Calculator / Scholar Development Thread

[kablizzy]

For all discussion pertaining to the Calculator class.

Calculators are all about numbers. They're analytical and brilliant. In my research, I ran aground of Arcanist from FFTA2, and it seemed to go slightly (slightly) in the direction I was thinking. But I've included below a metric fuckton of ideas for different ways we can take Calculator / Scholar. Also, Scholar and Illusionist from A2 (Both of those and Arcanist are links) are similar, but a relatively neat take on the idea as well. Calcy could also be a DoT class, at least in-part. I'd also love ideas for how to incorporate books into the class better. If we're looking at purely mechanical stuff, we can give Calculator spells that strictly cannot be reflected as well. And finally, the stuff that I didn't list herein were the -ologies. I had the concept of giving the Scholar an array or -ology abilities akin to Horology below that affect an array of things (Link)

Logos

Name	Description	Range	Effect	Speed	JP
Peep / Scan / Study	The Calculator's base ability. Reveals weaknesses / Level / Loot / cancels Invisible? Also, higher % of reaction abilities triggering post-Scan?
Debilitator	Adds a random elemental weakness / remove buffs.
Stamp / Rippler	Move a status effect from one character to another / Exchange statuses
Lv. Up / Down / Old	Dunno what effect this would have, but it'd be numbers-based.
Evasion Break	Lowers an enemy's P-EV / M-EV rating.
Magic Shear	Deals MP damage.
Delayed-Cast	The Calculator can delay a spell by 1-100 CT.
Magi	Recovers MP in an area.
Flashbook	Ignores opponent's R-Ability.
Nightfall	Inflicts Blind (100%) on all units except the Calculator.
Matra Magic	Switches Target's HP and MP values (Way OP, I know, more proof-of-concept)
PA Down / Wither	Ranged version of PA Rend
MA Down / Addle	Ranged version of MA Rend
Horology*	Damage based upon CT.
Quell	Halve damage for a turn, universal?
Subdue	Halve defense for a turn, universal?
Expose	Reduces an enemy's defense.
Quarter	Inflicts 25% HP damage to a target
Demi	Inflicts 33% HP damage to a target
Roulette	Imbues a random status effect.
Everyone's Grudge / Karma	Deals damage = to the amount of damage that character has dealt, OR proportional damage based upon the number of KOs that character has.
Astra	Immunity to status effects for ___ turns.
Rasp	Alternatively, we could totally give these to Calcy.
Osmose
Lv. 2 Protect	Casts Protect on all combatants with a level multiple of 2.
Lv. 3 Muddle	Casts Muddle on all combatants with a level multiple of 3.
Lv. 4 Flare	Casts Flare on all combatants with a level multiple of 4.
Lv. 5 Doom	Casts Doom on all combatants with a level multiple of 5.
Lv. 6 Zombie	Casts Zombie on all combatants with a level multiple of 6.
Almagest	Deals damage equal to max hp - current hp.
Tome Spell	The Scholar sifts through a tome to cast a random spell. OR the next spell the Scholar casts costs 0 MP.
Learn Ability / Mime	After Studying, the Scholar can Mime an ability cast from that person.

Reaction

Name	Description	Trigger	JP
Cup of Life	When HP is restored, distribute any excess among one's allies.	HP Restired	200
Soulbind	Split any damage taken with the opponent who inflicted it.	HP Loss	300
Critical-EV UP	Raises evasion by an amount equal to damage dealt
Spellbreaker	MA+ When critical
Inquisitor	Recover MP when an opponent is KO'd.
MP Shield	Converts HP damage into MP damage until MP is drained.
Critical: Blaster	Reduces opponent's HP to 1 upon critical
Auto-Potion	Potential?
Readiness	Turn to face a side or back attack
Counter Rippler	Counters by imbuing all statuses you have on your opponent.
Play Dead	Add: KO for three turns, at which time, the Calculator revives and takes an additional turn

