Concepts for (sub-)class choices as the main character (and companions)

[SirLudicrous]

Hi everyone!

While tinkering around with my first project and thinking about different concepts, I realized that I need to do something about the classes you can have yourself and in the party.

So the first thing I came up with was this:
The main character stays "hero" and gets access to all different types of skills throughout the game (magic, combat, supportive, etc.) but the strength of skills scales extremely hard with equipped gear and stats, meaning that you can be a mage by equipping wands and mage gear. You can still use combat skills, but they would deal little to no damage since you don´t have the right stats for those.

But I´m not too fond of this concept as it might get a little confusing if you have no guidelines for builds at all.

(Though I will stick with making abilities be very dependent on gear, stats, etc. but I will keep things a bit more "class exclusive". )

My second Idea (which I will stick with for now, if nothing better comes up) is the following:
Class tokens:
The hero equips one and that defines his class (and thus stat scaling, abilities and gear restrictions and maybe even the look).
And the hero earns those by progressing through the story.


Or does anyone know about a class selection plugin?


For companions I had this idea (though I haven´t looked into this far enough to be sure that it´ll work. It depends on wether or not you can set conditions for other actors to be in your group):

I was thinking about creating a whole lot of actors, all with different traits, classes, unique abilities, etc. and you meet those throughout the story and they can agree to follow you (up to 3 companions), allowing you to create your own team, based on what strategy/build you want to go with.


EDIT: I just came up with a sub-class-system I´m going to include and want to hear your thoughts about that:

First of all there are 2 (actually 3 but more about that later on) main categories for each class:
Physical and Magic (so far so good)

And 4 base classes (next to the hero not sure what to with him yet):

Warrior (Melee, Phys., moderate damage&defense)
Hunter (Ranged, Phys., moderate damage, less defense, chance to evade)

Mage (Ranged, magic, higher damage, little defense)
Priest ("Ranged", magic, little damage & defense, supports)

And all of these classes can "upgrade" into a special subclass with extra traits.

Warrior subclasses:
Paladin/Crusader (Melee, Phys. with a bit of extra magic, lower damage, much higher defense, a bit of support)
Barbarian/Gladiator (Melee, Phys. , much higher damage, lower defense, better sustain)
Duelist (Melee, Phys, much higher damage, very low defense, chance to evade)

Hunter subclasses:
Sniper (Ranged, phys. , tons of damage, very little defense, lower chance to evade, much slower, higher (critical) hit chance)
Mechanist/Trapper ("Ranged", mixed damage, higher damage, more defensive, uses traps to punish enemy movement)
Druid (Ranged, mixed damage, moderate damage, higher defense, uses offensive and supportive magic)

Mage subclasses:
Elementalist (Ranged, magic, tons of damage, very little defense, lots of hard hitting elemental damage)
Illusionist (Ranged, magic, high damage, little defense, MUCH more evasive, confuses/disables enemies)

Priest subclasses:
Sage (Ranged, magic, higher damage&defense, now has access to more offensive magic for protection)
Saint ("Ranged", magic, little to no damage, low defense, much more powerful supportive skills)


Now on to the 3rd category:
I called it "special" for now.

Martial Artist (Melee (can use some ranged weapons), phys., high damage, mediocre defense, chance to evade, has access to a bit of (mostly) supportive magic)

Enchanter (Melee&Ranged, mixed damage, moderate damage&defense, has access to magic, buffs allies, debuffs enemies)

Assassin (mostly melee, phys., very high damage, very low defense, high agility and chance to evade, high single target damage)

Hero (still no clue what to do with him)


What do you guys think about these concepts?

 

[SirLudicrous]

If I manage to get 3 extra stats into the game, I will add "Strength", "Dexterity", and "Intelligence" (HOW INNOVATIVE )
and make classes and abilities scale with those stats.

The strength classes would then be:
Warrior
Paladin/Crusader
Barbarian/Gladiator
Duelist (50/50 with Dexterity)

The dexterity classes would be:
Hunter
Sniper
Mechanist/Trapper (50/50 with intelligence)
Druid (50/50 with intelligence)
Martial Artist (50/50 with strength)
Assassin

The Intelligence classes would be:
Mage
Elementalist
Illusionist
Priest
Sage
Saint
Enchanter

 

[Sauteed_Onion]

The Intelligence classes would be:
Mage
Elementalist
Illusionist
Priest
Sage
Saint
Enchanter

I'm not sure why my attention was grabbed so much, but you gave a fairly detailed break down of what some of these classes were in your previous post. Can you break down Sage and Saint? If you don't mind.

 

[SirLudicrous]

Sure no problem
The Sage is supposed to give the (mostly defensive/supportive) priest a much more offensive side, which might be beneficial, based on what type of team composition you´re running with. The sage will probably share some abilities with the mage but will also receive some unique spells.

Tbh, I didn´t think of a point in going for the sage until now, but my point would be this:
In case you as the main character decide to start as a priest, you might want a much more reliable offense for higher levels, as i intend on adding levels you can only enter when you´re alone.

The Saint is slightly more straightforward: He will get access to much more powerful supportive spells, at the cost of offensive (and to some degree) defensive power.

Basically the ultimate support class.


Regarding my first ideas with the classes and and how to change them:
I basically scrapped these ideas, since I´m now using yanflys plugins, they seem to do all the magic I need

During creation I even added a new class: The mystic (He´s very similar to the enchanter but has more direct ways of dealing damage and will get access to some alternate elements, that noone else will have access to, like blood and darkness)

I also gave the special classes subclasses aswell (but only one, which is basically just an upgrade):
Martial artist -> Grandmaster
Enchanter -> Spellblade
Mystic -> Seer
Assassin -> Shadow

 

[Kes]

Please note that 'Game Mechanics Design' is not for feedback on individual, specific projects. If you want feedback that is only applicable to your game, it needs to be in 'Ideas and Prototypes'.