Roles and Role advantages (Capstones!)

[GrumpyMel]

Nihimon wrote:

I think Hark actually makes a very good point with respect to all the ways the warning can be accidentally bypassed, whether it's a spiteful little brother, or an overly affectionate cat, or a seizure, or the mouse jumped, etc.

I understand all the arguments people have made about "choices have consequences", but I think those consequences should manifest in additional costs to overcome rather than outright permanent bans.

Respectfully, that strikes me as a rather weak arguement that equaly applies to the Delete Character function or drop all my gold in the garbage, etc. Those situations are typicaly addressable through an in game petition to a GM or an out of game call/letter to Customer Service who can delineate between something that really happaned accidentaly and someone that waited 6 months and 5 levels to suddenly report it.

We're clearly talking about purposefull game-play choices here.

[Nihimon]

That's a valid point, GrumpyMel. I guess I found it persuasive because it reinforced my own position :)

[Onishi]

Nihimon wrote:

I think Hark actually makes a very good point with respect to all the ways the warning can be accidentally bypassed, whether it's a spiteful little brother, or an overly affectionate cat, or a seizure, or the mouse jumped, etc.

I understand all the arguments people have made about "choices have consequences", but I think those consequences should manifest in additional costs to overcome rather than outright permanent bans.

every restriction can be accidentally bypassed hypothetically. It is hypothetically possible that one could leave their character on the character selection screen, their little brother might click the delete character button, and type D-E-L-E-T-E when the confirmation asks you to.

or your cat could hit the disenchant skill, and break down the uber tier 9 helm you spent 9,000 DKP for in exchange for a crappy shard that you have no use for.

Heck I've lost out on tons of money in games because I accidentally put one zero too few in the box for what price to auction or sell something.

Actually the solution most games have to delete, could also work for a skill training type of thing, what if skill choices could be undone, up to 5 days after being set, though without refunding the time trained for it (to prevent abuse, IE someone retraining the same skill, or essentially permanantly having a skill they shouldn't via untraining and re-training it every 4 days.

[Insert Name]

How bout the ability to set a password to confirm actions that break capstones? Should be very unlikely to be accidentally bypassed, especially if it's a password you almost never type.

[Valkenr]

It would be trivial to setup a accident proof system, and I was about to post a suggestion to require the player to enter their password. Still, impulse control, substance abuse, and 'trusted' family/friends should not be factors GW accounts for.

Multi-layer approval is all you need to make it accident proof, adding a password makes it so people sitting near you can't tamper with your character unless they know your log in information.

[Hark]

I'm still offended by the hundreds of dollars and 2+% of my life when into getting to this point with the character, I should be able to do anything the game makes possible with the character.

[Nihimon]

Rather than trying to engineer new systems to make it impossible for human beings to make mistakes (as if!), just design a system that allows them to recover from their mistakes.

[Kakafika]

I'm still keeping up with this thread, though it doesn't seem many new ideas are coming of it.

Although personally I wouldn't mind permanently closed off capstones, I can appreciate the issues with it in terms of freedom to develop your character as well as the extreme nature of making a choice 1-3 months in that you only realize the true consequence of in 2.5 years. But I've already stated all that here.

For that reason, I still favor a point system which adds some more strategy and complexity to character development. Honest question, isn't this a pretty significant part of the PnP for some players? I've never played a TTRPG, but I still remember as a young teenager 'inheriting' a Vampire book with all the clans and abilities and stats etc. I never actually met anybody that played, but I did spend hours creating several character builds, for fun. I guess I would have been what you call a 'munchkin.'

If GW determines that the time to design such a system could be better used (though I would strongly disagree!), I'd welcome a system where a multiclasser was significantly penalized for doing so. Something between what I imagine Valkenr and Nihimon envision with their suggestions.

If either of those ideas seem a fair compromise to you, read the above posts by Nihimon, Valkenr, GrumpyMel, and myself.

[DarkLightHitomi]

Multiclassing is only a problem for games designed around players sticking primarily to a single class, if you instead design the game to multiclass or with no classes (and just add the classes as fluff after the mechanics are set) then no more multiclass problems.

As for it being a part of TTRPGs, it isn't, which is part of my unhappiness, it isn't in PF any any form yet they are doing it as a homage to PF. Sounds pretty lame to me.