Support

Name	Description	JP
Item Lore	Increases the effectiveness of used items.
Monster Lore	Do stuff with knowledge of monsters?
Gained XP Up	Earn more XP for the same actions.	550
Gained JP Up	Earn more JP for the same actions.	450
Numerology	Damage increases with successive hits.	650
Max Evasion+	Raises a character's maximum evasion%	650
Spellbind	Spell durations last 50% longer.	500
Range+	Increases the Range of spells by 1.	600
Effect+	Increases the Effect of spells by 1.	750
Swiftness / Celerity	Casting Time reduced by 20%	500
Equip Book	Reading is fundamental!	200
Equip R-Ability	Can equip an additional Reaction Ability.	800
Equip M-Ability	Can equip an additional Movement Ability.	600
JP-Cap UP	Raises your JP Cap for abilities by ___	___
Pierce	Spells Ignore Reflect (If we have it)	550
Elemental Resist	Elemental Damage reduced by 25%
Physical Resist	Physical Damage reduced by 10%.
Duration+	Duration of effects greatly increased
Arcane Knowledge	Damage done with books increased
Vitals Lore	Always critical with normal attack.
Serenity	Magic damage up while HP is at full.

Movement

Name	Description	JP
Move-Gain XP	Obtain XP upon moving.	400
Move-Gain JP	Obtain JP upon moving.	350
Move-Gain HP
Move-Gain Faith
Step Mine

[Schwerpunkt]

Honestly, I'd rather just cut this class. Reasons.

1. Status immunity is either horribly overpowered or just plain bad.
2. Delaying spells really isn't useful enough to build a niche around.
3. Peep is still terrible. It works great in a game where you're playing action-by-action, but it doesn't work well at all in a game where you submit tactics for someone else to run.
4. Matra Magic is hopelessly OP, as you note.
5. Move-Gain-__ unbalances the resource system.
6. Level spells are gimmicky as all hell. Odds are good that they'd never even be useful.
7. Almagest is ridiculously overpowered. Remember Beowulf's Break, which inflicted hundreds of damage at like an 8 tile range? Yeah. Exactly.
8. Horology is quaint, but kind of impractical if you can never really see the other guy's CT.

You get the idea.

Here's stuff I think will be more useful in other classes.
1. Gravity-themed stuff for the Oracle, who otherwise lacks direct damage.
2. Wither/Adler for the Spellsword.
3. Roulette for the Oracle.
4. Play Dead needs to go somewhere because it is awesome. Especially as a reaction ability.
5. Range+/Effect+ are great support abilities for a class that's otherwise lacking them. Probably the Mediator and Oracle.
6. Pierce would be a great Time Mage spell.
7. Readiness is very tanky. But most of our tanks have better reaction skills. Monk, maybe.
8. Vitals Lore is a great skill for, say, the Oracle.



As you can see, I'd like to just roll half this class into the Oracle. I'd rather have a really awesome Oracle than a really gimmicky Calculator.

[kablizzy]

Yup, I figured you'd just want to cut regardless. I'll wait and see what others got before cutting, but we'll continue along putting some of these abilities to good use elsewhere (Oracle) if they're a good fit.

[Mordred]

In regards to Schwer's bulleted list of banishment, yeah, I agree with pretty much all of it, with the following reservations/exceptions:

Almagest/Break is a good and worthy skill/spell, but with a great deal of consideration. "Break" by itself can be the centerpiece of an entire build due to its massive power (set up a reliable way to Reraise yourself and say hello to DOOM), and it certainly does not belong on a Calculator or Scholar.

Gravity spells should go to the Time Mage, who also lacks less than uber-tier DD and already has time and space manipulation inside his domain of magic effect.

Vitals Lore is insanely OP for ANYONE. Pierce is likewise OP. If you don't like Reflect that much just don't include it in the game. A skill that lets spells ignore reflect is like a skill that lets attacks ignore dodge - and last I checked we cut Concentrate.

Wither and Addle are out because if anything can be described primarily as "a better version of X" it makes X useless and redundant.

Play Dead would go great on a Thief or Ninja.

Roulette is not good for Oracles because they can already cast any status effect on purpose.

Readiness should go on Knight; it goes well with Cover.

Effect+ is more broken than a Yugo at the bottom of a ravine.

Blizz, I know you hate ruling things out, but what you've posted doesn't seem to even have the potential to coalesce into an actual, usable class theme. If I'm missing something, please let me know; my eyes kind of gloss over huge lists.

