Full Games List
Featured Games
New Games
Reviews
Media
Images
Blogs
Game Updates
Images Feedback Summary
Game Design Highlights
Tutorials
Articles
Scripts
Utilities / Plugins
Resources
Engines
Engine Bulletins
What is Makerscore?
Past Events
Achievements
Misaos
Forums
Post History
Chat
New to RMN?
Full Store List
RMN Music Pack (free)
DISCUSSING ORIGINAL CLASSES
Posts
Blobofgoo
View playlists
CloseClasses have kind of become willy nilly now. Basically anything can be considered a class as long as the name and stats are a tad different. That's not what I want. I want classes that are unique and interesting. This is probably confusing some so heres a list of what I think are meaningful classes.
Healer - Has mainly healing spells and supportive spells instead of offense, which making different than the majority of classes
Mage - The only class that uses high power spells that are offensive
Soldier - Has offensive and defensive abilities and high attack and defense
Beserker - Extremely offensive while sacrificing HP and defense for high strength
There are definitely more, but on to phase 2. I want them to be interesting. If they aren't interesting, the player will feel forced to use them instead of wanting to use them. This can be done by simply adding a quirk to a basic class, but it's going to need to be thought out. Kind of like when LockeZ asked for the boss designs. When you make a class, make sure you explain why it workd or what it covers for, etc.
You need to answer the following. How it is formatted is up to you. This doubles as my example, although you guys will probably come up with better classes.
Name - Spartan (or Gladiator)
Strengths - The Spartan class has high attack and defense.
Weaknesses - The spartan class has lower HP then most physical classes. Armor piercing attacks will take them down easily.
Special - The Spartan Class's skills change depending on the weapon equipped. Equipping shields gives defensive abilities. Equipping gauntlets gives multihitting and status abilities. Spears give offensive abilities. Daggers give very offensive and "risky" abilities. Shields and gauntlets are equipped in the shield slot while Spears and daggers are equipped in the weapon slot. Equipping different combos of items will give you an edge on different enemies.
When thinking of weaknesses, it may help to think of it in a PvP setting. Good luck!
Healer - Has mainly healing spells and supportive spells instead of offense, which making different than the majority of classes
Mage - The only class that uses high power spells that are offensive
Soldier - Has offensive and defensive abilities and high attack and defense
Beserker - Extremely offensive while sacrificing HP and defense for high strength
There are definitely more, but on to phase 2. I want them to be interesting. If they aren't interesting, the player will feel forced to use them instead of wanting to use them. This can be done by simply adding a quirk to a basic class, but it's going to need to be thought out. Kind of like when LockeZ asked for the boss designs. When you make a class, make sure you explain why it workd or what it covers for, etc.
You need to answer the following. How it is formatted is up to you. This doubles as my example, although you guys will probably come up with better classes.
Name - Spartan (or Gladiator)
Strengths - The Spartan class has high attack and defense.
Weaknesses - The spartan class has lower HP then most physical classes. Armor piercing attacks will take them down easily.
Special - The Spartan Class's skills change depending on the weapon equipped. Equipping shields gives defensive abilities. Equipping gauntlets gives multihitting and status abilities. Spears give offensive abilities. Daggers give very offensive and "risky" abilities. Shields and gauntlets are equipped in the shield slot while Spears and daggers are equipped in the weapon slot. Equipping different combos of items will give you an edge on different enemies.
When thinking of weaknesses, it may help to think of it in a PvP setting. Good luck!
Hmmm..... Perhaps a Defender or something?
Defender (or something)
Strengths: Very high defense, high HP
Weaknesses: Low speed, weak against magic
Special: Has okay Attack, can shield another party member from attack.
Also, maybe a 'wild card' class that is kind of weird but is useful in certain situations? Like a bard or geomancer, maybe?
Defender (or something)
Strengths: Very high defense, high HP
Weaknesses: Low speed, weak against magic
Special: Has okay Attack, can shield another party member from attack.
Also, maybe a 'wild card' class that is kind of weird but is useful in certain situations? Like a bard or geomancer, maybe?
Travio
149
Separate the idea of a Spartan out from a Gladiator - in and of themselves, they could be two separate styles. I would suggest taking a look to the Palladium series of games for some class inspiration and I'll use it as inspiration for a Gladiator class:
Name: Gladiator
Strengths: Good defense and evasion, high charisma (assuming such a thing exists in the system)
Weaknesses: Low attack, low magic resistance
Special: Gladiators are tanks, of a sort - their skills circle around getting the enemy to focus on them at all costs. They're flashy, they're loud, they're mouthy - they're the center of attention and, damn it, you better be focusing on them. They use skills that put their enemy off guard, leave them reeling, hamstringing them, fighting dirty, anything to put on a show. The longer the fight takes, as far as they're concerned, the better. And, if things become too tough, they take a dive and play possum.
