Any variants that don't restrict your options by class?

[gglibertine]

I've been turning over an idea in my head for the last couple of days now, and I'm wondering if any of the variants support anything like it. (I did a quick browse through the list but nothing jumped out at me.)

The way I imagine it, you'd select a race as in Angband, balance your stats to your satisfaction, and be able to buy whatever kinds of weapons, tools, spellbooks, etc. you wanted in the town. How well you could use any of it, however, would depend on your experiences in the dungeon -- both via practice and by luck. You'd need minimum stats to be able to do certain things, of course -- if you're too weak you can't swing a sword, if you're too stupid you can't cast spells -- but there would be plenty of opportunities to improve your stats via magic, experience, or just a really lucky roll on an attempt to do something. (I really like the idea, for example, of desperately trying something you shouldn't be able to do, rolling exceptionally well, and gaining a skill or increasing a stat as a result.)

You might start out with the intent to become a particular "class", but get sidetracked by finding items that lead you down another path. You might start out as a generalist and take what comes, but find yourself becoming increasingly specialized as a result of your finds. Anyone could try to learn magic, anyone could try to fight, etc., and with luck you might either become very powerful very quickly or struggle along, laboriously making small gains here and there in terms of equipment, stats, magic items, etc.

Are there any variants that do anything like this at all?

[Derakon]

Download SAngband ("Skills Angband"). It doesn't make you better via practice, but you can spend your experience points on improving your skills. Sil has a similar mechanic. I believe PosChengband has the "improve via practice" system for weapons skill, though you're still heavily biased by the class you chose to play as.

[gglibertine]

Download SAngband ("Skills Angband"). It doesn't make you better via practice, but you can spend your experience points on improving your skills. Sil has a similar mechanic. I believe PosChengband has the "improve via practice" system for weapons skill, though you're still heavily biased by the class you chose to play as.

Thanks! I tried Sil but found the interface extremely confusing. Too much color and flashing numbers. I'll try SAngband and see how I like it.

[Regalia]

Nothing (among Angband variants) really comes to mind.

In PosCheng you can kind of go possessor and then pick a body you want. Or a wild talent for random skills. I guess that's not really what you're looking for.

Like Derakon mentioned, there are variants that let you invest points into skills (a few more: tome, tome.net, furyband and so on) but not much luck factor in it (well, I guess fumblefingers in tome).

[NotMorgoth]

I don't think Sangband does quite what you want, since it does place restrictions on spellcasting. When you first learn magic, you have to choose a realm (sorcery, necromancy, holy or nature magic) and then you can't cast spells from the other realms.

Another one you might like to try is Ironband - there are no classes or "skills" as such, but any character can fight, cast spells etc. I believe how good you are at things depends on your race and stats (you get some control over which stats to level up but there is also a lot of randomness.)

Apart from that, there's always Crawl...

[gglibertine]

I don't think Sangband does quite what you want, since it does place restrictions on spellcasting. When you first learn magic, you have to choose a realm (sorcery, necromancy, holy or nature magic) and then you can't cast spells from the other realms.

Another one you might like to try is Ironband - there are no classes or "skills" as such, but any character can fight, cast spells etc. I believe how good you are at things depends on your race and stats (you get some control over which stats to level up but there is also a lot of randomness.)

Apart from that, there's always Crawl...

Well, I'm OK with having to make choices at various points. I've been playing with SAngband for an hour or two now, but mostly just wrestling with the preferences trying to get the display anywhere near the way I want it. Does every variant REALLY need to completely change the way you set options? Why can't I resize the stupid window? Everything should work exactly the way I want it to all the time, like magic!

TBH what I'm really after is mostly a lack of classes, so Ironman might work for me -- but I'm not so hot on the not being able to go back to the town aspect. I'll give that a shot too, though.

I'm wondering now how hard it would be to simply remove classes from Vanilla entirely without going to the trouble of changing other things. I understand libraries and config files, but actual code is beyond me, and I'm guessing there would need to be changes to the code.

[Derakon]

I'm wondering now how hard it would be to simply remove classes from Vanilla entirely without going to the trouble of changing other things. I understand libraries and config files, but actual code is beyond me, and I'm guessing there would need to be changes to the code.

I wouldn't be surprised if you could make a jack-of-all-trades class in Vanilla 4.x without modifying any code, just by modifying edit files. But making it balanced, especially as it levels up and gains access to more spells, would be difficult. Maybe you're not worried about balance though.

[gglibertine]

I wouldn't be surprised if you could make a jack-of-all-trades class in Vanilla 4.x without modifying any code, just by modifying edit files. But making it balanced, especially as it levels up and gains access to more spells, would be difficult. Maybe you're not worried about balance though.

Balance isn't really my biggest concern, no. I just like to see what happens!

[Estie]

I dont understand what this is about. Would this be a solution, and if not, why:

Take vanilla. Make a birth option, "remove all classes except paladin." Now you can only play a paladin and will never be restricted by class.

[Derakon]

I made a quick stab at modifying 4.x to add a class that could cast both holy and divine magic, since that's the big limitation on class abilities. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be possible. It seems like a given class can only have one 'magic' line in their definition, which is restricted to either arcane or holy magic (those concepts being hardcoded into the game). So you can't have a class that uses INT to cast mage spells and WIS to cast priest spells. I also tried just copying the spell entries from the Mage class into the Priest class (all of the 'book', 'spell', 'effect', etc. entries) so that they could cast mage spells while using WIS as their cast stat, and the game segfaults on launch; see this crash log.

