Patch with new classes

[Antoine]

Hi

I'm toying with the idea of producing a patch for V that adds new classes.

To be clear, I am not agitating for any changes to V itself - this would just be a patch that individuals could download and play with if they felt so inclined.

Self imposed restrictions:
- minimal code changes outside the edit files
- no changes to objects and particularly no new spellbooks
- none of the new classes to be easier than the V classes they are based on, and some substantially harder.

I was thinking of the following classes:
- Barbarian - like a warrior, but cannot read scrolls and has poor devices aptitude. Good melee combat, innate Regen and RCold.
- Berserker - like a barbarian, and aggravates as well. To 'compensate', innate RFear and a vampiric melee attack
- Thief - like a rogue, but with no spells, and gets penalties if he wears heavy armour. To compensate, better stealth, bonuses when attacking a sleeping opponent, an extra shot with the sling, and gets small amounts of XP from picking up gold.
- Archer - like a ranger with no spells
- Enchanter - like a mage, but much more effective with sleep/confuse/slow/scare spells and devices. Poor access to direct damage spells
- Sorcerer - like a mage, with more SP, but terrible melee/missile skills
- Healer - like a priest, with cheap access to healing spells and generally good magic, but poor missile aptitude, and gets the pointy penalty if he wields a bow or crossbow. Gets small amounts of XP for picking up gold
- Zealot - like a priest, with better melee/missile combat, but no healing spells at all. Very poor charisma, but can 'sacrifice' - gain gold and XP when destroying any item

Would anyone be interested in trying the patch, or helping to develop it?

A.

[andrewdoull]

Hi

I'm toying with the idea of producing a patch for V that adds new classes.

To be clear, I am not agitating for any changes to V itself - this would just be a patch that individuals could download and play with if they felt so inclined.

Self imposed restrictions:
- minimal code changes outside the edit files
- no changes to objects and particularly no new spellbooks
- none of the new classes to be easier than the V classes they are based on, and some substantially harder.

I was thinking of the following classes:
- Barbarian - like a warrior, but cannot read scrolls and has poor devices aptitude. Good melee combat, innate Regen and RCold.
- Berserker - like a barbarian, and aggravates as well. To 'compensate', innate RFear and a vampiric melee attack
- Thief - like a rogue, but with no spells, and gets penalties if he wears heavy armour. To compensate, better stealth, bonuses when attacking a sleeping opponent, an extra shot with the sling, and gets small amounts of XP from picking up gold.

Per Unangband, make him the only class who gets improvements to Stealth with level.

- Archer - like a ranger with no spells

Worth doing now the quiver is in.

- Enchanter - like a mage, but much more effective with sleep/confuse/slow/scare spells and devices. Poor access to direct damage spells

Unfortunately sleep / confuse / slow / scare spells are not terribly interesting except as side effects to damaging spells except in extremely limited circumstances.

- Sorcerer - like a mage, with more SP, but terrible melee/missile skills

Why are these non-fighting classes always called sorcerors? Btw: I think you can force mages to actually use spells by messing with the monster list. But I've tried to submit that already with not a huge amount of interest...

- Healer - like a priest, with cheap access to healing spells and generally good magic, but poor missile aptitude, and gets the pointy penalty if he wields a bow or crossbow. Gets small amounts of XP for picking up gold
- Zealot - like a priest, with better melee/missile combat, but no healing spells at all. Very poor charisma, but can 'sacrifice' - gain gold and XP when destroying any item

Not sure what the point of these two are.

I think you could also do something with someone with excellent device skills but no spells.

Andrew

[ewert]

Artificer, whee.

[fizzix]

no scrolls is brutal if not impossible in the endgame.

If you made it no wands/staves/rods it might be doable, but lack of TO would probably be too much of a hurdle to overcome.

[ekolis]

Interesting ideas... though I wonder what benefits an Archer would have to compensate for the lack of spells? Maybe no XP penalty, being at +0% like warriors? Then again, rangers are kinda overpowered!

[Antoine]

>> on the thief

> Per Unangband, make him the only class who gets improvements to Stealth with level.

Good idea.

>> on the enchanter
> Unfortunately sleep / confuse / slow / scare spells are not terribly interesting except as side effects to damaging spells except in extremely limited circumstances.

Why do you say they are uninteresting? Is this based on development experience from Un? Would a "slow/confuse and hack" supplemented with "sleep and run away" playstyle not be a bit different from existing V classes?

>> on the sorcerer
> Why are these non-fighting classes always called sorcerors?

I wanted to use the familiar name.

>> on the zealot and healer
> Not sure what the point of these two are.

The healer combines a couple of ideas - (a) a priest who doesn't use a Death Bow and (b) a semi-pacifist (gets some of his XP from picking stuff up rather than killing enemies)

The zealot was meant as a kind of "no selling to shops" option.

> I think you could also do something with someone with excellent device skills but no spells.