Name: Gladiator
Strengths: Good defense and evasion, high charisma (assuming such a thing exists in the system)
Weaknesses: Low attack, low magic resistance
Special: Gladiators are tanks, of a sort - their skills circle around getting the enemy to focus on them at all costs. They're flashy, they're loud, they're mouthy - they're the center of attention and, damn it, you better be focusing on them. They use skills that put their enemy off guard, leave them reeling, hamstringing them, fighting dirty, anything to put on a show. The longer the fight takes, as far as they're concerned, the better. And, if things become too tough, they take a dive and play possum.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
This'll be more interesting if you actually give a list of skills for each character/class. The high level idea of the class isn't gonna be particularly original; it's the way the skills work together with each-other that gives the class an identity and creates a flow to combat.
Here's one that's clearly got the names of it skills taken from Final Fantasy, but plays really differently from what it's based on. I'll try to describe how and why.
Archer starts out with a simple combo of just status and normal damage abilities, and their trademark attack, Charge Attack, which stops the archer's passive melee attacks while it charges up (since in this game, all characters deal a number of normal attacks based on their agility every round in addition to being able to use one skill per round). Since characters who are wielding bows deal agility-based damage, several of Archer's skills like Charge Attack and Hunting have great synergy with high-agility characters.
Very early on, they get the ability to summon Animals, which linger for a couple of rounds. This can be used to provide passive healing each round, or alternately, to give them some extra damage while using Charge Attack in place of their lost melee strikes. Much of the job is based around dealing status effects to prevent the enemy from attacking or cause them to take extra damage, and then following up with Animals and Charge Attack for big damage. But since that takes quite a few rounds to fully set up, it also has several random-targetting attacks for when you need to quickly dispatch weaker enemies. The random-targetting attacks are weaker than attacks in classes that specialize in area attacks, but strong enough that the job doesn't feel helpless against large numbers of weaker foes.
At rank 16, they get a unique ability, which is to start summoning a pet which they can name themselves for flavor purposes. These are intended to be the 'ultimate' Animal summons, turning the Archer into a bonafide hunter/ranger.
Some skills get upgraded later: specifically, the random-targetting attacks and some of the skills that deal damage + status effects. Others like Charge Attack and Hunting continue to be useful forever, and higher rank skills combo in with them rather than replace them. Because you must set three different animals, and can't just set the same one three times, the stronger Animals don't necessarily replace the weaker ones, except for Squirrel and Bees.
Here's one that's clearly got the names of it skills taken from Final Fantasy, but plays really differently from what it's based on. I'll try to describe how and why.
Archer starts out with a simple combo of just status and normal damage abilities, and their trademark attack, Charge Attack, which stops the archer's passive melee attacks while it charges up (since in this game, all characters deal a number of normal attacks based on their agility every round in addition to being able to use one skill per round). Since characters who are wielding bows deal agility-based damage, several of Archer's skills like Charge Attack and Hunting have great synergy with high-agility characters.
Very early on, they get the ability to summon Animals, which linger for a couple of rounds. This can be used to provide passive healing each round, or alternately, to give them some extra damage while using Charge Attack in place of their lost melee strikes. Much of the job is based around dealing status effects to prevent the enemy from attacking or cause them to take extra damage, and then following up with Animals and Charge Attack for big damage. But since that takes quite a few rounds to fully set up, it also has several random-targetting attacks for when you need to quickly dispatch weaker enemies. The random-targetting attacks are weaker than attacks in classes that specialize in area attacks, but strong enough that the job doesn't feel helpless against large numbers of weaker foes.
At rank 16, they get a unique ability, which is to start summoning a pet which they can name themselves for flavor purposes. These are intended to be the 'ultimate' Animal summons, turning the Archer into a bonafide hunter/ranger.
Some skills get upgraded later: specifically, the random-targetting attacks and some of the skills that deal damage + status effects. Others like Charge Attack and Hunting continue to be useful forever, and higher rank skills combo in with them rather than replace them. Because you must set three different animals, and can't just set the same one three times, the stronger Animals don't necessarily replace the weaker ones, except for Squirrel and Bees.
-Rank 1-
Charge Attack - 200 AP - Charge for a chosen number of rounds, then release.
Passive melee attacks don't occur while charging.
Deals phys damage based on the number of rounds spent
charging as well as the number of melee attacks
you WOULD have gotten if you didn't charge.
Pdef and mdef increased slightly while charging.
Increasing this skill's level will let you charge longer.
Blackout - 250 AP - Low-Medium phys single damage + blind.
Leg Shot - 200 AP - Medium phys single damage + immobilize.
(Immobilize prevents fleeing; useless in most fights)
(Due to the limited use, this skill does more damage
than other status shots)
Doubleshot - 600 AP - Low-Medium phys damage to two random targets; low damage
if it hits the same target more than once.
-Rank 3-
Beso Toxico - 500 AP - Low-Medium phys single damage + poison.
Animals - 800 AP - You must 'equip' 3 animals before combat.