I can understand the desire to encourage people to single class, though I don't agree with doing so in a game where it isn't needed to progress the story or avoid breaking things. They are already designing it with multiclassers in mind which means multiclassing isn't going to be some sort of over-powered thing to avoid, so that doesn't apply and is thus an invalid arguement.

And no accidents is not a strong reason, Andius suggests red tape which I think red tape should always be reduced to bare minimum, which means removing the reason for red tape when possible.

As there is no good reason for capstones to be locked out, they shouldn't do so.

[Lee Hammock]

Hey guys

We've been trying to have meetings to get some capstone stuff nailed down for the last three weeks but between holidays, me being sick, etc we never got together on it. We have another one scheduled for next week, hopefully it will work out.

Just so you guys know, capstones will not be permanent things you can end up being unable to get due to a mistake, and many of the ideas being discussed are from this forum. Actually the current leading idea is from this forum too.

[Andius]

Lee Hammock wrote:

Hey guys

We've been trying to have meetings to get some capstone stuff nailed down for the last three weeks but between holidays, me being sick, etc we never got together on it. We have another one scheduled for next week, hopefully it will work out.

Just so you guys know, capstones will not be permanent things you can end up being unable to get due to a mistake, and many of the ideas being discussed are from this forum. Actually the current leading idea is from this forum too.

That is very good to hear. Thanks for the heads up.

[Mbando]

Thanks very much for the update Lee.

[Ravening]

Awesome thanks Lee. We can now stop speculating and wait for the outcome from your meeting. My money is on the skill point training system thingy.

[DarkLightHitomi]

Sweet, I can't wait to hear what's up with them, though I might start a thread soon for more detailed combat mechanics since those are still in the air, and what comes from that meeting might help.

[Valkenr]

Lee Hammock wrote:

Just so you guys know, capstones will not be permanent things you can end up being unable to get due to a mistake, and many of the ideas being discussed are from this forum. Actually the current leading idea is from this forum too.

Does this mean that every capstone will be always obtainable by every character? or that a 'mistake' can't be involved in making one unavailable?

[Andius]

I read that as either capstones will not be permanent, or you can't be locked out of them for good. But the exact details aren't known because they are still debating about it.

[Stephen Cheney]

So we got a chance to pitch this to the team today and everyone seems to like it, so we're now putting it up here for feedback :) . This is based pretty heavily on some of the the earlier suggestions from DarkLightHitomi and GrumpyMel.

The main thing we want to achieve with this system remains keeping optimized multi-role builds from being far more desirable than single-role builds. This keeps the role feeling more special/distinct, and also doesn't penalize players that don't really pay much attention to optimization from feeling outclassed by others that do (e.g., we don't want to see "You're just a pure Fighter? No, I think we'll hold out for a Fighter/Barbarian/Rogue or a Fighter/Paladin/Ranger for our melee character.").

We've heard and agree with all your arguments about how a carrot at the end of the progression doesn't really achieve this, and that you don't want to be locked out of getting a capstone.

So what we're proposing now is the idea of a "Dedication" or "Focus" bonus.

Essentially, whenever you only have feats from one role slotted (rounded out with generic feats that aren't role-specific), you'll gain a bonus to doing what that role is supposed to do. This bonus is pegged to making the pure build competitive with the best synergistic multi-role build, may shift over time as new synergies are discovered, and may scale up in power based on your level (becoming similar in power to tabletop's Capstone at 20th level if high-level synergies are really powerful).

For example, if we decide that Paladins are supposed to be the best in the game at melee damage vs. evil targets, but testing determines that there's a synergistic Paladin/Ranger/Fighter build that does better without losing any real effectiveness in other areas, we may tweak the Paladin Dedication bonus to increase Smite Evil damage. This gives us the ability to shore up specific corner-case issues without having to rebalance the feats of a whole role (which may propagate out to cause further issues).

Your bonus is entirely dependent on what you have slotted, not what you know. If you build a Fighter 5/Barbarian 5, you get the Fighter bonus if you only slot Fighter feats, the Barbarian bonus if you only slot Barbarian feats, and no bonus while you slot feats from both (or neither) roles. And there may remain situations where you prefer the synergy of two or more roles to whatever the individual bonus is. If we scale the bonus in power by level, it will likely be based on the highest-tier feat you have slotted.

Thoughts?

[JakBlitz]

Sounds like a good way to balance it. I hope there is still some kind capstone that you can only use if you’re all slotted in a single class but, this might be a good compromise between the two camps.

