Classes in the new system

[horus]

Just a brief update on the changes that will occur to classes and the way its played. Be aware and be forewarned, the play SHOULD be quite different from what it is now. No longer will you be able to choose any class and play each class as if they are tanks.

Warriors
The quintessential combatant, they can master any weapon or they can even specialise in unarmed combat. They deal with devastating damage when they specialise in one particular weapon! Pure tanks.

Hunters
Essentially wilderness warriors, hunters use their knowledge of the wilds to gain the upper hand.

Rangers
Rangers are based on the wild west "Texas Rangers". They are the masters of long range combat, including pistols. (This is Molly's definition of rangers, so please dont go complaining to me about this.)

Gypsies
Gypsies are the jack-of-all-trades, having knowledge in all things, including tinkering weapons and armours, as well as having rogue abilities. Gypsies also have musical talent, and their music is known to have magical effects on those that follow gypsies closely (ala bard style).

Thieves
Thieves are the masters of hit and run. Set traps along your escape route, backstab someone, then run away and watch as your victim stumble upon trap after trap. Warning to old 4ders, do not attempt to stand toe-to-toe against a warrior, thieves are not designed that way.

Thats it for now, I will update further when I have time. My aim is to inform you that each class should be played very differently from each other, so dont bother just standing in the same room, typing kill/cast/backstab, and then stand there doing kick/encircle/behead/fireball etc.

[Jason Orsini]

Mmmhmm sounds not so exciting.

[Virisin]

I will beat you all as a thief.

[horus]

Last few classes:-

Espers
Espers are psionicists, using the power of their minds to attack their foes. Their magical abilities affect things that have minds, and so half of their magic will work through silent rooms.

Mages
Mages manipulate the magical energies in their surroundings and so their magic is very primal. Very powerful mages can easily devastate an entire forest, burning it down in no time.

Clerics
These are the typical psycho bible bashers or crackpot mormons knocking on your door at 6am and pretending to be surpised that they woke you up or loony cultists worshipping dog-faced icons, oh wait. Well, I think this class is quite self explanatory.

As I said in the previous post, don't expect to use casters as tanks unless you want to impress little bunny rabbits.

[Molly]

Judging from his description of Clerics, it's obvious that Horus has some fundamental problem with religion. 

Anyhow, we discussed the subject a bit today, and came up with the following concept:

Since alignment plays a role in many of the spells, it makes sense that they should be connected to some sort of Deity, who could represent Good, Evil or Chaotic/Neutral alignment.
The same Deities could also represent Light, Darkness and Twilight (dusk and dawn).

Transformed into code thinking, it would mean that a Cleric, who has chosen to follow a Deity that represents Good/Light, would have the best effect if he chooses a good-align spell cast during daylight outdoors, or in a light room indoors. The wrong alignment, as well as the absense of light would affect the level of the spell negatively. Likewise the Good/Light spells would work better on a target that is evil aligned.
Also there would be spells to cast darkness or light, as part of a fighting strategy.
Since there is no twilight available indoors, that would be a drawback, but on the other hand the neutral aligned could use both dark and light spells, not with as high level of success as someone with the right align, but with less penalty than someone with totally opposite align.

This would be consistent with the entire concept of more variety and adding some planning and strategy to the combat and choice of skills/spells.

It might also be possible to work with different deities in the different Dimensions, meaning we'd need 4 sets of Good/Evil/Neutral Deities. A priest who chooses a Deity from PreHistoric, would then have a bonus effect on the spells if cast in the same Dimension. Perhaps they could also choose one deity for each Dimension, which would not necessarily have the same aligment, (although that probably would be the most strategic). So theoretically the same cleric could choose to work with Dark/Evil spells in one Dimension, Good/Light in a second and Neutral/Twilight in a third.

But perhaps the Dimension aspect would be taking things a bit too far. There is aways a balance between realism/consistency and what is actually feasible gameplay. And one could argue that the Gods are eternal - they are always the same three Gods, only with different names during different time periods and in different cultures.

Anyhow, I'd prefer that we work with the Gods/Goddesses already existing in our game, and not invent a whole new set of deities that has nothing to do with 4D. A short check shows that we have around 30 Gods and Goddesses to choose from, so it shouldn't be too hard to pick out 4x3 of them, based on the importance of the zones. Part of the training process for the Clerics would then be to find the right Priest or cult or group of worshippers in any Dimension to be accepted as a follower. This would typically be easier for the Good and Neutral deities than for the Evil ones.

[Molly]

Rangers
Rangers are based on the wild west "Texas Rangers". They are the masters of long range combat, including pistols. (This is Molly's definition of rangers, so please dont go complaining to me about this.)

Here are some additions to Ranger abilities, since Anubis blames their abilities on me.