Have to equip 3 different ones; can't equip 3 unicorns.
For three rounds after using Animals, you will
summon a random animal each round in addition to
whatever other skills you use that round.
Unlock more animals as you continue to use archer.
Rank 3: Squirrel (low phys damage)
Rank 3: Bees (very low phys damage, more to stronger enemies)
Rank 3: Nightingale (weak heal + remove poison/blind)
Rank 6: Falcon (lowers enemy HP by 1/4)
Rank 6: Badger (slow or paralyze on all enemies)
Rank 8: Wild Boar (medium phys damage)
Rank 10: Unicorn (weak party heal + mp recovery)
Rank 12: Skunk (poison or blind on all enemies)
Rank 13: Interceptor (counterattacks when you're hit)
Rank 16: <Pet> Strike (high-medium phys damage)
Rank 16: <Pet> Search (get healing items)
Rank 16: <Pet> Recover (medium heal)
Rank 17: <Pet> Reverse (revive & buff defense of party members)
Rank 19: <Pet> Cannon (low-medium phys damage vs. all enemies)
Rank 22: Invincible Moon (buff defense of party members)
Rank 23: Wishing Star (low phys damage to 4 random enemies)
-Rank 4-
Arm Shot - 300 AP - Low-Medium phys single damage + paralyze.
(Immunity to paralysis is very common)
-Rank 8-
Sonic Boom - 750 AP - Medium phys damage to all enemies. Diminishes when
fighting more than 2 enemies.
Aim - 500 AP - Removes Blind and improves critical hit rate of passive
melee attacks for all party members.
-Rank 10-
Hunting - 700 AP - Low-medium single phys damage; if enemy is killed with
this attack, gain a bonus to critical hit chance of
passive melee attacks for 9 rounds.
(Note: Buffs carry over between battles)
-Rank 15-
Barrage - 1000 AP - Low-Medium phys damage to four random targets; low damage
if it hits the same target more than once.
(Effectively replaces Doubleshot)
-Rank 18-
Wither Shot - 800 AP - Low-Medium phys single damage + curse.
(Curse increases damage taken and lowers damage dealt)
(Very few enemies are immune to it)
-Rank 21-
Triple Foul - 800 AP - High-medium phys single damage + blind/silence/sleep.
(Effectively replaces Blackout and kinda replaces
Arm Shot & Leg Shot.)
-Rank 23-
X-Fight - 1200 AP - Medium phys damage to four random targets; low-medium
damage if it hits the same target more than once.
(Effectively replaces Barrage)
CyberDagger
10
In games like these, your characters basically just do three possible things. They either kill stuff, help their team mates kill stuff faster, or keep their team mates from getting killed. Everything they do is one of these three things, sometimes more than one at the same time. The question is less about what they do, and more about how they do it. If you have two classes that focus on the same goal, like damage, but achieve their goals through different means.
Let's say that you have some damage dealing classes. There are the attackers, the ones that deal their damage by constant use of the attack command, low cost abilities and counters.
In contrast to that, there are the nukers. They are not your main damage dealers most of the time because their damage dealing abilities, while extremely powerful, are very resource intensive. So, once in a while, they can deal massive ammounts of damage, even clearing the whole field some times.
Then there's the critters. If you think they're simply a subset of the attackers with purely aesthetic differences, you're doing crits wrong. A critical hit can be a great damage boost, but it's reliant on a dice roll. While the maximum damage in a turn for these is greater than that of those that rely simply on a massive attack stat, they deal less damage on average, and as such, in a vacuum, simply stacking damage is more beneficial. So give a twist to crits! Have crits ignore defense buffs, or even ignore defense altogether! Give the class abilities that activate on a crit. Whatever you do, make crits more than just a random element on the damage formula.
Then there's the odd ones out. You know the type, those that deal their damage through conditions like poison, burn and bleed. These are special because they circumvent the damage calculations entirely. No randomness, no defense stats mitigating damage, no crits. Just subtracting directly from HP each turn. For this reason, they are excellent against heavily armored enemies, as they ignore this advantage. Them relying on conditions also means that they have some free turns to do other things, while others would have to keep attacking, so making these hybrid classes and giving them something useful to do on those dead turns is nice. Or you can make condition removal prevalent and make it an epic struggle to keep those conditions up, if you wish.
After all that attacking stuff, there's support. As I said before, there are two kinds of support. Offensive support, making your allies kill faster, and defensive support, keeping your allies from getting killed.
With offensive support, you can be a saboteur or a buffer. Buffers raise the party's killing capabilities, by directly influencing damage, or sometthing like a haste spell that makes an ally attack more times. Saboteurs make the enemies more vulnerable to whatever attacks you want to use.
Defensive supporters can also be buffers or saboteurs. Defensive sabotueurs impede the enemies' damage dealing capabilities, either by reducing damage or preventing the attacks from happening at all. Defensive buffers can be either proactive or reactive. Proactive defensive buffers work by improving the party's capacity to take damage. Reactive defensive buffers are what you know as healers. They return the health to its previous value after the damage is dealt.