[kablizzy]

It's not even a matter of ruling things out, it's just that no one's tried to make any of these work yet (Except you and Squire for a bit). But 10 posts back and forth just isn't my idea of trying, especially when all of those posts have the base operating concept of, "I'd rather just cut this" instead of actual development and actual ideas. Now if you guys truly have nothing, that's cool, but I'm gonna keep going on them until I've ruled all ideas out.

Just like all of my lists, these are just concepts, so ruling it out on the basis of it not being usable as-is is missing the point a bit. Saying that we don't like a few abilities and should cut on the merit that we don't like those few abilities is flying directly opposite of what we're supposed to be doing in development - I'm here to make positive changes, and I'm trying to come up with concepts and ideas that we can build off of, maybe see if one of these sparks an idea in your head for a direction that we may go. If you can honestly tell me that you've spent any time looking at that list and truly said to yourself that none of that gave you a concept of a direction to go, or if you truly have no feel for what a Calculator should do in combat, or what role it could potentially play, or things that you find interesting about the class - there haven't been any comments of that nature. It's all been "Welp, I don't like the way calculators function in FFT, so we're gonna cut this." Howabout a "Hey, you know what I liked about Calculators? They're supposed to be super-smart, right? Okay, so get this..." Personally, I thought calculators were intriguing as Hell. In my mind, they were the tacticians of battle - sitting back, analyzing, scribbling on parchment, and going, "Eureka!" And then blowing up everyone's face when their calculations came out right. Sometimes their own teammates. And then I did some research on Scholars, and found them even cooler - the concept that you just sit and analyze and take notes and measure the wind and temperature, it's like genius-level stuff. And it's freakin' cool. Sure, the FFT system was balls and constructed poorly, but we're obviously not tying ourselves down by that, so the sky is really the limit. If we want the calculator to shit golden bird tokens for use at the Gold Saucer Casino and Strip Club, then we can do that. If we want him to have access to golf clubs as his primary weapon, yes we can. Do we want to? Probably not, but why not suggest some stuff? Worst case scenario is we cut the thing anyway, and we have more ideas to use elsewhere.

Thusfar, I haven't seen much of an attempt to salvage any of the classes you guys are wanting to cut, and they're going to stay on the board until there is. If not, then there's no point in opening up class development anyway, and I'll just go ahead and build the classes myself. I'm not going to just throw my hands up and cut something that has potential, especially when I'm the only one actually working on it. Basically, all I've heard is "I don't like ability X, ability Y should be given to another class, and therefore, there is no merit to the concept of this class." So I dunno. There's 70 abilities there, and if we expand upon any given idea, there's the potential for 100 more if you see something and say, "Hey, that may not work, but something similar might." Even if we only keep 15% of the abilities, and really refine those abilities, there's your class.

Edit: I dunno. Maybe this came off as harsh, but this won't go the way v2 development went. We either had 40-page topics of argument on a singular point, or we had no one motivated enough to give input on other singular points. We're giving these a chance, and if you guys really aren't feeling it, that's cool. But I'm gonna keep building and keep postulating and doing research until I find a satisfactory 'yes' or 'no' either way - for Calculator, Red Mage, Dancer, Bard, Chemist, Squire, all of 'em. I guess I may operate a bit differently than you guys in this regard, but I want every avenue explored this time around. Especially when I know the potential of games like this. This'll likely be the last time I get my hands on these classes too, so I'm gonna do it 100%, and I'm gonna make sure that whatever decision we reach is the right one. And at the end of this, if that decision is 'Cut Calculator and Chemist, but keep Dancer," then that's what we'll do. But I'm gonna try my damndest to do otherwise first.

[Mordred]

Blizz, what you posted isn't a "concept," it's a scrap heap. You can't just post a huge list of random abilities you slapped together and say "make this work;" that's an ass-backwards way to go about developing anything.

If you have an idea for some kind of defining, unique role that a Calculator would play on the field, then post that and I'll be happy to bat it back and forth with you and work out the kinks. The abilities a class gets should be based on its battlefield role, with the purpose of actualizing the vision behind the class. Don't just post a massive pile of unrelated junk with no vision and then get mad when I call it what it is: a massive pile of unrelated junk with no vision.