[Mbando]

Stephen Cheney wrote:

Essentially, whenever you only have feats from one role slotted (rounded out with generic feats that aren't role-specific), you'll gain a bonus to doing what that role is supposed to do. This bonus is pegged to making the pure build competitive with the best synergistic multi-role build, may shift over time as new synergies are discovered, and may scale up in power based on your level (becoming similar in power to tabletop's Capstone at 20th level if high-level synergies are really powerful).

For example, if we decide that Paladins are supposed to be the best in the game at melee damage vs. evil targets, but testing determines that there's a synergistic Paladin/Ranger/Fighter build that does better without losing any real effectiveness in other areas, we may tweak the Paladin Dedication bonus to increase Smite Evil damage. This gives us the ability to shore up specific corner-case issues without having to rebalance the feats of a whole role (which may propagate out to cause further issues).

As long as this is at the heart of your solution--that the bonus is very tightly bound to the flavor of the class, I'd be down with it. It would be important to me as a player that my Paladin not have a general boost to competetive (thereby losing flavor), but be boosted in a very specific way.

While I don't plan to play an arcane caster, I think it would be totally badasstic if they got some sort of bonus by school of magic.

[Mbando]

Stephen, does "feats" mean specifically feats in the 3.5 way, or more generally class abilities?

[Stephen Cheney]

Mbando wrote:

Stephen, does "feats" mean specifically feats in the 3.5 way, or more generally class abilities?

"Feats" is our current term for any modular trait, in this case specifically "combat feats" which are active and passive traits you put into your weapon, refresh, utility, passive, etc. slots as described here.

We're still very high level on how to divide role features among feats and on deciding what slots they go in, but as an example, a Wizard/Rogue might have:

• The Spellbook Refresh feat, several particularly useful School feats that slot into a staff or wand weapon, and a few other miscellaneous feats that count as "Wizard" feats (because Wizard was a prereq for buying them)
  
• A Sneak Attack passive, several weapon attack feats (mostly for light weapons) that work even better when Sneak Attack is available, and things like Evasion and Feint that are utilities or refresh feats that count as "Rogue" feats (because Rogue was a prereq for buying them)
  
• A bunch of generic feats (largely basic weapon attacks, simple passive bonuses, etc.) to round out the character (the prereqs for these don't include role levels)

If the player used only feats from 1 and 3, he'd get the Wizard bonus. If he used only 2 and 3, he'd get the Rogue bonus. If he mixed 1 and 2, he'd get neither. But he might be running the Rogue bonus while using generic wand attacks or the Wizard bonus while using generic dagger attacks (and even a pure Rogue or Wizard could do something similar if the right generic feats were purchased).

[Ravening]

It looks like a fair compromise to me as people still have the option to pick and choose skills that makes sense for their character concept, while still giving a meaningful reason why to either solo or only use the skills and abilities of a single role at a time.

[Nihimon]

Stephen Cheney wrote:

Essentially, whenever you only have feats from one role slotted (rounded out with generic feats that aren't role-specific), you'll gain a bonus to doing what that role is supposed to do.

When you say "slotted", I get the impression you mean on any Weapon Set. Is that accurate? Or is it not considered "slotted" if it's on a currently inactive Weapon Set?

[Stephen Cheney]

Nihimon wrote:

When you say "slotted", I get the impression you mean on any Weapon Set. Is that accurate? Or is it not considered "slotted" if it's on a currently inactive Weapon Set?

We haven't drilled down to that level of detail yet, but I suspect we will want it to be set up so you have to decide whether to have the bonus or not when you're generally slotting powers. And that would include any weapon sets you can swap between on the fly.

If you could, say, be slotted as a pure Rogue and enjoying the Rogue bonus, but have a wand in your alternate weapon slot with several Wizard-specific feats on it (thus only losing the Rogue bonus for a round here and there when you swapped to the wand) that would not be in the spirit of the concept, as you might be able to benefit from some synergies unavailable to a true single-role character.

[Kakafika]

Stephen Cheney wrote:

Nihimon wrote:

When you say "slotted", I get the impression you mean on any Weapon Set. Is that accurate? Or is it not considered "slotted" if it's on a currently inactive Weapon Set?

We haven't drilled down to that level of detail yet, but I suspect we will want it to be set up so you have to decide whether to have the bonus or not when you're generally slotting powers. And that would include any weapon sets you can swap between on the fly.