Now, what do you want to do to make interesting classes? Mix and match! Maybe there's a class that has attacks that heal the party after striking. Maybe there's one that make the rest of the party's attacks against a single enemy more powerful, as long as it keeps attacking it. Hell, mix two damage dealing methods! Perhaps a class that has a skill that deals more damage if the target already has a certain damage dealing condition? A class that inflicts bleed on crit? And how about this one, a class that's a defensive saboteur most of the time, but has a spell that deals damage that scales with the number of conditions the target has, allowing it to work as a nuker once it has already nerfed the opposition as best as it can.
The skills define the class much more than the stats. Make the skills interact in interesting ways among themselves or with other elements of the game, and the classes will be interesting.
If you want examples of class builds I'll post a couple of them later. It's late, and this wall of text has tired me a bit.
Let's say that you have some damage dealing classes. There are the attackers, the ones that deal their damage by constant use of the attack command, low cost abilities and counters.
In contrast to that, there are the nukers. They are not your main damage dealers most of the time because their damage dealing abilities, while extremely powerful, are very resource intensive. So, once in a while, they can deal massive ammounts of damage, even clearing the whole field some times.
Then there's the critters. If you think they're simply a subset of the attackers with purely aesthetic differences, you're doing crits wrong. A critical hit can be a great damage boost, but it's reliant on a dice roll. While the maximum damage in a turn for these is greater than that of those that rely simply on a massive attack stat, they deal less damage on average, and as such, in a vacuum, simply stacking damage is more beneficial. So give a twist to crits! Have crits ignore defense buffs, or even ignore defense altogether! Give the class abilities that activate on a crit. Whatever you do, make crits more than just a random element on the damage formula.
Then there's the odd ones out. You know the type, those that deal their damage through conditions like poison, burn and bleed. These are special because they circumvent the damage calculations entirely. No randomness, no defense stats mitigating damage, no crits. Just subtracting directly from HP each turn. For this reason, they are excellent against heavily armored enemies, as they ignore this advantage. Them relying on conditions also means that they have some free turns to do other things, while others would have to keep attacking, so making these hybrid classes and giving them something useful to do on those dead turns is nice. Or you can make condition removal prevalent and make it an epic struggle to keep those conditions up, if you wish.
After all that attacking stuff, there's support. As I said before, there are two kinds of support. Offensive support, making your allies kill faster, and defensive support, keeping your allies from getting killed.
With offensive support, you can be a saboteur or a buffer. Buffers raise the party's killing capabilities, by directly influencing damage, or sometthing like a haste spell that makes an ally attack more times. Saboteurs make the enemies more vulnerable to whatever attacks you want to use.
Defensive supporters can also be buffers or saboteurs. Defensive sabotueurs impede the enemies' damage dealing capabilities, either by reducing damage or preventing the attacks from happening at all. Defensive buffers can be either proactive or reactive. Proactive defensive buffers work by improving the party's capacity to take damage. Reactive defensive buffers are what you know as healers. They return the health to its previous value after the damage is dealt.
Now, what do you want to do to make interesting classes? Mix and match! Maybe there's a class that has attacks that heal the party after striking. Maybe there's one that make the rest of the party's attacks against a single enemy more powerful, as long as it keeps attacking it. Hell, mix two damage dealing methods! Perhaps a class that has a skill that deals more damage if the target already has a certain damage dealing condition? A class that inflicts bleed on crit? And how about this one, a class that's a defensive saboteur most of the time, but has a spell that deals damage that scales with the number of conditions the target has, allowing it to work as a nuker once it has already nerfed the opposition as best as it can.
The skills define the class much more than the stats. Make the skills interact in interesting ways among themselves or with other elements of the game, and the classes will be interesting.
If you want examples of class builds I'll post a couple of them later. It's late, and this wall of text has tired me a bit.
author=CyberDagger
In games like these, your characters basically just do three possible things.
I'm trying to break out of this. C'mon guys! Let's get some more classes! (I'll come up with another eventually)
There really is a fourth one. Messing with other factors besides the heroes or monsters. Most notably, this would be changing turn order, and beyond that, global conditions (stuff like weather or terrain). This isn't really the second (buff/debuff) because you can't directly control it, but rather it allows passive effects to come into play.
For example, the spell makes the weather change to rain (this blinds everyone, and turns the land to mud lowering DEF and AGI globally). Or maybe it's a bright sunny day (death to undead, sleep to nocturnal, daylight party/enemies are all energized)
There's also terrain changing, like field to mountain (among other things, ears pop, causing deafness).
Beyond turn order and environment, there would monster/hero numbers (summoning pets or banishing monsters), messing with battle system (ATB to CTB or turn-based, for instance), and changing the party iteself during battle.