Schwer and I may be collectively nay-saying a lot of classes, but I don't see where you get off accusing anyone of putting insufficient thought into it. We get a lot more discussion done on IRC than on the boards; we've talked about Squires and Chemists and etc, and the honest-to-god result is that these classes are so empty of concept that we've come up with diddly squat. Shoehorning in a busted, lame duck class just so that we can preserve the sacred cow of "having a class called Chemist/Calculator/Squire because this is FFT" is not only unfair to the players, it's also a lousy way to approach the development of a game - one which, if carried through the rest of the process, will result in a broken, shitty product on which no one will look back fondly.

[Schwerpunkt]

Let me preface this by saying that the "scrap heap" approach isn't nearly as bad as Mord makes it out to be. It gives us plenty of starting points for development. It just so happens that, in this case, every single ability of note belongs somewhere else moreso than here.

I also want to point out how utterly silly it is to imply I'm being lazy about this. If I say "I'd rather just cut this," it's because I'd rather just cut it. It means what I've come up with is either so fundamentally broken it's impossible to salvage (CT5 Holy) or because the class concept simply cannot be brought into line with the thematic feel of the game thus far.

I get what you're trying to do here, Kablizzy. Giving every class its day in court is fair. But seriously: some verdicts are going to come down 'guilty -- class rejected.' That's simply the way it's going to work. We can spend a week batting this class back and forth, mulling over innumerable different concepts, but I honestly believe we're going to get nowhere with this. And to compound that problem, every post I make on this subject is that much less time I can brainstorm on other classes. Every post you read is that much less time you can spend reviewing other classes. Every interesting concept you explore in a dead-end class is that much less creativity you can put into another class.

The fundamental problem with this class is that it's gimmicky. If you tie things to character level, it varies wildly in efficiency; you're super-effective if the guy's level is a multiple of 4, but if he's level 17, you're SOL because you have nothing that can affect him... unless we add an entire swathe of Prime skills. Similar problems crop up when looking at height-based calculations and whatnot. And then there's also the problem that if your level is a multiple of 4, you're probably not going to Flare the map.

You're welcome to use your creative juices however you'd like, Kablizzy. But I've measured twice and I vote to cut.

[kablizzy]

Schwer: I'm good with that. I'm probably still gonna work on these, and I truly, truly do see that many of these abilities are crap. Like, honestly. But just because they are now doesn't mean they can't be good. Basically, I just didn't see the work, so I assume that there's nothing going on behind the scenes, which was a shitty thing for me to do. Apologies to both of you there.

Mord: In honesty, that's a fair point. With that said, however, I probably spent... Ehh, an hour on researching Calculator. And in that time, I found ten or fifteen different ways for the class to be viable, and given some time and genuine discussion, there are likely more. And I'll go ahead and be fair and assume that you and Schwer put an equal amount of time in discussing the class over IRC. And you found zero? None? At all? Not a single idea or concept or neat idea that you like about it... Nothing? Can you honestly tell me that nothing up there and nothing that you've found whatsoever was worth salvaging / changing / suggesting? Because that's a very large discrepancy - 10 or 15 and nothing. I suggested ideas to make the Calculator more like Arcanists, Scholars, Illusionists, a damage-over-Time class, a book-based class (Both weapon-style and using tomes / grimoires / maybe scrolls for effects?), giving the Calculator access to spells that can't be reflected, an entire skillset based upon studying the battlefield, an anti-buff concept (Giving Calculator Dispel and the shifting status skills was kinda going towards this), lowering evasion ratings and adding weaknesses is kind of a cool niche to explore, basing a class on RSM abilities and trigger percentages, giving them battlefield-wide buffs / debuffs, making the class more about gravity-based attacks (And as an extension, other sciency concepts), giving him access to some of the lesser-used magicks like Rasp and Osmose (And expanding upon this idea), and doing a ton of cool non-elemental stuff, the level-based spells that boil down the original FFT, a study / learn ability / mime concept - which could also work for mime, of course - The Play Dead thing could totally go on Thief, that's actually really cool, but Readiness can totally be justified for Calculator - he's so in-tune with his precise calculations, that he knows where his opponents are coming from - There's a lore concept, where he gets bonuses against things that he knows (And maybe gets better in combat as a result of things he's fought in the past?), there's the idea of damage conversion and giving the calculator a conceptual bonus for moving damage around (Akin to his original FFT reaction abilities), insofar as Support / Reaction / Etc. abilities, the Calculator could have, like, 40. There are so many there that I didn't even glance at, but even the ones that are down are pretty worthwhile. I think that's, what, 30 ideas right there? Sure, none of them are strong at the moment, but all of those ideas were included in my first post. What you saw as a junkheap was a "Hey, here's some cool stuff I've found. Does this spark any ideas in you guys?" It wasn't and isn't a decree to comment on every single ability, it's a discussion point. Anyway, I'm just wanting some of that discussion to try to move the Calculator concept to something workable, Also, Ilium wants us specifically to try and salvage these, so I'm trying to salvage them. But what causes that rift? 10/15 and nothing? To me, that only speaks to an unwillingness to develop something. I could be way, way off base there, but as you've said, if I can throw down some ideas, we'll discuss them. So, I've thrown down a bunch. Can we please discuss them?

