The Fourth Classes

[Tinker]

I've been "designing" some classes in my spare time, trying to stick to the themes of each guild, and coming up with a 4h class for each that fits in thematically, but is still fresh enough to make sense on its own. Also, I tried to come up with abilities that I thought would be cool to have in the game... Of course these were never playtested, so in practice they may be totally off the power curve set by the existing classes. It's pretty much just a thought experiment right now, thought you never know who might get inspired by what...

Feel free to point out - in a strictly theoretical sense - how totally br00ken some of these would be, or useless, or whatever you think about them... Or if you have a better idea to give the guilds a 4th class, post up. At least we can use the thread as a new "hey! new classes!" thread.

Design Intent


[GUILD] Warrior
STEADFAST: 10% Physical and Magic Resist. Gain 2% to both resists on level-up.
WELL-ARMED: Starts with a free Sword. Treat all items giving +Damage as small items.
MIGHTY: +20% Knockback damage. Striking any monster erodes 2% of its resistances.



[MAGE TOWER] Magician
TELEPORTATION: Starts with a WEYTWUT glyph. Can be cast on an empty tile for half cost to move there.
SPELLCRAFT: Spells cast are 10% likely to consume no mana.
DISPEL MAGIC: Converting a glyph weakens adjacent monsters.



[CHURCH] Bishop
INSPIRATION: all altars begin scouted.
INQUISITION: you can "unworship" your current deity. You can desecrate even while faithless. Desecration heals you.
INDOCTRINATION: 25% Magic Resistance



[THIEVES] Hunter
CRITICAL STRIKE: Starts with a GETINDARE glyph. Casting GETINDARE gives double dodge bonus.
PROVISIONS: Regain a smidget of health and mana after each XP-valuable kill.
BEASTSLAYER: Instantly kill any No Experience monster.



[EXPLORERS] Bard
BARD'S SONG: Starts with WONAFYT glyph. WONAFYT ignores monster Magic Resist.
BARDIC KNOWLEDGE: All items have their conversion values increased by 15 points; can also convert non-convertible items.
MONSTER LORE: +10% Attack Bonus against a monster for each trait/condition the monster has.



[AUDIT ZEPPELIN] Wanderer
PHASE SHIFT: Begins with LEMMISI glyph. You can move to any unblocked tile.
BACKWAYS: An extra random subdungeon spawns in each dungeon.
FORESIGHT: Picking up a booster gives an additional bonus.

[Darvin]

[choongmyoung]

I really like the Bishop's INQUISITION(unworship), Hunter's BEASTSLAYER(instakill no-xp mobs) and Wanderer's BACKWAYS(extra subeungeon). Though they can be OP or UP, I love the intuitions behind them.

[Magic Rabbit]

[GUILD] Warrior
STEADFAST: 10% Physical and Magic Resist. Gain 2% to both resists on level-up.
WELL-ARMED: Starts with a free Sword. Treat all items giving +Damage as small items.
MIGHTY: +20% Knockback damage. Striking any monster erodes 2% of its resistances.

Small +dmg items looks too powerful (skullpicker, penance and hero helm looks too awesone together, enormous damage boost, max mana boost, even tinker cant get it all as small items), get hands of midas on VGT, or kill some bosses in DL and just gather everything for a huge damage. I think that he also need some nerf in spellcasting, because getindare or cydstepp will let him get enormous kills, and with bysseps you will erode 5% res from a single hit at 2 mana cost, or maybe slower piety gain, because he can easily gather ~60% resistances with taurog\dracul, he can also abuse binlor even as warmonger and raise all resistances too. Maybe permanent slowstrike will deal with his powers a little, but also it ensures appearing of rbs/platemail in inventory.

[MAGE TOWER] Magician
TELEPORTATION: Starts with a WEYTWUT glyph. Can be cast on an empty tile for half cost to move there.
SPELLCRAFT: Spells cast are 10% likely to consume no mana.
DISPEL MAGIC: Converting a glyph weakens adjacent monsters.

Will dispel magic affect bosses, or we need some new traits "resist dispel"? Is this dispel -res can be applied multiple times? Or gnomes will rape almost any level. And what about "CP unworthy" glyphs from gods? Binlor can give two of them almost for free.

[CHURCH] Bishop
INSPIRATION: all altars begin scouted.
INQUISITION: you can "unworship" your current deity. You can desecrate even while faithless. Desecration heals you.
INDOCTRINATION: 25% Magic Resistance

Can be interesting on one hand, but required too much balancing with penalties from "unworshipping" on the other hand. Its more like buffed goatperson without food, with same amounts of refills and ability to control deities.

