Exhaustive Class / Skill Compendium

[kablizzy]

I can get behind Prestige Classes as a designation, that works. And Master Classes are totally lazy - I don't think they were meant to be high-brow, really. But changing that is as easy as you say - For instance, Dancer and Bard could totally have the same Master class. And having to make a Master Class for each and every basic was nothing short of awful. I'd also potentially like to see three or four options open to every class to go up into (For instance, Bards and Dancers could An Awarded Class from a faction, the Performer Master Class, the Mime Master Class, and one more MOJ-tree Master Class, or something along those lines), and then just line up pre-requisites from there. Which would be cool.

And there are probably Dark Knights that work for the Church and Machinists in Ordalia too, but I like that the Awardeds that they're going to hand out as a de-facto part of their faction are thematic.

Also, I am a big fan of not having too many classes. If we can throw a couple of classes together into one cool class, I'm all for it. So, we'll do some dev on those and figure 'em out.

Any opinion on a third branch for those Hybrid classes, since there's not much room in either branch for stuff like Red Mage, Blue Mage, etc? POJ, MOJ, and HOJ?

[Schwerpunkt]

I can see Red Magi being included. They are, after all, basically basic-tier spellswords.

Blue Magi in v2 were pretty dreadful. I mean, you're talking about a class that can basically only become viable if they spam MHs every single turn -- and get lucky enough to run into mobs that can cast spells on them (who then choose to do so, instead of casting spells at the other dudes). It's an interesting concept, but I'd much rather just not have them. They bring new stuff to the table, but they just aren't balanced. They either wind up jokes (usually the case) or they turn into show-stopping monsters (like Ultima-slinging Ramza). I'd much rather take monster-inspired spells and give them to other classes.

Green Magi, since I'm talking about all the magi anyway, are just bad. Just bad. One of the neat parts of the Priest class is that they can buff people; take that away (or worse, duplicate it) and you've just created an extremely bland class whose only purpose is to throw Protect and Shell at his allies. That adds nothing to the game and it's probably why Green Wizard wasn't any good, either.

So I'd keep Red Magi and get rid of Blue/Green Magi. And keeping with the tradition of moving away from "___ Mage" class names, I'd call them Spellsword. I'd also throw Paladin into the mix as a second HOJ.

The problem comes down to numbers. If we have 10 POJs and 10 MOJs, why on earth would we settle for just two 2 HOJs?

[kablizzy]

Are we moving away from ___ Mage? I could care less about Green Mage, you're absolutely right on that accord. Blue Magi were really awful.

Also, there's Geomancer, Bard, Beastmaster, Dancer, Gambler, Mime, Puppet Master, and Memorist all in HoJ range, Not counting any of the unsorted ones, like Shaman. I think we may be able to do 10 HOJ classes if we gave it a go.

[Schwerpunkt]

Mime, strictly speaking, isn't a HOJ. And on that note, I don't believe I ever saw a Mime. Like... ever. Should we even include it or should we just ignore it, like the Onion Knight?

On the subject of ____ Mage, I think it's kind of silly to have Priests, Wizards, Summoners, Oracles, Spellswords, Paladins, and Time Mages. They just feel completely out of place. I'd prefer a name change at that point. Chronomancer sounds really pretentious, but it's the only alternative I can think of. And if we do opt to keep ____ Mage, we'd probably want to axe Priest and Wizard. They'd be breaking the theme.

Why don't you go ahead and list where you think the basic classes will fall? And what method you used to get that list, since people will want to know.

Personally, HOJ, POJ, and MOJ vs. MOJ and POJ is a purely academic distinction. It doesn't really change anything insofar as I can tell.

[kablizzy]

I shall respond here tomorrow.

[wrips]

Dark Knight will be a MOJ? It is "strange" in my view. I mean, you will need to master the Wizard class, which will likely mean huge mana pool and sucker level hp for some time. We'll need some abilities other than the Sword Skill to take advantage of 8-10 levels of wizard progression. I have been thinking about keeping DK a meelee class (fits with the vikings) and create two knights MOJ, the Black Knight( some king of Blackguard dude) and the White Knight(Paladin). It offers more diversity for Awarded classes. Of couse, they're only suggestions, because MOJ DK doesn't look so cool for me. =P

[kablizzy]

Dark Knight's listed in POJ.

[wrips]

From Schwer:

"Dark Knight (MOJ): Typically a POJ, I went with MOJ here to balance Berserker and simultaneously emphasize the class's acquisition in-game (where you have to master the Wizard class). I'd like to see some skills cost MP or HP; the HP-consuming skills would be more high-damage, the MP-consuming skills would have more status effects and stuff."

[Schwerpunkt]

That was before we added HOJ. Now it's more properly a HOJ class.

And you don't unlock it like in FFT. You unlock it by joining a specific faction. There are ~20 faction-specific unlocks and we're probably looking at somewhere in the vicinity of 12 non-faction unlocks.

[Mordred]

When did Dark Knights make it onto the base class list? 0_o

[Schwerpunkt]

FFT: WotL?

They're Awarded here. Romanda's ____ Knight class, to be exact.

[Mordred]

I know Dark Knights are generic classes in WotL; I just didn't recall seeing them on any of the basic POJ/MOJ/HOJ lists you or Blizz posted. I suppose I don't recall that because they weren't there!

[Schwerpunkt]

Yeah. Wrips was looking at the initial draft of awarded classes, I guess. I made the Dark Knight a MOJ because of the Berserker. But since we added HOJs, I can make it that instead.