Game Mechanics

[sunspawn]

But the question is: are you even supposed to be good at being priestly? Maybe the point is to add minor additions to diversify tactics a bit, without changing the primary focus of the character. Might seem a little too rigid and linear, but this would make people actually band together for stuff and work together. I actually disliked the proposition system of HoI, where they threw a bunch of random people together and expected them to work things out. I'd like to see props favoring ready parties that would have better teamwork and would know each other well enough not to break things down over infighting.

And to counter the counter to that idea is that people without parties can have other mediums of stuff acquisition and RP that are no less fun than props. Basically, make props an organized group thing instead of randomly throwing parties together.

[Schwerpunkt]

Really, now, what's the point of even having Priest as a tertiary if you only get two or three spells and they're all just plain dreadful?

I'd much rather see the Knight have a set growth rate and, when the PC reaches a point where he takes a second class, he gets to add a consistent growth rate to his level up. For instance, he might go from:

Level up: 1/8th MA, 1/4th PA, +25 HP, +5 MP
To combined level up: 1/6th MA, 1/5th PA, +22 HP, +10 MP

With that build, and unrestricted access to the Priest class, it wouldn't take the Knight very long to become decent at using white magic. He would never be able to stay on par with a Priest (and be vastly inferior in any sort of battle of attrition), but he wouldn't have one or two token spells for "characterization" that are, in practice, utterly useless to him.

Honestly, I'd rather see a system where you get really good at your Primary and then become decent at your secondary before you're given a prestige class (at which point you probably get really good at that) than the alternative, which is "you get really good at your primary, become extremely mediocre at your secondary, become near-worthless at your tertiary, and then become a demigod with your prestige." To me, the former is much more sensible than the latter, even if the latter confers what is technically a wider array of skills.

[sunspawn]

As I said, I'm in the "axe tertiaries" group. I meant Secondary.

And I generally agree with all you points. I can even rationalize why after a few levels a pure knight would be better at plain old knighting than the knight/priest - divided attentions and all that. I just don't think that even with your ideas, a knight/priest should get access to the penultimate skills of a priest - he might be getting into groove as a medic and all that, but he does not have the dedication to get the most powerful white mojo out there. Which is why I say limit it to Tiers 1 and 2. That way, beyond simple stat differences, a priest/- will have tricks that the knight/priest will not.

[Schwerpunkt]

Stat differences, though, will be pretty huge in and of themselves. Remember, the Knight and Priest have very different items. It's pretty likely that the Knight's weapons won't even have FP and if FP's an important stat in spells, that alone is going to hamstring him.

Simply saying "you can't get Holy" is kind of silly when the Knight obviously has bigger hurdles to deal with if he wants to match a Priest spell-for-spell.

[Mordred]

Thinking of a Knight-Priest... Let's say he did have Holy. What could he do with it? Not much. Knights have lousy MA, they don't have Holy-elemental weapons with high FP, and they have low MP pools. You get one lackluster cast out of it, then you're out of MP for Protect, Shell, and Regen.

I'd rather let a guy who REALLY wants to be a full-on warrior priest, for whatever reason, have his Holy as a show-stopping set piece, than to lock Holy behind a JP wall.

At work today I was thinking pretty hard about the mage classes, and came up with a few tricks for making Priest primary far more effective than Priest secondary without resorting to JP caps. Basically, the trick is, most Staves are Holy-element, so even a class with higher raw MA than Priest still can't sling Holy spells as effectively.

[Schwerpunkt]

May 1, 2013 18:54:39 GMT -6 Mordred said:

At work today I was thinking pretty hard about the mage classes, and came up with a few tricks for making Priest primary far more effective than Priest secondary without resorting to JP caps. Basically, the trick is, most Staves are Holy-element, so even a class with higher raw MA than Priest still can't sling Holy spells as effectively.

See, it sounded a lot sillier when you pitched this idea in the other topic. It makes much more sense when we see where you're coming from.

