Shattered Kingdoms

I've been thinking about SK a bit, and I noticed that I always play certain classes over and over, and totally avoid others. After 5 or six years of play I've never GM a necromancer, or a warlock, or a hellion, or any of the other classes I just don't find appealing in an imaginitive way.

But the class selection does get limiting after years of play, and rather then expect Dulrik to churn out another three or four classes, which could take over a decade, I was thinking that it would be nice if we could customize our characters some.

When trade skills are added, which is soon I hope, maybe instead of a stock sorceror or necromancer There could be a selection of spells for each ranking right up to grand master. At each level you get to learn a spell or number of spells if you can find the trainers for them. You might not even know what spells are available to learn until you find them or someone tells you about them. Same goes for skills.

So you could have two sorcerors, who made different choices and have two different skill and spell lists. Get the idea? A certain number of skill and spell slots available filled how you want to fill them. Including some, excluding others. A customized character.

same goes for warriors and stuff. Some skills will be class specific like snare for scouts or alertness for barbs but you won't automatically get to know those. You can choose to learn them or other skills.

This is just a rough idea it's not polished at all. It would require more skills and spells to be added to the game over time to give characters the chance to really be diverse, but I think it would make the game which is good already about 10 times funner.

Don't post drunk.

To clarify, there will still be skill and spell lists for each class. They will be class specific, but they will be expanded upon and you will choose from the skill and spell list to make a character to your liking.

The idea would be stupid if say a sorcer had petrification, finger of death, conjure elemental, and magma spray. That would be bad. I think you all get the idea, though I'm not sure ovt did.

I'd like to see a broader set of customization and specialization available to spellcaster classes, but we could probably just wait for things like tradeskills to be put in before that.

I have stated before that I would to see skill trees and limited access to those trees. For instance, if you make it journeyman. You have a choice of three skill paths to go down but you can only choose two (or one for that matter). Stuff like that would give players great amount of customization.

"Funner?"

Other than that, I do agree that this idea is a very good one, and sounds like it has amazing benefits.

However, I think it's a lot like Communism: good in theory, but not really applicable in real life.

But I'd love to be proven wrong.

Not about Communism though.. filthy Soviets.

This sounds so awesome, however, the only thing that comes to mind when I read this is, "Poor imms".

Just a note... Since a theory is meant to describe or work within reality's confines, a theory that doesn't do so cannot be described as "good" since it fails to address its primary function.

On topic. This is a good idea, but it would make grouping up for training, exploration, or PK a lot harder because there would be no real way to predict what skills/spells each character brings to the table without long conversations. It might also ensure that some skills/spells are never used, depending on the overall utility and desireability of each "tree." Generally, this would be individually satisfying for players, but would present a great deal of problems to larger groups, which partly defeats the point of the game.

That would be my biggest issue with it. I can totally see this becoming the next specialize where in everyone debates and whines over what is the best. The debates are so much of a problem except that it will likely be true that there will be some form of imbalance that will cause people to bi.. I mean.. reasonably complain.

I like the things being passed now that allow for some creative differences, but entire trees of skills doesn't sound so appealing to me. It really just reminds me of WoW or Guild Wars, two games I've stopped playing partially because people discriminate against "bad builds," half the time meaning that the person doesn't have the most twinked out system.

So really I'm not against the system. I'm against the people who will use it to be abusive. I won't hate seeing something like this, but I still won't cry if it never happens either.

This would be the end of things like detect magic, or detect poison that's for sure. Also, if you could only learn so many amature skills, you wouldn't have people with dim int walking around able to speak read and write every language in pyrathia.

There's an upside and a down side to it, but I think it would be an improvement.