I guess where it breaks down for me is this: let's take Roulette, for instance. What we've said about it is that because Oracle is the status effect class, that Roulette has no business being in another class. What? And that's a reason to cut the class? That's not developing anything, that's the opposite. Development is about trying things out, not going in, balls-to-the-wall, with 100% definitive concepts of exactly what's going to go down and then do it. It's like a puzzle - you don't bring your own pieces from other puzzles and try and smash them in - we've already got all the pieces, why not give it a shot trying to put some of this together? Yes, Vitals Lore is OP, but what you alluded to is that it's, "OP" and as a result, shouldn't exist. Why can it not be balanced down to produce a 15% crit instead of always critting? Why is that not an option? Like, this is the part I don't understand. I seem to be coming up with an unbelievable amount of neat flavor concepts and mechanical concepts, and it looks like it gets ignored. Which is cool, I can develop stuff myself, but I'll ask again - why not suggest stuff? It could be awful, but what if it sparks something in my head and we build off it? We had an idea for Squire, but it wasn't that great. Maybe someone will look at it and something'll happen. You basically told me that Red Mage has no place in a Final Fantasy game because our non-existent class by necessity has to step on the toes of another class. Which I don't understand. Why can't it get its own, unique identity? Why not something new and fresh? We haven't talked about Red Mage a bit. And like I said in my last PM, nothing's set in stone, so why is this even a discussion? I'm not gonna finalize classes or class concepts until we're ready to launch the full-game.

Plus, development isn't about slapping an idea down and giving it an immediate thumbs-up or thumbs-down. It's about figuring out a direction, a concept, a "Where do we want it to go / What do we want it to be?" And trying to make it work. And as I said, our worst-case scenario is an incredibly shitty version of Calculator / Squire / Chemist that doesn't work, and we cut it anyway. Atop all of this, Schwer has had Squire / Chemist / Calculator on the chopping block since the beginning, so when the first comments I see are just "Yawn, pass" themed, that doesn't give me much hope of concept, y'know? So, beyond everything above, let's answer the question, "What niche could the Calculator fill?" What can we do with it?

Anyway, let's go into those defining, unique roles that Calculator could play, some of which I've already posted, but I'll go into them again.

[kablizzy]

Anyway, tl;dr, I'ma keep going on these, and when I get some time, I'll throw down other MOJs as well for further discussion.

[Schwerpunkt]

I think your post suggests you don't quite understand how Mord devs. He doesn't start with something really vague -- he starts with something concrete, something distinct, and he works from there. I'm the opposite: I can extrapolate an entire culture based upon one painted urn (see, all those history and sociology classes were useful!), but it's all conjecture until we get to the nuts and bolts (or, in this analogy, primary sources). Mord works from one starting point "this class does this very, very specific thing" and moves from there. Take his description of Summoners as "artillery," for instance. It's themed his approach to the Summoner and the Wizard.

And his post is kind of ambiguous on the point, but the Calculator didn't come up in IRC. We spent most of that time doing more practical and useful development (note how the Summoner, with the exception of his comically bad movement skill, was almost entirely finished in three posts).

That said, don't construe my vote to axe classes as a vote to not even consider them (except for the Bard & Dancer vs. Performer, which is more a question of organization and allocation of resources). I'm not going to keep voting cut if you come up with a viable strategy. Mord's pretty much in the same boat.




But since you really want to sink time into this, these are the general themes we can work off with the Calculator.

1. Level or height based stuff. No matter how you cut it, it won't work. It just won't. It's gimmicky and so inconsistent that the Calculator will go from being insanely overpowered to utterly worthless in the span of a single battle.

