Rogue Ideas

[Antoine]

I actually rather like the symmetry in having all realms have Destruction somewhere in an endgame book. Doesn't matter how you get there, mystical powers let you blow stuff up.

This is like the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, where just about anyone can manage a Ritual of Desecration if they get pissed off enough.

A.

[Napsterbater]

wait hold on here... The classes are finely balanced?

Well, yeah. They're all very playable. Games are pretty winnable with all of them. Contrast with Unangband, where certain combos you can't even start with. I'd say V's classes are analogous to Starcraft's races.

[Magnate]

Well, yeah. They're all very playable. Games are pretty winnable with all of them. Contrast with Unangband, where certain combos you can't even start with. I'd say V's classes are analogous to Starcraft's races.

That's high praise indeed. Now that archery mutlipliers are slightly less insane they are a little more balanced - but for most of the past two decades a cl40 ranger with a decent x5 bow and infinite branded ammo was pretty far outside the range.

[Tibarius]

new classes

Originally posted by d_m
I'd like to avoid an explosion of races/classes in V.

Why? Is it too much coding-work?

More classes allow a more specific way the class work. Right now there are few classes. The debate about mages showed, some players like melee, some think melee could be dropped for more spell focus.

If you split the mage class into spell-mage and sword-mage for example. The player can make himself a more accurate picture of how the class is intended to be played and i guess balancing is a lot more easier as well, because you can fine tune each class individually. That said, more classes are not bad by default from my point of view.

I like the nature's magic path.

If warrior is the only class with no magic (why at all, there could be stuff like gladiator, berserker, as well).
mage powers: mage-rogue
priest powers: priest-paladin
nature powers: druid-ranger

More ideas to this concept in a later post ...

[Derakon]

Why? Is it too much coding-work?

It's more that Vanilla is expected to be polished. To the greatest extent possible, every aspect should be well-thought-out and fit in well with every other aspect. Obviously this doesn't always work out right (c.f. DSM egos), but it's the ideal. New races and classes are pretty fundamental ideas, and getting them to work well is a lot of work (not coding work, but balancing and playtesting work).

In other words, rather than have Vanilla do everything, Vanilla does only specific things, but it does them as well as it can.

That said, if a new race/class were written up in a branch, playtested, and got favorably reviewed, it could well be added into Vanilla. Nobody's tried yet.

[Antoine]

That said, if a new race/class were written up in a branch, playtested, and got favorably reviewed, it could well be added into Vanilla. Nobody's tried yet.

My view is that the next plausible step would be to introduce the Druid and/or Brigand from NPP.

A.

[Tibarius]

druids

I was pondering how to differentiate mages and druids magic yesterday. My ideas so far:

Mages:
There are different planes of existence. Besides what the mundane man can sense there is an astral plane. Each being or object existing in the mundane world also exists as aura in the astral plane. Mages and Rogues have mastered the arts of manipulating those auras, invoking effects on either plane.

Druids:
In contrast to mages druids do not study their arts, they have a close link to nature and their surroundings (intuitive magic). They call upon the elements to their aid - fire, water, earth and air.

While the theme would fit in my eyes this will lead us into a dead-end from the game-mechanic point of view. Druid and Mage will basically play the same, just that a mage will use magic missile, mana or nether bolt and druid will use fireball, ice shards, lightning strike etc.

The mage requires much more versatile attack spells in my eyes. So that at every level he has the choice between different spells with different advantages. Right now he uses, magic missile, frost bolt, ice bolt, meteor swarm and mana bolt as soon as they are available and within reasonable success rate.

Originally posted by Antoine
My view is that the next plausible step would be to introduce the Druid and/or Brigand from NPP.

What is NPP?

[relic]

If you go to the links page here, and look under the heading Variants, you will find a link to the variant named NPPAngband (NPP stands for No Pet Peeves).

[d_m]

Why? Is it too much coding-work?

Everyone has their own idea of what V should be (although many of them are similar).

My feeling is that Vanilla exists to "do the most with the least" or something like that. That is, some of the obvious ways you could "explode" the game (creating a million races/classes/uniques/artifacts/ego types/monsters/whatever) are better left to variants to explore. Instead, Vanilla should serve as a stable/polished/self-contained game that really explores mechanics/tactics/core gameplay.

This is part of the reason why I am so in favor of removing broken/boring/useless mechanics/items/mini-games... because they are not "pulling their weight".

The one place where I'm currently deviating from my definition of what Angband should be is in dungeon generation/terrain: for both of these I'm working on adding new content. That said, I think most variants have shown that you can do a lot better than V even while maintaining a "V feel". Hopefully it will work out and improve the game more.

That said, "my idea" of V shouldn't prevent someone else from submitting patches or doing work in some other direction. That said, if you write a patch that adds 5 new classes it would probably take some convincing (and some great code/gameplay) to get it into V.

