Class spotlight: Darkguard

[KeroTani]

As I've talked about in other posts each character in my project will have a purpose in the party. From playing DND I've always loved the blackguard class, at least it's concept. For tank I wanted one of his class options to reflect this. I didn't want to copy from DND in terms of skills so I have another idea that I think works and would like some feed back. There will be skills that use HP and not magic in my game. I thought I would be interesting if this class used the party's HP and not his own for his skills. An example would be reducing an ally's HP to 1 to give 2x as much to someone else. Also a one turn shield that prevents all damage but reduces all other ally's HP. Any thoughts?

 

[Kes]

@KeroTani Please remember that 'Game Mechanics Design' is not for feedback on specific, individual projects, though you can use your own project as an example. If you want feedback that is only related to your game, then I shall merge this with 'Features Feedback'. Otherwise, be prepared for people to discuss the question without reference to how it fits into your particular game.

Do you want me to merge this, or are you happy for this to be a more wide-ranging conversation?

 

[KeroTani]

@KeroTani Please remember that 'Game Mechanics Design' is not for feedback on specific, individual projects, though you can use your own project as an example. If you want feedback that is only related to your game, then I shall merge this with 'Features Feedback'. Otherwise, be prepared for people to discuss the question without reference to how it fits into your particular game.

Do you want me to merge this, or are you happy for this to be a more wide-ranging conversation?

I'm sorry this was an error on my part being unclear. This is about a project that I am working on. I should talk more about the game as a whole as this does come off as unclear.

 

[fireflyege]

@KeroTani so we are talking about a tanky class that is a protector but uses party's health for those. It is good and interesting but it has some major issues which you must work out if you are gonna make that sort of class.

First is that most tanks provide safety to their party. A tank that offers safety at the cost of safety is not going to work much. Think of a healer with a self heal which costs health. That would be unwise to do, right? If that character's whole gimmick is gambling with safety I would make the character gamble with his personal safety, not the team safety. Do not make defensive characters gamble with team safety because it conflicts with their themes. For example why would a healer drain life from its allies, that would be the opposite of what that healer must be doing.

Also you must give that character clear advantages over other tanks because all other tanks can defend people without going into masochism themselves. Speaking of which, you can add masochism as a personal trait to that guy and you can justify all those health costs of those abilities and why the guy intentionally harms himself but tries to protect others. Thinking of it, you can make very interesting characters. I can imagine a tank that regards pain as treasure, and wants to keep all the pain to itself in battle because of that. If you look at the eyes of a masochist, it is kinda selfish but to all others it is valiant.

 

[KeroTani]

@KeroTani so we are talking about a tanky class that is a protector but uses party's health for those. It is good and interesting but it has some major issues which you must work out if you are gonna make that sort of class.

First is that most tanks provide safety to their party. A tank that offers safety at the cost of safety is not going to work much. Think of a healer with a self heal which costs health. That would be unwise to do, right? If that character's whole gimmick is gambling with safety I would make the character gamble with his personal safety, not the team safety. Do not make defensive characters gamble with team safety because it conflicts with their themes. For example why would a healer drain life from its allies, that would be the opposite of what that healer must be doing.

Also you must give that character clear advantages over other tanks because all other tanks can defend people without going into masochism themselves. Speaking of which, you can add masochism as a personal trait to that guy and you can justify all those health costs of those abilities and why the guy intentionally harms himself but tries to protect others. Thinking of it, you can make very interesting characters. I can imagine a tank that regards pain as treasure, and wants to keep all the pain to itself in battle because of that. If you look at the eyes of a masochist, it is kinda selfish but to all others it is valiant.

You bring up good points, this is more of a thought experiment though. The idea being way to make a tank but he puts the other members in a bad spot but also has an upside. I'm still messing around with skill ideas.