2. Exactly how he is in FFT. Which is to say dreadful as a primary, extremely good as a secondary. But since we're trying to avoid that, well...

3. Illusionist. This strikes me as very gimmicky too and boils down to diluting the Oracle's oomph.

4. Using a theme like "Ignore Reflect" as the basis for the class. It turns them into one-trick ponies.

5. Topography-based stuff, which runs afoul of the same problems as HoI's Ranger and simultaneously infringes on the Geomancer's stuff.




I mean, if it's about nothing more than filling a niche, I think we'd be so much better if we just took a class like Astrologer (which is currently an awarded class for the Nanten) and used that as a direct replacement ofr the Calculator. But nothing I've read yet suggests any sort of genuinely viable alternative to the baseline FFT Calculator.

[kablizzy]

Fair enough. If I hit something more substantial, it'll be here. Also, I was pondering Astrologer as a Prestige for Calcy / Scholar, 'Cause that's kind of a neat progression.

[Mordred]

I had a much nicer post here, but the board ate it... guh. Here's the quick version.

When I say "class concept" I mean more than just a few names listed. I typically envision a "concept" as being a few sentences describing the significance behind the word, putting forth a vision that other people can understand. You have a lot more in your head than you're putting down on paper; you can't put down a mixture of half a dozen different classes and three dozen spells and expect anyone to be able to pick out the different motivations that led to each entry making it onto the list. If you compartmentalize, I'll be much more able to understand your thoughts.

The FFTA2 classes to which you referred - Illusionist, Scholar, and Arcanist - are all to varying extents broken, either because their skillset makes Wizards and Summoners completely useless (Illusionist and half of Scholar) or already stolen from existing classes (Arcanist). From those 3 classes, the only moves that I consider to be unique and nonbroken are Syphon (turn enemy MP into your HP), Force (increase all ally M-EV in a radius around you), Mad Scientist (random buff to one ally), and Peep (useless in a context where you don't have the ability to act in real time on the information you gather).

It's nice to say "there should be a book-based class" and I agree it would be cool, but what exactly is this book based class supposed to do once it's there? Whatever we stick in here can use books, but there's a huge variety of guys that could use books or be book-based in some way.

It's really strange, to me, for you to be saying you want something "new and fresh" while insisting on being constrained by the trappings of what has gone before - names are just names. Red Mage, Calculator, whatever; keeping the name is just going to confuse people if the classes we offer aren't anything like what they know from the video games.

My loyalty isn't to the tropes of Final Fantasy. My first and foremost priority is building up a set of unique, balanced classes from scratch. Once they're done, then I consider it time to worry about coating them in the traditions - like calling the result a Priest, a Wizard, whatever. Being required to spread enough ideas for two classes across five is only detrimental to that aim. Like, notice how I suggested we fold several Bard skills into Priest so that Priests become more robust? I would rather have a game with six kick-ass classes than two dozen mediocre ones.

Development, to my mind, is very much like a puzzle - you can't throw in pieces from half a dozen different boxes and then expect the resulting gallimaufry to form a coherent picture. Every single piece has to interlock with every other in a very careful way, in a way that can only be the result of having some kind of overarching design.

Asking "where do we want this to go" is a fantastic question in determining what that design should be, but as I said above - when it comes to Calculator, you haven't really provided any substantive answer to that. For my part, I'm not ashamed to admit that I've really got nothing.

So, let me pose it to you plain and simple: Where exactly do you want this class to go? What should a Calculator do on the battlefield that makes him unique compared to all the other classes in the game? I'm not asking for a definitive "this is what it must be," I'm only hoping that you can elucidate the different concepts that are already in your head. We can talk about spell lists once we have some solid concepts on the table.

I hope we're on the same page now, but if not, we should continue to talk it out and get our respective hashes settled. If I sound harsh, it's only because I'm frustrated with the misunderstandings we're having. At no point do I mean to insult you or anyone else, Blizz.

[kablizzy]

No, no, nor do I. And now that I see a bit more clearly what you need from me, it's a lot easier for me to edit my development to fit your mind. Also, my goal is primarily to be true to Final Fantasy, but this is what makes us a good team, and not a bad one. Our ideas aren't incompatible - This is why I rely on you and Schwer to provide the Non-FFT ideas in these builds. The back-and-forth Schwer and I had for the POJ classes was magnificent, because I came from the Final Fantasy camp, providing some theme and background, and he came up with the kickass mechanics.