Oh well.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

I made a quick stab at modifying 4.x to add a class that could cast both holy and divine magic, since that's the big limitation on class abilities. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be possible. It seems like a given class can only have one 'magic' line in their definition, which is restricted to either arcane or holy magic (those concepts being hardcoded into the game). So you can't have a class that uses INT to cast mage spells and WIS to cast priest spells. I also tried just copying the spell entries from the Mage class into the Priest class (all of the 'book', 'spell', 'effect', etc. entries) so that they could cast mage spells while using WIS as their cast stat, and the game segfaults on launch; see this crash log.

Oh well.

Actually, this is only half-right. You can modify 4.x class files (and p-race files, for that matter) to achieve a jack-of-all trades. You can even cast both mage spells and priest spells, simply by adding the relevant spells to the class file and modifying the object file for the books to contain the number of spells needed (or make new spell books with the number of spells and modify the spell lines in the class file to refer to the new books). It is true that you can only choose one "magic-realm", but this affects only which stat will determine the number of Spell Points and what stat failure rates and new spell level gains are based upon.

It works, I've done it before. Just to see if it was possible, I made a "super-race" (Valar), adding it to the p-Race file. It had all the best flags and stats of all the other races. Then I made a "super-class" (Istari), adding it to the class file. It had all the best flags and stats of all the other classes as well as cherry-picked spells from both mage and priest spells/prayers. Had to choose a realm for SP (Int). I also made the "Istari" spells appear for use only by them in two new books (which they have from the start), by modifying the object file to add the books (Valar Morghulis and Valar Dohaeris) to which the Istari spells in the modified class file point. Oh, and as part of adding the Valar race to the p-race file, also modified the history file to add their birth description, age, and level-up ranks.

Sure, it can be made to work without any crashes whatsoever. But, the balance is so thrown out that the game becomes an exercise in pushing buttons. Fun as an exercise, but boring as a game. I've played a couple other races as an "Istari" using the two new spell-books, and it is somewhat better balanced, but only somewhat. Nonetheless, it is entirely possible to add, say, healing spells to a Ranger and have it work.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

If anyone wants to try the Valar/Istari super-race/class, just unzip these files to the main player directory (the same place as the lore.txt file) and, thanks to Nick's foresight, they will override the files in the gamedata directory. It contains edited class, p-race, object, and history files which add the Valar race/history, Istari class, and two Istari class specific spell books. Just roll-up your new @ and choose Valar and Istari. You start with the books and a great kit, but 0 gold, so just go down the stairs and start playing.

But, like I said, fun as an exercise, boring as a game.

super race-class.zip

Edit: Oh, and I suggest balancing your @ stats to spread the points across everything but Wisdom.

[Derakon]

Okay, I guess I just didn't put enough effort into it, then.

My plan was to create a class with all of the restrictions of the other classes, so e.g. blessed weapons only, can't wear normal gloves, 4 blows/round, no stat modifiers, only average skills. That seems more likely to make a fun experience than giving the player a superpowered race and superpowered class, because you actually need the versatility that dual-casting gives you to be able to keep up.

[Ingwe Ingweron]

Okay, I guess I just didn't put enough effort into it, then.

My plan was to create a class with all of the restrictions of the other classes, so e.g. blessed weapons only, can't wear normal gloves, 4 blows/round, no stat modifiers, only average skills. That seems more likely to make a fun experience than giving the player a superpowered race and superpowered class, because you actually need the versatility that dual-casting gives you to be able to keep up.

Easy enough to do. Just modify the super-race "Valar" in the p-race and history files for your new race (using human stats info and the worst skills and flags from the other races and whatever history you want to change) and modify the super-class "Istari" in the class file (using the worst class flags and skills of the other classes). Change the names Valar and Istari to whatever you want. The spells fail rates, mana cost, etc., are from the Mage and Priest varieties, if you want them to reflect the worst of the other classes, you will need to modify each spell entry. If you want them to be in other books, you will have to modify that also.

[Nick]

It works, I've done it before. Just to see if it was possible, I made a "super-race" (Valar), adding it to the p-Race file. It had all the best flags and stats of all the other races. Then I made a "super-class" (Istari), adding it to the class file. It had all the best flags and stats of all the other classes as well as cherry-picked spells from both mage and priest spells/prayers. Had to choose a realm for SP (Int). I also made the "Istari" spells appear for use only by them in two new books (which they have from the start), by modifying the object file to add the books (Valar Morghulis and Valar Dohaeris) to which the Istari spells in the modified class file point. Oh, and as part of adding the Valar race to the p-race file, also modified the history file to add their birth description, age, and level-up ranks.

Brilliant. This was exactly the intention of the current setup - well, really to enable making sensible, balanced classes, but that's just nit-picking

I did actually consider allowing multiple realms as well, but in the end decided to get it properly working with only one realm possible, and generalise later if it seemed necessary.

It's possible that you could get a class which satisfied what the OP was outlining. I feel like you'd basically want to take the worst from all the other classes - add all the restrictive flags, and give generally fairly bad skill modifiers, but then give it a bunch of hitpoints. But that's all just guesswork.