For example, the spell makes the weather change to rain (this blinds everyone, and turns the land to mud lowering DEF and AGI globally). Or maybe it's a bright sunny day (death to undead, sleep to nocturnal, daylight party/enemies are all energized)
There's also terrain changing, like field to mountain (among other things, ears pop, causing deafness).
Beyond turn order and environment, there would monster/hero numbers (summoning pets or banishing monsters), messing with battle system (ATB to CTB or turn-based, for instance), and changing the party iteself during battle.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
The thing about classes that do things other than win the battle or keep the enemy from winning the battle is that, unless there are goals in your battle other than winning before the enemy does, those classes are useless because the player doesn't want to do those things.
Most RPGs do provide the player with at least two other goals in battles that I can think of, though.
The first is: obtain rewards. The rewards might be required to progress in the game, or might be beneficial long-term, or might simply make the player feel good (like outfits). This is why the thief class is so popular in Final Fantasy games. It's generally the only class that specializes in obtaining rewards instead of winning battles before the enemy does. In a pokemon game, you are likely to have at least one pokemon on your team that inflicts paralyze or sleep - not because it helps you win but because it helps you catch pokemon. In Final Fantasy Tactics or any of the Dragon Quest games with classes, any class you temporarily use just because levelling it up is a requirement to unlock another class could be considered a reward-obtaining-based class. You aren't using knight because it's good, you're using it because you want to unlock samurai.
The second is: save time. The sentinel class in Final Fantasy 13 is the most useful class in the game in terms of making the difference between winning and losing a battle, but you will never use it unless you can't win without it, because it slows you down. In contrast, a character who can flee from battles will be invaluable in many games, as will a glass cannon type character - not because they help you win but because they help you end the battle faster. Classes that are focused primarily around saving time are pretty rare, but ones that take extra time as a tradeoff for being more effective are rather commonplace. Black belts in Final Fantasy 1 are perhaps an example of a time-saving-focused class - you don't have to earn gold to buy equipment or magic for them, and they do nothing except normal attacks, so you have to spend as little time as possible in battle. Generally, in RPGs, things that take less time are also less interesting, because the most common ways of reducing time spent in a menu-based battle system are to either remove the need to stop and think or to remove most of the player's options. As a result, these types of classes are often a sign that your battles are boring. However, this isn't always the case, especially if your combat takes place in real-time.
Individual games might have additional goals beyond the above. For example, some games might have classes based around the player's non-combat objectives such as diplomacy, exploration or stealth. I played one game where there was a sort of tutorial class, built around learning how to play - it was highly ineffective in battle later on, but among the easiest classes for new players to learn, so its primary function was teaching the player the game's mechanics in a simpler format than the more advanced classes could afford to do. I can easily imagine an open-ended game with a class that revolves around getting new quests - I think I've played a roguelike that had that as a potential character build, in fact.
Most RPGs do provide the player with at least two other goals in battles that I can think of, though.
The first is: obtain rewards. The rewards might be required to progress in the game, or might be beneficial long-term, or might simply make the player feel good (like outfits). This is why the thief class is so popular in Final Fantasy games. It's generally the only class that specializes in obtaining rewards instead of winning battles before the enemy does. In a pokemon game, you are likely to have at least one pokemon on your team that inflicts paralyze or sleep - not because it helps you win but because it helps you catch pokemon. In Final Fantasy Tactics or any of the Dragon Quest games with classes, any class you temporarily use just because levelling it up is a requirement to unlock another class could be considered a reward-obtaining-based class. You aren't using knight because it's good, you're using it because you want to unlock samurai.
The second is: save time. The sentinel class in Final Fantasy 13 is the most useful class in the game in terms of making the difference between winning and losing a battle, but you will never use it unless you can't win without it, because it slows you down. In contrast, a character who can flee from battles will be invaluable in many games, as will a glass cannon type character - not because they help you win but because they help you end the battle faster. Classes that are focused primarily around saving time are pretty rare, but ones that take extra time as a tradeoff for being more effective are rather commonplace. Black belts in Final Fantasy 1 are perhaps an example of a time-saving-focused class - you don't have to earn gold to buy equipment or magic for them, and they do nothing except normal attacks, so you have to spend as little time as possible in battle. Generally, in RPGs, things that take less time are also less interesting, because the most common ways of reducing time spent in a menu-based battle system are to either remove the need to stop and think or to remove most of the player's options. As a result, these types of classes are often a sign that your battles are boring. However, this isn't always the case, especially if your combat takes place in real-time.
Individual games might have additional goals beyond the above. For example, some games might have classes based around the player's non-combat objectives such as diplomacy, exploration or stealth. I played one game where there was a sort of tutorial class, built around learning how to play - it was highly ineffective in battle later on, but among the easiest classes for new players to learn, so its primary function was teaching the player the game's mechanics in a simpler format than the more advanced classes could afford to do. I can easily imagine an open-ended game with a class that revolves around getting new quests - I think I've played a roguelike that had that as a potential character build, in fact.