So, here are my ideas, in more easy-to-digest steps than the above;

So, what do I want Calculator to do? I can only answer that by providing what I see every class doing, and honestly, without listing every single class and what I want them to do, that's rough. But I'll totally get on that in the morning. But I'll tell you this, my "What I want these to do" isn't really mechanical. Because if we're breaking each of these classes down into three roles - Tank, Healer, DPS, well, we've got anywhere between 12 and 21 classes, depending upon the list. And there are only so many ways that we can combine those. So, I use Final Fantasy canon to kinda guide my concepts. And I used to have an Excel spreadsheet guiding me on all of this (I may remake this for this purpose in the morning), but for instance, I see Knight being honorable, and protecting his party. Being a martyr. Sacrificing himself for his Lawful duties to the realm. I don't see him as [GENERIC TANK TEMPLATE], and so my concepts about Calculator and Dancer and Red Mage are a bit more fluid than, say, "Shittier White / Black Mage hybrid". Also, Blue Mage is totally a viable class if we bend the concept of having to learn from monsters. I have no problems with turning Blue Mage into a "Monster Lore" class.

Anyway, Calculator. Issue-at-hand. I see Calculators as brilliant. They are scholars of war, always analyzing. Combat statisticians, they are like Happy Gilmore putting across the downed announcer's tower - They analyze the situation (And do so quite perfectly), and as a result, they pull off something amazing. This was done in FFT, but I disliked the concept and application. Basically, they study. They're logicians. They never make a wrong decision. They're likely to fall into a support role, but I can see them being a MOJ evasion class. They're kinda like when Neo learns Kung-Fu - He just knows where to move and how, and why? 'Cause information, man. There's also the Scholar path, where we can conceptually make them literally battle tacticians, more akin to the tacticians you see in other Sims. And I think it'd be kinda cool to explore the idea of transferring that flavor into FFT a bit. I'd rather they have a skillset like we have for other classes here, and I really am partial to the -ology idea, which I didn't expand upon.

We don't have to call all of the skills 'ology', but if you take the concept of study and amplify it to the high-fantasy ideal. So, for instance. Desmology, the study of ligaments. The Calcy could inflict Don't Move by knowing what ligaments to snap. Epidemiology, the study of the spread and origin of diseases. The calculator could be adept at spreading disease. Heliology, the study of the Sun (Which I like something like this leading into Astrologer). Kymatology, the study of Waves and how to manipulate them. The calculator could inflict waves on his opponents. Phonology, the study of voices. Could inflict Silence. These are endless. Now, I understand that you may look at these and go, "Wow, that's awful. We already have something that inflicts Don't Move and status effects, and elemental damage," but if you'd like for me to expand upon the idea and discuss, I can do that when I have a bit more time.

Anyway, some more concepts - The calculator is so precise with his calculations, that he can mess with evasion ratings and add weaknesses that no one else could see before the Calculator got there. This moves him into a support role, which could work rather well.

I love the idea of the Calculator doing a lot with RSM abilities - Being able to nullify an opponent's Reaction for the turn, or a couple turns, being able to use his own support slot for an extra Reaction or Move ability, and I loved the idea of Range +1 (And I know that effect +1 is probably a bit OP, just kinda proof-of-concept). I am in the doghouse right now with the missus, so I'll totally expound on these ideas tomorrow. Gotta fly for now. Apologies for being abrupt.

[Schwerpunkt]

Mord and I went over this class in IRC and our verdict was that it's still a bust. Pretty much the only way we can make it viable is to completely throw it out and incorporate some elements into the Astrologer class.

Basically, the Astrologer class would be themed around the zodiac signs (obviously), each of which would have a specific effect. Virgo (Virgin) might charm, Taurus (bull) might do direct damage and knockback, Cancer (crab) might do damage and attempt to immobilize, and so forth. The general idea would be to give the Astrologer a veritable grab bag of skills, allowing him to serve as a very flexible caster. We'd then also probably give him whatever weapon the summoner has (no rod for this guy).

[kablizzy]

I love that for Astrologer, actually. An ability and effect for each constellation.