Shattered Kingdoms

I vote yes because I want to see what kind of messed up character builds jhorleb wants to mess around with. Then I want to hoard whatever stat mods he made his build dependent on.

I just want a barb with 25 hp trains:(

I was thinking things like:

* Sprite shaman [FIST] with all HP trains
* MC Scout with ME trains
* Crossbow specced hammer merc with ME trains
* Barb with all HP trains

I really think opening up stat trains along with largely removing restrictions on which classes can be which races would get veteran players not currently playing SK to roll characters (I'd play a halfling shaman in a second) . And retention/return of veteran characters is probably a more significant factor in total player counts than newbie recruitment is these days.

While I appreciate Finney's comments about potentially making certain cabal spells cost a portion of one's total mana pool, it doesn't have the breadth of impact I was going for with this suggestion and I think it's complicated enough balance-wise that Dulrik would never do it.

Removing train caps and class restrictions should be a really simple toggle for the implementor and would allow for greater diversity of characters with no new coding of classes or races.

gnome greybie shaman with 28 mana trains?

crap wtf I meant shaman

Gnome shaman with 28 mana trains would be scary.

This sort of code change would disproportionately reward veteran players and/or players that can endure the time sink of enchanting. Even though I would probably benefit from this change, I would also dread the additional min/max element it would add to the PvP meta-game.

This game really does not need any more time sinks that allow players to get an edge - there's enough already.

That's true on the gnome shaman. Guess you'd have to prevent that one.

Finney - we'll have to agree to disagree. I recognize the drawbacks. I just think the benefits outweigh them and that it's an easy tweak to make.

Voodoo should be removed from the game, anyways.

Then, depending on how art works, this change could have limited consequences in terms of game balance. I agree that the drawbacks Finney mentioned would exist, but I don't think they'd be so pronounced as to drastically widen the gap between veterans and newbies or between people with time to invest in SK and people without it.

I would actually kill Jeckel, Anjin, Grep, or countless other players to be able to play a halfling shaman.