If you could, say, be slotted as a pure Rogue and enjoying the Rogue bonus, but have a wand in your alternate weapon slot with several Wizard-specific feats on it (thus only losing the Rogue bonus for a round here and there when you swapped to the wand) that would not be in the spirit of the concept, as you might be able to benefit from some synergies unavailable to a true single-role character.

Good question Nihimon.

And I think that has to be how you do it, Stephen. Even if you just made it so they could not 'recover' the rogue bonus after they switched weapons to wand and back, that flexibility is still of benefit, and so is undeserving of the 'initial' rogue benefit.

I really like your example of the spirit of class bonuses as something that is fairly specific to class (not simply just +melee damage), Stephen.

[DarkLightHitomi]

I like that, sounds good and definatly don't allow switching weapons to switch out the bonuses in combat.

I do prefer needing to avoid slotting off-role abilities on the second weapon to gain the bonus, rather then losing the bonus mid combat though.

[IronVanguard]

That certainly sounds like a cool way to do it. I like that the bonus would follow the flavor of the class.

[Nihimon]

Thanks for the reply, Stephen. That was in line with my expectations.

[Jiminy]

Excellent news indeed. A small bonus to those that have a single focus on their characters. Really love that angle on character progression.

[Andius]

Stephen Cheney wrote:

So we got a chance to pitch this to the team today and everyone seems to like it, so we're now putting it up here for feedback :) . This is based pretty heavily on some of the the earlier suggestions from DarkLightHitomi and GrumpyMel....

....So what we're proposing now is the idea of a "Dedication" or "Focus" bonus.

Essentially, whenever you only have feats from one role slotted (rounded out with generic feats that aren't role-specific), you'll gain a bonus to doing what that role is supposed to do. This bonus is pegged to making the pure build competitive with the best synergistic multi-role build, may shift over time as new synergies are discovered, and may scale up in power based on your level (becoming similar in power to tabletop's Capstone at 20th level if high-level synergies are really powerful).

I love this idea but I would like to point out I think the basis for it was derived from:

Andius wrote:

I really think the best solution is this. If you have 20 in a class, you have that classes capstone ability. Regardless of training order.

All of your skills you have equipped must be available to the class you have trained to in order to use your capstone.

So if I am playing a cleric and my cleric level is 20. I can use my capstone but only so long as every ability on my bar is either a cleric class skill, or a non class specific skill available to clerics. The minute I slot a single passive, refresh, utility, weapon ability etc. from another class my capstone is not useable. If I take that skill back off my capstone is useable again.

They adapted it, but I think I deserve a little credit. ;)

[DarkLightHitomi]

@Andius
I do agree, I had the basic idea and you married it the equipped slots, Grumpymel spread the concept (with his own but similar alterations) to this thread.

[GrumpyMel]

Yeah, I think this is a really great example where productive discussion and even passionate debate can provide the development team with fruitfull ideas and concepts that can assist them with crafting the game.

It's really awesome to see the kind of interaction PFO Developers have with the community, you just wouldn't see this sort of thing in a AAA MMO. I'm really glad that our discussion could provide some assistance to the Development Team....and I think that even though a few of us were mentioned specificaly by Stephen, pretty much everyone that participated here must have contributed in some way. I know that when I've read posts in this thread, even ones that I've disagreed with strongly, or are vastly different from my own ideas about some issue, they always make me think or rethink about my own ideas and very often I'll encorporate some of that into what I put forward.

I think it shows something really cool about this community already...that we can talk about and kick around issues constructively and even disagree and debate passionately about things but it never devolves into the kind of vitrol and nonsense you see in so many other game forums. That's really cool (IMO)

[Myzmar]

Hey everyone. I am new here, so please excuse me if the below topics have already been discussed to death, but I am trying to understand what are the conclusions of your discussion on the class system.

- are builds final? If I reach "level" 20 with 10 fighter / 10 ranger, can I continue learning skills / getting milestones for either of those classes, and later change my build, i.e. to 12 fighter / 8 ranger?