Like Lockez and Cyber said, the majority of RPG classes exist solely to win battles and continue exploration. In fact, the traditional RPG is built around the ideas that the battles and the exploration are completely separate from each other, excluding the resources that travel between them. Your typical resources are items (especially restoration items), MP, and battle-effecting items. Your current equipment set is also part of this, although it changes much less frequently.
Exploration serves to further the story and gather resources which help you in battle. Battle serves to provide challenge and drama to the story, as well as test short-term planning and long-term resource management.
So if you're building an RPG, how do you create non-traditional classes? The obvious solution is to build a non-traditional RPG, but let's skip that for now and try and mix it up within the "traditional" layout by adding some new interactions between exploration and combat.
A great example Lockez mentioned is the Thief class, which can actually add to your resources via battle (typically battles are nothing but a resource drain). Some weird ones:
These are simple examples, but I'm sure you could expand upon them in interesting ways.
As for combat itself, I think the character class concept works best when the classes can interact with each other in unique ways, ex.: A priest can only cast a Death spell on a stunned enemy, so he relies on the warrior to hit with a stunning attack. The mage puts an enemy to Sleep first so the Thief's Steal ability has a 100% success rate instead of 15%. Little things like that - and potentially even bigger, more complex combos - can be a lot of fun if you allow the player to discover them on her own.
If you detach the combo pieces from each other and throw them everywhere, you can create very emergent gameplay (albiet possibly broken). If three classes have a Magic Def. Break, and the player wants to maximize her Ultra Nuke potential, she has to figure out the best way to work in the Magic Break caster while keeping all her other potential combos around.
This leads to experimenting, depth, and all sorts of fun junk that the player will mess around with, and if you let them discover it naturally, will make that player feel super smart.
Exploration serves to further the story and gather resources which help you in battle. Battle serves to provide challenge and drama to the story, as well as test short-term planning and long-term resource management.
So if you're building an RPG, how do you create non-traditional classes? The obvious solution is to build a non-traditional RPG, but let's skip that for now and try and mix it up within the "traditional" layout by adding some new interactions between exploration and combat.
A great example Lockez mentioned is the Thief class, which can actually add to your resources via battle (typically battles are nothing but a resource drain). Some weird ones:
- A Vampire class, which dies slowly when exploring and requires battles to use it's blood-draining abilities and restore itself.
- A Ranger class that can set up traps while exploring and start battles off with an advantage, or a Geomancer class that can change the environment while exploring to better boost your characters (and weaken enemies).
- A Werewolf class, who's abilities in battle change based on the time of day outside.
These are simple examples, but I'm sure you could expand upon them in interesting ways.
As for combat itself, I think the character class concept works best when the classes can interact with each other in unique ways, ex.: A priest can only cast a Death spell on a stunned enemy, so he relies on the warrior to hit with a stunning attack. The mage puts an enemy to Sleep first so the Thief's Steal ability has a 100% success rate instead of 15%. Little things like that - and potentially even bigger, more complex combos - can be a lot of fun if you allow the player to discover them on her own.
If you detach the combo pieces from each other and throw them everywhere, you can create very emergent gameplay (albiet possibly broken). If three classes have a Magic Def. Break, and the player wants to maximize her Ultra Nuke potential, she has to figure out the best way to work in the Magic Break caster while keeping all her other potential combos around.
This leads to experimenting, depth, and all sorts of fun junk that the player will mess around with, and if you let them discover it naturally, will make that player feel super smart.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=slashphoenix
how do you create non-traditional classes? The obvious solution is to build a non-traditional RPG
author=slashphoenix
solution is to build a non-traditional RPG
author=slashphoenix
non-traditional RPG
This is really the thing! If you want the player to do different things than usual, he has to have different objectives than usual.
Lol! You're right on the money, though. If the rest of your gameplay is taken right from FF5, your job system is limited by your game's adherence to protocol.
The flow of a standard RPG can be broken in so many ways that people have yet to explore, and some really creative secondary mechanics (here, job systems) can be borne from that. Hell, there's a lot to be said for the mere act of subverting player expectations. Try putting a player in a dungeon with no monsters and see how long it takes for him to figure it out, and watch his reaction when he does.
Now I really wanna write an article on mixing up gameplay flow...
The flow of a standard RPG can be broken in so many ways that people have yet to explore, and some really creative secondary mechanics (here, job systems) can be borne from that. Hell, there's a lot to be said for the mere act of subverting player expectations. Try putting a player in a dungeon with no monsters and see how long it takes for him to figure it out, and watch his reaction when he does.
Now I really wanna write an article on mixing up gameplay flow...
Another way of creating class combos is fusion units, where two units can combine into a single unit that gains boosted stats and new abilities in exchange for less total actions per round and the loss of specific abilities from the base units. Examples would be a Knight (defensive physical attacker with skills to mitigate party damage) and Unicorn (speedy but weak healer) combining into a Crusader (powerful and fast unit with single-target physical nukes and offensive holy-element magic, but loses the healing and barrier abilities of the Knight and Unicorn)
Enker
1572
I'll throw an idea I had into the ring!