Basically, you're saying that the Priest should be more effective based upon what weapon he's using. That's already in FFT -- Jump has a 150% damage coefficient if you're using a spear, otherwise it's only 100%. It does make a degree of sense.

But if we go that route, what's the point of FP?

[Mordred]

Because FP modulates power along the progression of items within a type.

[Schwerpunkt]

So, basically, in order to get 100% efficiency out of a Priest, you need Holy elemental and high FP. Which just feels like we're throwing an additional hurdle out.

And how does this apply to the Wizard? Does he only get extra fire damage from his fire stick? Does the Oracle get completely screwed because his rod has no element at all?

I don't think this is the way to go. A Lancer/Knight, for instance, doesn't need to use a sword to get maximum efficiency out of his secondary class (especially if he goes spear-shield). A Ninja/Thief doesn't need to equip daggers to not suck at stealing. What this change would do is, yes, it would degrade the efficiency of the Knight/Priest combo -- but it would also degrade the efficiency of the Wizard/Priest combo. And it would so at a much greater rate than POJs have to deal with, especially since (with only a few notable exceptions) POJs don't actually require specific weapons to do stuff. This change, while interesting, simply hurts MOJs more than it hurts POJs.

[Mordred]

If you're a Priest primary, you won't worry about the Holy elemental, just the FP, since most/all Staves would be Holy-element.

Wizards get elemental bonuses from elemental rods. I'm thinking as a rule, FP on rods will be higher than staves.

I guess if you really wanted to merge Rods and Staves you could, as long as each level had a version good for Priests and a version good for Wizards/Time Mages/Summoners, but it seems like you may as well have separate weapon classes if that's gonna be the split anyway...

The comparison to fighter classes doesn't really apply, IMO, but yes, as a matter of fact, a Knight-Lancer would need to use spears to get maximum efficiency out of his secondary class. I believe you mentioned the +50% Jump damage with spears yourself in the other thread...

The Holy elemental strengthen on staves would not degrade the Wizard-Priest as much as it would the Knight-Priest because the Wizard-Priest will be equipping Rods with naturally high FP, whereas the Knight will presumably be equipping Swords with natually low FP.

EDIT: And Sticks are needed because Oracles need their high-for-a-mage DD utility. Their counter-negating 2 rangeyness and their damage derived from MA make them the perfect weapon for a mage class whose spells don't do DD.

[kablizzy]

Re: Combined growth rates - We'll either need to code those or give each class an amount of points to buy a point of PA / MA, it'd be twelve bitches to figure out each fractional growth rate changes for all 18*18*(Number of Awarded/Master) classes. Although I do like the concept of taking Priest secondary and gaining bonuses at level-up, we'll need a way to do that.

[Mordred]

I think the easiest implementation would be for every class to list its gains in a way like this:

Wizard
Primary
MA: +1 on reaching Level 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12
PA: +1 on reaching Level 4, 8, 12
HP: +4 every level
MP: +10 every level
Secondary
MA: +1 on reaching level 16, 20, 24
PA: No gains.
HP: No gains.
MP: +3 every level.

That way, let's say you're a Knight-Wizard, when you level up you just look up you gains from your Primary class, add them to your base, then look up your gains from Secondary. You could translate it into fractional points if you wanted to, but this way gets you there much more sanely.

[kablizzy]

Actually, I like that. Instead of +1 PA every 6 levels and have to cross-multiply fractions, we can make a functional table. Good thinking, sir.

[Schwerpunkt]

They weren't supposed to really be fractions, but rather lazy shorthand for "one MA every 8 levels" and such.

But Mord's system works fine for me.

[sunspawn]

I was thinking of that during work today... This way, no need to change growths - just add a secondary growth that goes along with the primary one.

[kablizzy]

The only issue I see with this is that we'll have to balance all growth rates taking into account Primary / Secondary / Prestige growth rates, and work our way down from there.