- is there going to be any limitation on what we can learn / how far we can advance in different classes? While I understand the appeal of unlimited progress, I believe it would be better if the advancement was capped somehow. The most obvious way is by statistics - if I am strong and dexterous but not too bight, I can very well master the rogue, barbarian, fighter and ranger paths, but casting spells should be a no-no. This character is simply too dumb for it. There would still be quite enough room for advancement, but this would encourage some variety in characters (instead of having in 10 years a thousand of demigod master-of-all-trades running around)

Stephen Cheney wrote:

For example, if we decide that Paladins are supposed to be the best in the game at melee damage vs. evil targets, but testing determines that there's a synergistic Paladin/Ranger/Fighter build that does better without losing any real effectiveness in other areas, we may tweak the Paladin Dedication bonus to increase Smite Evil damage. This gives us the ability to shore up specific corner-case issues without having to rebalance the feats of a whole role (which may propagate out to cause further issues).

Maybe I am wrong, but I get the feeling this would basically discourage the whole idea of multiclassing. Leaving roleplaying reasons aside, people multiclass because it gives them a specific advantage or just best suits their playstyle. To be honest, I would let them do. Experiencing and finding builds that excel in something is part of the fun, and there should be a reward involved. In an ideal word, if the game we start playing at beta would be finished and no balancing changes would ever be needed, I would say let people play as they want, stick to the original capstone idea only for those who single class and see how it goes. That's not going to happen, but maybe an easier way to balance things out would be to let people untrain the merit badges. Free of charge during the beta, at a cost (potentially high) afterwards. If I understand correctly, you can improve any skills you would like (hopefully with a limit resulting from your statistics), and you need several of those to get a merit badge. If this process would be reversible, a character with all the prerequisites (skills, quests, whatever else is required) to have 20 "levels" in both fighter and rogue could experiment and switch between builds, either sticking with a pure fighter, a pure rogue, or any combination (5/15, 8/12 etc) of those. If during the beta the abilities you wanted have changed and you no longer need those rogue levels, just untrain the rogue merit badges and stick with being a pure fighter. Players would still have quite some space to experiment with builds and get an edge here or there, there would be no drama involved when you introduce those needed balance changes, and new players who stuck with one class could alter their builds later if they realise a specific build would be more fun for them or give them an edge here or there. On top of that, we would have some variety in the game, instead of knowing that a Paladin will always have the highest damage against evil.

EDIT: in the above system, the capstone could well remain as a reward for obtaining and slotting the 20 merit badges in a single-class. The GM's could also balance it as they see fit, since "builds" would be reversible. A very experienced character could some day have 2 or 3 of those capstones available, but only one useable at a time (I believe switching builds should both be expensive and maybe require a substantial amount of time, let's say - a week of training, to discourage switching from build to build depending on the immediate challenge at hand).

[Valkenr]

Myzmar wrote:

- are builds final?

- is there going to be any limitation on what we can learn / how far we can advance in different classes?

Stephen Cheney wrote:

For example, if we decide that Paladins are supposed to be the best in the game at melee damage vs. evil targets, but testing determines that there's a synergistic Paladin/Ranger/Fighter build that does better without losing any real effectiveness in other areas, we may tweak the Paladin Dedication bonus to increase Smite Evil damage. This gives us the ability to shore up specific corner-case issues without having to rebalance the feats of a whole role (which may propagate out to cause further issues).

Maybe I am wrong, but I get the feeling this would basically discourage the whole idea of multiclassing.

First, there is no final build, but it will probably take like 17 years to learn everything. You constantly gain new skills, you are limited in what you can do by what you can have equipped at any given time

The only skill training limitations we know about are alignment limitations, for classes like barbarians and paladins, and settlements will have training facilities that you must use for advanced skills.

The goal of multi-classing shouldn't be to be better than a single class, It should be to be equal and more of 'your own thing'. The example Stephen gives is a multi-class that is obviously better than the single class it borrows from.

[Nihimon]

@Myzmar, if you haven't already, I recommend reading Your Pathfinder Online Character. It will answer a lot of your questions about leveling up and multi-classing.

I also recommend browsing Guild Recruitment & Helpful Links. I tried to give a reasonably informative, brief description of each blog entry, so you can skip around and read the ones that most interest you first.

[Myzmar]

@Nihimon: yes, that is the blog post I started from, then went to the discussion thread, then was directed here. It is quite outdated thus my questions.

Anyway thanks for the explanation guys, I got a clearer picture of where things are going now. I do hope we will see some updated information from the dev team soon, maybe sort of a features page on the website. It would be good to know what has already been decided, what changes have been made in result of discussions, and what is still open for debate. As my example shows, right now bits of information are spread here and there and rather hard to find.