[THIEVES] Hunter
CRITICAL STRIKE: Starts with a GETINDARE glyph. Casting GETINDARE gives double dodge bonus.
PROVISIONS: Regain a smidget of health and mana after each XP-valuable kill.
BEASTSLAYER: Instantly kill any No Experience monster.

Say hi to VGT no-experience floor and goodbye to soko-trolls subdungeon Some bosses has "no experience" trait (first two forms of anoobis in creeplight ruins for exmpl). Looks like altered version of assassin, with guaranteed first strike, but without dependency on poisoning. Goblin hunters can be too strong in non-vicious dungeons, especially with yendor and blue bead. Add tikki tooki to this pack and we have almost same game mechanics as goblin assassin, well, with a difference that you wont slay lvl8-9 enemies in one hit.

[EXPLORERS] Bard
BARD'S SONG: Starts with WONAFYT glyph. WONAFYT ignores monster Magic Resist.
BARDIC KNOWLEDGE: All items have their conversion values increased by 15 points; can also convert non-convertible items.
MONSTER LORE: +10% Attack Bonus against a monster for each trait/condition the monster has.

You can convert gg beads for gaining piety with gg?
IMO, his positive bonuses are weak. Moster lore - depends on stage of the game and type of dungeon, bardic knowledge - its not likely that you will hit more than 1 additional conversion treshold, maybe this bonus benefits for halfling or gnomes, but have little use for orcs or elves. Maybe gathering +2xp instead of +1 from slowed enemies could give some strength to this class, but IDK, honestly.

[AUDIT ZEPPELIN] Wanderer
PHASE SHIFT: Begins with LEMMISI glyph. You can move to any unblocked tile.
BACKWAYS: An extra random subdungeon spawns in each dungeon.
FORESIGHT: Picking up a booster gives an additional bonus.

This is an interesting idea, but how "backways" will interact with HGT/VGT?

[Tinker]

[zayyeh]

FORESIGHT: Picking up a booster gives an additional bonus.

What kind of bonus are we talking about?

[Tinker]

[Tinker]

Here's a new one, my take on the Witch... Again, may be totally OP/UP/whatever, I just wanted to imagine something fresh.

[WITCH] WITCH (monster class)
HEAVY CAULDRON: Starts with Alchemy 10%. Gain 5% Alchemy per 120 Conversion Points. Brew potions when you level up or trigger a conversion.
COMPLICATED TASKS: A monster you strike in melee loses 1 point of damage. When you level up, each visible monster loses 1 point of damage. Monster damage cannot go below 1 this way.
BALEFUL DOLL: Starts with the APHEELSIK glyph. Casting APHEELSIK costs 1 extra mana for every two stacks of Corrosion on the monster, but it applies 1 stack of Corrosion. APHEELSIK can be cast on Undead monsters as well (though it does not inflict Poison on them).

How I imagined the potion brewing to work is this: Your alchemy chance is checked whenever a new potion may be brewed. It's just a percentage chance of the brew succeeding; so if you've got 15% Alchemy, it just means that each potion that can show up has 15% chance of doing so. When you trigger a potion brew (level-up or reach CP threshold) two things happen:
1) You have Alchemy % chance to brew one of each of the following basic potions: Health Potion, Mana Potion, Fortitude Tonic, Burn Salve. Check each one separately, so you may get all or none or just some of them, depending on your Alchemy % and your luck.
2) Any other potion you may have in your inventory has Alchemy % chance to spawn an extra potion of that kind. So if you have a Quicksilver potion... And your Alchemy is 15%... You have 15% chance of that potion "doubling". Check this once per potion type, so if you have 3 Quicksilver Potions, you still only have 15% chance of getting a new one. But having more types of potions on stock means you have a better chance of getting something.

Now... I don't really like the randomness. I would really like to do something like JJ's happy/unhappy effect, that is random in the short term, but is balanced out in the long run as things that don't show up now are just going to be more likely to show up later. However, I can't really think of a clever way to do that mechanic in a way that's scalable with a skill... So let's just stick to straight %.

[dislekcia]

Just a quick heads up: You generally want to give each character a trade-off in this sort of design. So making new abilities and things is cool, but you have to give classes inherent weaknesses to then play to those strengths around, otherwise all you're doing is adding preparations on an existing vanilla character and creating power creep.

Take the Warrior, for instance, it's a damage-dealing powerhouse, cool. But it has no weaknesses, so that makes it a bit boring to me: I'd do something like restrict it to 3 inventory slots total, that way players will have to really think about what combos with all their damage items/potions. I'd also look at switching the resistances around entirely, players are always going to combo resists with big melee damage, so I'd make resistances decay (and come off items too) when leveling up/converting/something. I'd also probably up the mana pool, just to be a dick and add more stress to the smaller inventory

So yeah, try to design around creating interesting choices and tradeoffs, not just upping power massively.

[Tinker]