Good idea. Will add to list.

A.

[Antoine]

Interesting ideas... though I wonder what benefits an Archer would have to compensate for the lack of spells? Maybe no XP penalty, being at +0% like warriors? Then again, rangers are kinda overpowered!

I thought a lower XP penalty, and getting the extra shot with crossbows as well as bows.

A.

[Antoine]

no scrolls is brutal if not impossible in the endgame

What scrolls are most essential (and cannot be replaced by devices)?

A.

[Matthias]

What scrolls are most essential (and cannot be replaced by devices)?

A.

It depends on how "bad" they actually are with devices.

recall - Heng Berserker solves it with a class power. Might be replaced by giving a rod of recall as the starting equip, but that feels like a strange approach considering the bad at devices skill
remove curse - the Heng 'zerker can remove cursed equip without scrolls by force, again a device exists.

I won't mention escapes scrolls, while they will be the ones most missed, that is kind of the point of the class right?

[Antoine]

It depends on how "bad" they actually are with devices.

recall - Heng Berserker solves it with a class power. Might be replaced by giving a rod of recall as the starting equip, but that feels like a strange approach considering the bad at devices skill
remove curse - the Heng 'zerker can remove cursed equip without scrolls by force, again a device exists.

I won't mention escapes scrolls, while they will be the ones most missed, that is kind of the point of the class right?

I can see the sense of giving an adequate devices skill and -Recall / -RemoveCurse.

The cursing problem could also be solved by allowing the barbarian to read scrolls in town (presumably someone will help with the big words).

An alternative would be to allow the barbarian to read scrolls anywhere, but it takes 10x as long as usual ("you are a slow reader"). This would rule out the escape scrolls but allow the utility ones.

A.

[andrewdoull]

>> on the enchanter
> Unfortunately sleep / confuse / slow / scare spells are not terribly interesting except as side effects to damaging spells except in extremely limited circumstances.

Why do you say they are uninteresting? Is this based on development experience from Un? Would a "slow/confuse and hack" supplemented with "sleep and run away" playstyle not be a bit different from existing V classes?

This is going to be a blog post, but I'm too tired to do it tonight.

Basically, the problem with all status effects is that they are binary (e.g. the monster is slept, or not slept) and doesn't eventually lead to defeating the monster.

If there was more instances where it was worth sneaking past a monster, then I could see sleep being more useful.

This implies enchanters should get detect objects/treasure at a minimum, plus a modification to let you notice when monsters are nearly waking up. (See Unangband for example code).

Confusion should also allow monsters to use ranged attacks, to be truly interesting.

Plus you really need more status effects to keep enchanters interesting (blindness, charm etc).
Andrew

[fph]

Why do you say they are uninteresting? Is this based on development experience from Un?

Maybe he meant that they are Un-interesting. *dodges*

[buzzkill]

Basically, the problem with all status effects is that they are binary (e.g. the monster is slept, or not slept) and doesn't eventually lead to defeating the monster.

Instead of all or nothing results, why not use a counter. Devices which induce these effects would increment the counter (for the target monster) by a given (high variance, randomized) range dependent on device type or spell/caster level. Monsters would decrement the counter a given amount each turn based on their innate ability to resist and/or saving throw. When the counter reaches it's threshold, the enemy is affected. Further castings would deepen/prolong the effect, or amass a functional count against more resistant enemies. Thus, using multiple charges may be effective wheras a single charge would routinely fail.

In this way a currently useless wand may be used to throughly sleep and couple of low level orcs, or maybe confuse a dragon long enough to steal or heal.

[will_asher]

I like the idea of an enchanter class a lot and will probably add it to DaJAngband with the following further ideas:
0) enchanting type spells would be more effective for enchanter than for other classes (a must-have if this class gets used in vanilla since those spells are so weak in V.)
1) 'greater sleep' spell makes monsters sleep through being attacked (maybe until a certain amount or percent of damage is done, or to stay asleep after 1 full melee attack but always wakes with the second attack.)
2) full invisibility makes you undetectable to almost all monsters. Mention in spell description that it hides your smell and sounds as well because normal invisibility would not be effective for many types of monsters (most animals and some other monsters can sense you quite well with only smell & hearing).

Obviously both greater sleep and greater invisbility would have to be rather expensive high level spells.

I also kinda like the idea of have alternate ways of getting XP specially for non-combat classes and will likely do some form of that for certain classes in DaJ (tourist, thief, healer, enchanter- since the enchanter's magic is better for avoiding combat than actually killing monsters)

Any classes with no spells at all would probably be all too similar to each other unless you made other MAJOR class features (not just different levels of skills). A vampiric melee attack may be major enough to set the berserker apart, but I think something like innate -3 to stealth (and maybe a max possible stealth) would be better than constant aggravation.

<only momentarily resurfacing for now..>

[andrewdoull]

Blog post up with more thoughts...

Andrew