[fizzix]

That said, "my idea" of V shouldn't prevent someone else from submitting patches or doing work in some other direction. That said, if you write a patch that adds 5 new classes it would probably take some convincing (and some great code/gameplay) to get it into V.

I think this is also the reason why there is not yet a druid class. It's hard to come up with a convincing spell-set for a druid class without adding features like self-summoning or charming, and still make them distinct from the priest class. I don't see player-aligned creatures making it into V anytime soon.

This is also why, of the three classes I proposed (druid, alchemist, archer) I'd be least excited about the druid, but that could entirely stem from my own lack of imagination.

[Therem Harth]

Personally I think it would be interesting to have a bookless caster class - maybe that would be where druids fit in... OTOH the code for that might have to be kludgy, judging from what I've seen of the V source.

[Tiburon Silverflame]

In what way does 'bookless' become interesting and different, beyond the obvious issues that such a character has significant inventory weight reduction and item slot availability advantages?

To me, classes play differently based on:

a) What monsters are easy for me to kill, and which do I prefer to avoid, and why? Also, how well can I deal with them? This is an area where mage kicks ass, with banish/mass banish.

b) What kinds of monster organization do I prefer to face...one at a time, small groups, large groups?

c) How do I kill...melee, ranged physically, or magical?

d) What are my inherent defenses/buffs? A mage has temp resists and speed, shield, and rune of protection; a cleric has his massive healing; a paladin has the melee buffs, with the basic melee firepower to go with it.

[Jazerus]

Everyone has their own idea of what V should be (although many of them are similar).

My feeling is that Vanilla exists to "do the most with the least" or something like that. That is, some of the obvious ways you could "explode" the game (creating a million races/classes/uniques/artifacts/ego types/monsters/whatever) are better left to variants to explore. Instead, Vanilla should serve as a stable/polished/self-contained game that really explores mechanics/tactics/core gameplay.

This is part of the reason why I am so in favor of removing broken/boring/useless mechanics/items/mini-games... because they are not "pulling their weight".

The one place where I'm currently deviating from my definition of what Angband should be is in dungeon generation/terrain: for both of these I'm working on adding new content. That said, I think most variants have shown that you can do a lot better than V even while maintaining a "V feel". Hopefully it will work out and improve the game more.

That said, "my idea" of V shouldn't prevent someone else from submitting patches or doing work in some other direction. That said, if you write a patch that adds 5 new classes it would probably take some convincing (and some great code/gameplay) to get it into V.

I'm not so sure that your work on dungeon generation is against the spirit of vanilla, personally. It's an area where Angband has been deficient rather than intentionally minimalistic, and I think that's an important distinction to make. The low number of classes and the balance between them are an example of vanilla's minimalism allowing for increased focus on polish, while the use of a single dungeon generation algorithm without much notable terrain just show that no one has ever put much thought into it until now.

[bio_hazard]

In what way does 'bookless' become interesting and different, beyond the obvious issues that such a character has significant inventory weight reduction and item slot availability advantages?

To me, classes play differently based on:

a) What monsters are easy for me to kill, and which do I prefer to avoid, and why? Also, how well can I deal with them? This is an area where mage kicks ass, with banish/mass banish.

b) What kinds of monster organization do I prefer to face...one at a time, small groups, large groups?

c) How do I kill...melee, ranged physically, or magical?

d) What are my inherent defenses/buffs? A mage has temp resists and speed, shield, and rune of protection; a cleric has his massive healing; a paladin has the melee buffs, with the basic melee firepower to go with it.

e) equipment

I haven't played much V recently, but I always wished for slightly firmer restrictions on what equipment each class could use. By the time you hit stat gain, it seems like there is basically no specialization, and this is imo detrimental to giving the classes different strategies or styles. Having a mage carrying around a defender battle axe for the FA just seems wrong.

Also, while I like checking out a variety of classes and play styles (e.g. ToME2/4), I agree that V's simplicity is one of its strong points, and why I keep coming back. Rather than add new classes or races, an alternative might be to focus on player choices by allowing specialization to develop more through character progression. Maybe rather than make every mage or priest spell available by the end of the game, place some limit that forces the character to choose their balance of attack types/defense/debuff, etc.

[Derakon]

Maybe rather than make every mage or priest spell available by the end of the game, place some limit that forces the character to choose their balance of attack types/defense/debuff, etc.

That'd be great as soon as there are more useful spells in each realm than there are learnable spells, and as soon as there aren't spells that become obsolete with time.

(The latter is a problem because it penalizes players who didn't realize there would be better spells down the road. Raise your hand if the first time you played, say, Diablo 2, you spent each skillpoint as soon as you got it, only to discover you were supposed to have been saving them for the level-24 and level-30 skills...)