Shattered Kingdoms

They would end up with the same intelligence as a half-elf sorcerer, which is a very weak combination because of the low intelligence. I'm not saying it shouldn't be an option, I was just pointing out that it would be a very weak combination.

Is THAT why you brought this up? LOL!

In all honesty, that would be pretty neat. I think I would actually roll a paladin for once if halflings got full class access. Although, I'm a bit partial to hellions. I never did make a very good lighty. The only drawback to a halfling hellion is that hellions already have sneak and hide.

Now, giving a paladin innately mastered sneak and hide, with a slight boost to magical resistance, would be pretty choice. There would be a lot of RP potential there. Sneak + hide + bolts of glory = owned!

You have my permission, Achernar. Make it so.

You have no idea the kind of cookie cutter class this would create not to mention opening the flood gates to Twinks. Sounds good in theory but in practice, no good has every came from such a system.

I can't imagine myself ever taking a halfling hellion seriously. Dwarf hellion is a worse combo but it's at least completely badass when not played by Adroan.

Dwarf hellion is pretty awful.

Thank you. That is pretty much exactly what I said in my post directly after grep's. I am glad to know that someone else was able to see this as well.

Again, I don't mean to be a jerk, grep. Chem is right, though. It does sound like a good idea in theory. I say give it a couple months and everyone would end up with a cookie cutter class, made up of only certain skills and spells that would be the most advantageous.



LOL! Okay, I do sort of see what you mean to a level. Regardless of how badass the equipment is, a hellion halfling would only be so intimidating. It's actually pretty funny to picture. I just don't see how a dwarf hellion is a worse combo. Dwarves are everything between full-on mercenaries, barbarians and battle-priests to bards and warlocks. The only thing I could honestly say I could laugh and point at when it came to a dwarf was a rogue.

I meant from a purely technical standpoint, a dwarf hellion is a bad combo. They are not effective in pvp. They're still badass though.

System Design 101:

Fix only what's broken.

Game Theory 201:

If you're stupid for not choosing a certain option over others, that option is very likely unbalanced.


There are many options in the game that already are better than others, and those choices are already made. Why adopt a philosophy for only half of the design process? Either make all choices equally valid or don't, but don't start trying to balance things after accepting the fact that some things are just naturally better choices than others.

In other words, set up a classless system with net zero gains, and you won't have a system that can be abusable.

The only thing that can stop twinks is sane, well-thought-out designs.


But.


This game has been designed to favor and reward twinks, grinders, and other such jrpg protags.

Going classless would be a step towards making that paradigm shift.

I completely understand what you mean, or at least I think so, lol. The way I had envisioned you idea is by taking all the skills, spells and songs and putting them into one big list. Now divide that list amongst certain trainer types. Elemental, arcane, buff/debuff, weaponry, ranged spells, aoe, summons, etc. Not to mention armor type training (what type of armor your character will use. Cloth, light or heavy.).

The only way I could see this working is if you devised a point system after this, giving each skill, spell, song and training session a value based on it's strength and/or type. I would also envision that training any skill, spell, song or armor set would also require spending acquired experience.

Allowing this, one could put together whatever type of character they wanted. For example, I could roll a elf that wears heavy armor and summons elementals and shoots arrows. I am just coming up with this off the top of my head. However, give it enough time, and enough experimentation, and people will eventually figure out one set that will gank all the others. Those who get ganked by the ones with this 1337 skill, spells, song and/or armor set will eventually figure out what that set it. Before too long, they will roll the exact same thing. The only people I could see breaking the cycle would be the pure RP players, which are extremely rare these days (I hate to say it, but players like myself are an endangered species). It will open up the flood-gates for twinkers and jerks alike to ruin it for everyone. Chaos would ensue, up would become down, black would become white, East would become West and molten marmalade would rain from the sky.

I could be seeing this very differently than everyone else is, and perhaps you have a different idea than I do, grep. This is just how I see things with the way you have explained it thus far and I cannot see how, in the long run, this would be a proper solution. However.......once again I admit to the possibility that I am completely wrong.

On a completely personal note, I think I would lose almost all interest in the game if the system changed so drastically.

A quick way to do it would be to assign each skill/spell/proficiency a Status Level and a Price.

Each level, you get character points that you can spend on anything you can afford.

They are organized so that it would be impossible to too many "really awesome" abilities, but you could still in theory somehow buy something above your level if you wanted. There could be hierarchies further regulating things: no third attack before second attack, no arcane spells before arcane proficiency, etcetera.

This would be a completely different system requiring a complete overhaul, but it would be far more diverse, robust, and scalable.


If the classes wanted to be maintained, you could opt-in to certain class-like packages of abilities, call them "Jobs," that provide you with more net points of a thematic power set than a purely a la carte would provide: deciding you wanted to take the "priest" job for all your levels would make your choices for you, but in the end, give you some larger amount of abilities than if you tried to just build the priest from scratch. That would provide incentive for players to choose thematic options.

This would completely change the game and require coding. Lots of coding. I think that's something the community and implementor shouldn't be afraid of, though. Since there's a lot of coding that already has been admitted to needing to be done.

The kind of new blood the MUD is trying to get does not mesh well with the current obscured system where shut-in veterans like Ardith have unapproachable skill.