Rangers should also be masters of mounted combat, whip and lasso and probably good at traps too. All of these things are very much part of the Oldwest way of living. Both Cowboys and Indians were excellent horsemen.

A whip as a weapon could work to snare, trip, sting and strangle a player, depending on the choice of technique, which could make for pretty interesting combat.

A lasso could be a sort of long_range alternative to snaring (where the attacker needs to be in the same room as the target). Lassoing could work on a target both in the same room and the adjoining six rooms. 

Speaking of long_range weapons, they really should work when the target is in the same room too, at least pistols should. And since Indians are parts of the Oldwest, bow and arrow should also be part of the skills that Rangers excel in.

And how about starting a stampede as the oldwest equivalent of a room spell?

[horus]

In regards to rangers, I intend to base this class off Clint Eastwood's cowboy characters, where you can shoot at hundreds of gunslingers before they can even draw their guns, or if you are the bows and arrows type of guy, then you can be like Legolas, sliding down a rampart whilst poking holes into hundreds of enemies with his arrows.

They will be able to fire continuously, as long as their ammunition lasts, and their rate of fire is dependent on their skills. Damage is lessened the further away the victim is.

I was toying with the idea of allowing arrows/bullets to be able to bend around corners, but I realised that not bows and guns cant be compared with every man's Tom, Dick and Harry where some might curve to the left, some straight and .... oh wait, wrong forum, wrong topic.

So the point of this post - long ranged combat will be beefed up mega big time mucho grande.

[Virisin]

Likewise the Good/Light spells would work better on a target that is evil aligned.

This is the only thing I disagree with, it means that balancing not only requires tinkering with the spells themselves but with the zones and mobs as well to try and keep a balanced amount of good and bad mobs. Also I generally just don't see why a 'good' spell would work better on a 'bad' person.. Surely a bad person would typically find themselves running into trouble with good people and be far more adept at dealing with good spells coming their way than bad spells from their mates.

[Molly]

To Horus:
Not Legolas, you dolt, it's the Wild West, not Midgard.
Think Deerfoot or Winnetou or Crazy Horse or Sitting Bull.

If you really intend to make Rangers the masters of ranged weapons, I might choose that class for my own part of the testplay.
In the long gone days when I still used to play the game, I was a total coward, and used to level by sniping at the knights in the Tournament place from outside their tents.

And why didn't you like my stampede idea? It could be part of a special Cowboy skill branch, including cattle driving, bronco busting, lassoing, branding your victims (equivalent to scalping), handling a long rawhide whip, pokerplaying and cheating at cards, whiskey drinking, and of course fistfighting, marksmanship, quick draw, sniping and backshooting.
All very IC pastimes for a young cowboy.
And I am sure Kitolani could provide a matching branch of skills for Indians.

To Virisin:
You should know me well enough by now to understand that I would never suggest anything that requires extensive changes to the zones.
I think there is a quite sufficient selection of good and bad mobs in the zones already, people just need to locate them.
But I'll bow to your other argument. Perhaps the penalty of affecting your own alignment by attacking the wrong type of mobs would be penalty enough.

[Asmodeus]

Likewise the Good/Light spells would work better on a target that is evil aligned.

This is the only thing I disagree with, it means that balancing not only requires tinkering with the spells themselves but with the zones and mobs as well to try and keep a balanced amount of good and bad mobs. Also I generally just don't see why a 'good' spell would work better on a 'bad' person.. Surely a bad person would typically find themselves running into trouble with good people and be far more adept at dealing with good spells coming their way than bad spells from their mates.

I am inclined to disagree (with Viri's disagreement).  While they may be in more combat with those of the opposite alignment, they have an intimate knowledge and workings of the spells of their own alignment... i mean, they USE evil spells.  

I would assume that whether your an evil elf mage or an evil centaur of whatever other spellcaster class, you're essentially drawing your evil magic from the same place, and therefore understand more about it than where some good mage gets his power from.  

Consider a new evil character who has begun to master dark magic.  If he came up against one of his own type, and one of light magic for the first time, who would he do better against?  I would think against the evil mage, his attacks might not do as much damage, and he could defend himself more against his opponent... theres that knowledge of the magic his opponent is using.  Against the good mage, he obviously is new to the attacks, so might be more vulnerable.  But also, because theres not the understanding of the magic being used against.  So each opponent would be more vulnerable to the others attacks, and by the same token, attacks would be more effective.

Of course, maybe over time you could build up some sort of immunity or whatever, but i think basically, in general, light works against dark.

[Virisin]

Either way alignment is a crappily implemented totally arbitrary feature in 4d and I hate making it more involved than it already is. 

[Tocharaeh]

I think the alignment deal should only be implemented IF we have a stationary alignment. None of this static alignment crap.