NAME Duellist
STRENGTHS Has an extremely high defence stat.
WEAKNESSES Has very low HP total and no defence against magical attacks. Cannot use the attack command (or if does only deals minimal damage) only defend.
SPECIAL 'Counter' When attacked by a physical attack the character immediatly halves the damage and counters the blow with a powerful direct-damage assault that is at least as strong as the attack he countered. This only triggers in a turn that the character has used the 'defend' command, and not used an item or skill.
Based on the idea of fencing being a largly parry-orientated affair, the Duellist equips a number of foils that decide his elemental type and raise base attributes without directly affecting his attack value, which is decided by the value of the attack he counters. Critical hit percentage chances could be increased between foils to give added incentive however.
NAME Duellist
STRENGTHS Has an extremely high defence stat.
WEAKNESSES Has very low HP total and no defence against magical attacks. Cannot use the attack command (or if does only deals minimal damage) only defend.
SPECIAL 'Counter' When attacked by a physical attack the character immediatly halves the damage and counters the blow with a powerful direct-damage assault that is at least as strong as the attack he countered. This only triggers in a turn that the character has used the 'defend' command, and not used an item or skill.
Based on the idea of fencing being a largly parry-orientated affair, the Duellist equips a number of foils that decide his elemental type and raise base attributes without directly affecting his attack value, which is decided by the value of the attack he counters. Critical hit percentage chances could be increased between foils to give added incentive however.
That's an interesting idea; I think it'd be best off if you worked it into a game where you have control over who your enemies attack.
TheGowans
30
I've been messing about with an idea the last few weeks to do with classes, not sure how its gonna turn out though.
Basically, the weapons in your characters hands (shields included) make up your 'class' for example a sword and shield combo makes you the 'knight class' whilst two empty hands makes you a 'martialist' etc.
Each class has a different focus, for example, delaying enemy attacks to get more of your own in, parrying and blocking, or simply rushing in for the kill.
Along with this each class will have a slightly different way of playing, eg/ dual swords has a momentum counter which increases as you attack but stops if you block too much, or a the archer will be able to retreat out of range to buy some time for attacking.
It's not a complete idea yet but it's all about making the classes feel different from each other.
Also with this method you can have your character swap weapons to alter the playstyle to their needs as the battle progresses.
Basically, the weapons in your characters hands (shields included) make up your 'class' for example a sword and shield combo makes you the 'knight class' whilst two empty hands makes you a 'martialist' etc.
Each class has a different focus, for example, delaying enemy attacks to get more of your own in, parrying and blocking, or simply rushing in for the kill.
Along with this each class will have a slightly different way of playing, eg/ dual swords has a momentum counter which increases as you attack but stops if you block too much, or a the archer will be able to retreat out of range to buy some time for attacking.
It's not a complete idea yet but it's all about making the classes feel different from each other.
Also with this method you can have your character swap weapons to alter the playstyle to their needs as the battle progresses.
Crystalgate
694
author=Enker
I'll throw an idea I had into the ring!
NAME Duellist
STRENGTHS Has an extremely high defence stat.
WEAKNESSES Has very low HP total and no defence against magical attacks. Cannot use the attack command (or if does only deals minimal damage) only defend.
SPECIAL 'Counter' When attacked by a physical attack the character immediatly halves the damage and counters the blow with a powerful direct-damage assault that is at least as strong as the attack he countered. This only triggers in a turn that the character has used the 'defend' command, and not used an item or skill.
Based on the idea of fencing being a largly parry-orientated affair, the Duellist equips a number of foils that decide his elemental type and raise base attributes without directly affecting his attack value, which is decided by the value of the attack he counters. Critical hit percentage chances could be increased between foils to give added incentive however.
I see two problems with this class.
The first problem is that while this class has an use as long as there's a way to encourage enemies to attack the duelist, it's a class that can only do one thing over and over. Instead of hitting attack all the time, this class hits defend all the time.
The second problem is that the idea of this class being based on fencers breaks if you imagine two duelists having a duel. Who wins if a master and a novice fights? The answer is; it's a draw regardless of skill difference since nobody will attack.
I like the idea of a counter based class, but I don't think it should be restricted to defending. If you don't want it to attack, maybe it can have a skillset that somehow complements it's role as a counter based class.
Name - Poet
Strengths - Versatile, all around high stats, especially SPI / MDEF / RES/ CHA / whatever.
Weaknesses - Mediocre attack and magic.
Special -
Passive: Sentiment
Stats receive an increase or decrease based in two factors: Enemy party and allies on combat. (take the average of party and enemy's stats (ALL TOGETHER), increase by 30%, multiply by (base stats * 3) and then divide by four.)
Passive: Comprehension - Gains elemental & status resistances of the enemy party / ally party much the same way. May gain weaknesses too, but this occurs less often.
