point of the other abilities is and making them more interesting, and I think it'll be more fun.

I agree. I almost wanted to give him/her the ability to steal health and stats (for the duration of a battle) and sort of weaken enemies and empower himself and then just wreck for the last couple turns of a battle but I felt that it seemed to vampiric in nature and that it was just either overpowered or meh overall in concept but typically a thief class is just massively useful for the long term game. I just tried to give him some utility beyond that. You'll notice thieves with minimum battle power still get used frequently (FF V, Disgaea, etc.)

Meanwhile spellsword is a ridiculously shitty and boring class, all it will ever do is normal attacks. Ugh. Just delete this one, and move its three meaningful skills to another class. No one will miss it.

Yeah I know the class has a lot of monotonous aspects to it. Personally, I've never been a fan of the "Attack" command aspect; I always said if I ever got around to making an RPG, the "attack" command would be replaced by an "Attack" skill sub-set (double strike, quick strike, heavy strike, jump attack, etc.) that all do different things or have stat variations useful against different enemies and/or for different purposes (for example, doublestrike would be extremely useful for the spellsword but quick strike might be necessary against agile enemies. Maybe you want to try the heavy strike and take 'em out in one turn but you'll likely miss... So forth). Which is where the class would be less monotonous (but still relatively monotonous compared to individuals with the attack subskillset on top of the class skillsets). But I think there's a lot of potential and while I focused on elemental attacks, there's a lot more that can be done (steal health, steal mana, deal aoe damage, chain lightning, fire damage over time, etc.) that I probably should've addressed instead but I was focused on showing the sort of variety there are to classes and kind of did quantity over quality.

But I'd like to point out that overall, the classes are unique unto themselves and most of them would serve quite a useful battle purpose (maybe warlocks would be iffy to balance with bosses and summoners need a task to do once they've summoned but I mean, no class is going to please everyone).

For example, look at the Assassin class; they deal massive single target based on Speed and Strength. In an ATB combat form, they'd be immensely more powerful (might need to nerf damage to compensate). In a regular turn based combat form, they'd always attack first; maybe clear out an enemy before they attack and manage to deal massive single target damage to bosses.

Or conversely, the paladin which can heal his allies (not very well), attack (not very well), and tank on behalf of his allies. He's able to serve multiple purposes (mediocre physical attacks, healing and buffing...) if you want "punch." A very defensive class which focuses on protecting squishier damage dealers (obviously stat balancing on those characters has to change to compensate). But the design is overall, a defensive master that isn't completely worthless offensively (unlike the Cleric).

author=Craze
has there ever been a game where having more than four damage elements was meaningful or worthwhile or anything other than fucking stupid

(FINAL FANTASY VI/FINAL FANTASY TACTICS*: HALLMARKS OF shitty GAME DESIGN)


*fft only has a few elements but its classes are about as interesting/useless as doomed2die's

Meh I was just really addressing elements overall.

I have to wonder about the classes being "useless" and uninteresting though. Why say that? How would you approach it differently really?

It's interesting because I really liked FFVI and FFT. And FFVI really had about 5 elements (physical, water, ice, fire, lightning). I also like SMT gameplay (never played one full through admittedly but mostly because I have never owned one) which apparently you liked and some of the ideas are arguably derived from some of the gameplay designs of both types.










Reasoning behind classes then:
Thief- Just an archetype I felt needed addressing; not much rhyme or reason put into the design. Like I said, I considered making someone capabale of stealing even health and stats (stats probably temporarily or for the duration of the battle) so that he weakens enemies and strengthens himself to do more towards the end of prolonged battles. But I felt that might be overpowered in nature and/or too much outside the design philosophy of a thief, being that a thief is designed to do little in the battle but contribute the battle preparation (with the new items they get you). I may be misinterepting the design philosophy though.

Warlock- An archetype of just assailing enemies with status ailments; I added nightmare (and wanted to add more variations of utilizing pre-inflicted enemies but didn't want to overuse the concept) so that they do more once these status ailments are inflicted. Also, by weakening enemies, they naturally contribute to both the defense and offense of the team but in exchange, they can't do any direct damage nor can they help allies directly (healing, buffs). This time, I wanted to show the potential diversity of the Warlock class's status ailments but didn't add more gameplay skills into it. Which I could but whatever; I feel nightmare displays a bit of the design philosphy behind that adequately.

Paladin- Sort of the ultimate defensive character. He can heal and buff (albeit mediocre) and can physically attack decently (but doesn't really excel at it). But his real use lies in the fact that he can defend his allies (which means powerful offensive characters that die in 2 hits are actually viable, however you may want them). Paladins also would go greatly in a battle of attrition (warlocks).

Bard- A sort of mix between cleric and warlock. You'll notice he's 1 of 2 classes that can heal energy for allies, which gives him a niche role. He can also heal (not very well) but buffs and debuffs all enemies/allies which makes him pretty useful to keep around. I suppose his biggest strength would be his minimal resource use (which I imagine he would use very little energy) and his versatility in switching between offense and defense.

Blue Mage- Another jack of all trades type; didn't bother making skills for it because they could really be any skills. Just felt we ought mention it.

Assassin- Makes the best use of single target offense; definitely a character I'd have in aboss fight. Dismal multi-target power but since he moves first (high high speed), he could take out an enemy (potentially) before they attack you.

Spellsword- A versatile class in elements; again, it really only isn't monotonous when "attack" isn't an Attack command but a skill subset.

Alchemist- Sort of an opportunity for alternate resource development. Again, 1 of 2 classes that can heal MP. He's pretty versatile and does a lot but requires quite a bit of money to maintain. Of course, the skills would be well worth it, especially healing MP for all allies and dealing such good damage.

Summoner- I like the idea of summoning allies; I always preferred that to the FF style of summons being essentially pumped up black magic. I think summons serve multiple purposes (tanks like Phoenix and Goblins can help greatly in boss battle when they're targeted instead of your allies. They can deal great damage like the Dragon or just support your team with fairies and imps). And the ability to switch out between summons depending on the fight is sort of a pokemon deal. The main design flaw here being that once they summon, they're worthless until you want to change summons. I ought fix that somehow.


Sage- This is a weird design choice, allowing someone to cast both lines of spells. I'd probably cap it at like lvl 8 spells out of 10 lvls of spells (arbtirary numbers, proving a point, don't quote me on it). However, the dismal stats beyond magic and the dismal resource pool balance it out some and having to decide, each turn, between supporting your team or decimating your enemies is a big choice, especially since both time and MP are being burned up quickly. Double cast averts one of those flaws a bit but then you're burning MP twice as fast which helps to balance out the ideas. Also, this means you can have less slots to fill with casters and other classes.

So there, design motivations.

author=Blobofgoo

author=doomed2die
I was just saying that there are a lot of commonly seen archetypes that should be obvious beyond the warrior/mage/cleric trio that we should address.

Yes, but the whole reason I made the topic was to discuss -={ORIGINAL}=- classes. The topic started out there. I thought SlashPhoenix's vampire class was great. Anyway, the mainstream classes weren't listed because everyone already knows about them. A thief is a weak stealing class that benefits the party in the long term. If you change the class to make a new version of a thief, then it deserves its own name. The whole idea is to make innovative classes that are fun, interesting, useful. Maybe I should have called the topic DISCUSSING CREATIVE CLASSES...

Sorry haha. I read how you felt that classes with "just different stat variations" became new classes and I wanted to show you the original ideas within common archetypes (that usually, admittedly, are poorly executed). But if you want more original concepts, that'd be a different discussion I guess.