Skillset: Blue Magic (obvious)
Interpretation (Based on character's own version of allies' classes and enemy types. Every class would grant him/her two skills, same applies to enemies.)
So Jilberto the Poet is fighting alongside a White Mage aganist a dragon.
His SPI will increase a lot, his DEF will increase a nice ammount, ATK will remain the same and SPD / etc. will diminish.
At his disposal under the Interpretation skillset there will be Console (heals minor Hp to the whole party with the unique Reverse Slip effect, wich differently from Regen, heals at every ATB tick, slowly getting weaker until it ceases.), Dispel (removes status effects), Dragon Soul (Increases one ally's DEF / MDEF to 120% until the end of the battle. Stacks with everything but itself.) & Screech (Deals 1/16 MHP damage to a foe, reducing ATK & INT to 80% for a reasonable time)
Also, the Poet can equip rings. Whenever he/she equips a white or black ring, instead of having a black and a white ability, it would have two black / two white, etc. Effectively making this a less RNG based class.
So... That's my attempt! >_<
Strengths - Versatile, all around high stats, especially SPI / MDEF / RES/ CHA / whatever.
Weaknesses - Mediocre attack and magic.
Special -
Passive: Sentiment
Stats receive an increase or decrease based in two factors: Enemy party and allies on combat. (take the average of party and enemy's stats (ALL TOGETHER), increase by 30%, multiply by (base stats * 3) and then divide by four.)
Passive: Comprehension - Gains elemental & status resistances of the enemy party / ally party much the same way. May gain weaknesses too, but this occurs less often.
Skillset: Blue Magic (obvious)
Interpretation (Based on character's own version of allies' classes and enemy types. Every class would grant him/her two skills, same applies to enemies.)
So Jilberto the Poet is fighting alongside a White Mage aganist a dragon.
His SPI will increase a lot, his DEF will increase a nice ammount, ATK will remain the same and SPD / etc. will diminish.
At his disposal under the Interpretation skillset there will be Console (heals minor Hp to the whole party with the unique Reverse Slip effect, wich differently from Regen, heals at every ATB tick, slowly getting weaker until it ceases.), Dispel (removes status effects), Dragon Soul (Increases one ally's DEF / MDEF to 120% until the end of the battle. Stacks with everything but itself.) & Screech (Deals 1/16 MHP damage to a foe, reducing ATK & INT to 80% for a reasonable time)
Also, the Poet can equip rings. Whenever he/she equips a white or black ring, instead of having a black and a white ability, it would have two black / two white, etc. Effectively making this a less RNG based class.
So... That's my attempt! >_<
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
For the reasons Crystalgate said, Enker's duellist class could greatly benefit from, say, a Taunting Taunt ability, which simultaneously forces the enemy to target the duelist and puts it in a berserk state where it will always physically attack. Also, a few other skills for variety: probably different very effective but very short self-only defensive buffs. These would be more interesting than just Defend, and probably they'd each defend against different types of attacks or in different ways (evade, 1-hit phys immunity, mdef, fire resist, bullet reflect, counter magic also).
Poet is an interesting idea. One problem, which is a common problem with any "use the enemy's power against them" class, is that a LOT of the skills he gets from enemies will be ones that those same enemies resist or are immune to. Because, you know, fire monsters tend to use fire spells, and water monsters tend to use water spells. This wouldn't be a BIG problem in battles against normal enemies, since there'll be multiple types of different enemies in the same battle, most of the time. But it will be an issue against some enemies, and also against a lot of bosses. (But maybe the fact that bosses have much higher stats, and thus his stats go up also, makes up for that? Or maybe you can make sure the skills that bosses and solo enemies give are all at least somewhat useful? Or maybe he can just rely on his party members' skills for those fights.) Also, why is he called a poet? When I think of poets, "obtains skills and attributes from his enemies as well as his allies" isn't really the first thing that comes to mind. The first thing that comes to mind is, uh, "creates lyrics with both rhyme and meter." There's not a lot of actual poetry going on here.
Poet is an interesting idea. One problem, which is a common problem with any "use the enemy's power against them" class, is that a LOT of the skills he gets from enemies will be ones that those same enemies resist or are immune to. Because, you know, fire monsters tend to use fire spells, and water monsters tend to use water spells. This wouldn't be a BIG problem in battles against normal enemies, since there'll be multiple types of different enemies in the same battle, most of the time. But it will be an issue against some enemies, and also against a lot of bosses. (But maybe the fact that bosses have much higher stats, and thus his stats go up also, makes up for that? Or maybe you can make sure the skills that bosses and solo enemies give are all at least somewhat useful? Or maybe he can just rely on his party members' skills for those fights.) Also, why is he called a poet? When I think of poets, "obtains skills and attributes from his enemies as well as his allies" isn't really the first thing that comes to mind. The first thing that comes to mind is, uh, "creates lyrics with both rhyme and meter." There's not a lot of actual poetry going on here.