[Valkenr]

Myzmar wrote:

...and what is still open for debate.

This is what I want to come out soon.

[Gibbs]

I say remove capstones all together, if its based on reaching "level" 20 of a class. It might as well just be an additonal ability. My take of a capstone was a reward for being dedicated at one class from beginning to end.

An analogy would be the classes are organizations and if you multi-class (Cleric/Paladin) you are splitting your loyalty between multiple organizations. If you are working at Paladin, you aren't putting any effort in Cleric, so you are, indirectly, hurting the Cleric "organization". A capstone would be a gift given after reaching the highest level of the organization, if you spent your entire time benefitting the Cleric path.

Taken another way, let's say the absolute minimum time it takes to reach maximum level for any class is 2.5 years. The capstone is given as a reward to anyone who reaches that level in 2.5 years. Not 2.8 nor 2.5 + 3 days.

This whole thing about fixing mistakes can be a big can of worms, unless everything is set in stone from day 1. The moment anything is changed, no matter how small, someone will complain that they would not have chosen that path had they known. Treating it as a mistake, even though they may have benefited from it "pre-nerf" for several months. The same people will want the ability to constantly change ("reroll") based on the "flavor" of the month.

In summary, the capstone is a bonus not a privilege. It should be given to only a few dedicated individuals.

Gibbs

[Void Ronin]

I have been trying to think of things to constructively add to this discussion and am not sure were my thoughts fit in beyond the following.

Capstones are part of the core RPG sure but i have never had them come up. All of the Adventure paths and modules i have come across never reach 20th level. I know they are there to reward dedicated game play but they feel more like a punishment to multiclassing. Since nothing i have encountered has reached 20th level none of my players nor myself have ever had to deal with them or balance anything around them and they are generally ignored.

This will not be possible in an Online game. At some point someone will reach those capstones. I do not think they should be better than someone that mutliclass, just different. They should be balanced as a whole; 20 "levels" in one "class" should be fairly equal to 20 "levels" in more than one class as far as power goes. This is only for Mechanical reasons. The dedicated player will get something neat that the multi class player cannot and the mulitclass player can do something else that the dedicated player cannot, but they should be equally balanced in "power" (or whatever the Devs determine is the mechanical balance for the game)

This become even more important as more things are added to the game. The start of the game will not have prestige classes nor will it see the non-core base classes. They will at some point be added. This will cause some issues for the Devs. When they add another base class does that mean those that have been playing so far are now X time behind the power curve, do they get a "skill reset" and now day one of new class they have X time invested but no idea what they are doing (yay new class introduction), ect. Then there are the prestige classes.

Prestige classes receive some type of "capstone" ability for completing it. In the RPG they are not really balanced against the 20th level capstones but share the same feel. They are also rarely taken as only a few games seem to ever get that high. But when they do the GM will look at each player and determent if something needs to be changes to keep the game fair and balance among the players. This also cannot happen in an MMO. The balance needs to be designed into the system before player ever have access then constantly tweaked as players find new and creative ways to manipulate the system.

Playing a single class character verses playing a multiclass character should be a choice the player decides but it should never encouraged/ discouraged by mechanics. If one is more "powerful" than the other in an MMO the majority of player will roll that version. Please keep the choices meaningful but also balanced. This will only help make the game a better place to play.

On a personal note: I plan to play a Mystic Theurge. I know it will not be in the game to start. It is, however, a core book prestige class and i expect it to be among the first prestige classes to make it into the game. I also plan to "hedge my bets" by running a second account that is a single class character. If in the end multiclass characters end up being second class citizens in PFO i will discontinue the multiclass account. So far i have recommend not playing multiclass characters to my friends that do not understand MMO's as it currently looks like they will not be on par with single class characters. This may change as more information is released and i get my hands on the game in alpha.

[Kakafika]

@Gibbs and Void Ronin

The previously imagined capstone system has been replaced by the "Dedication" bonus that Stephen Cheney describes above.

I'm happy with that system.

[Void Ronin]

I looked at that as well. I am just hoping that those "bonuses" are still roughly as powerful as the guy not getting them because he is using more than one class ability. I can live with the they are better at X because of the bonus while I'm better at Y because I have the synergy of more than one class.

Power is simply the term I am using until I know more about the mechanics of the system. RP is really important to me an a lot of my guild but i am also a really into mechanics. I would really hate to start hearing the "why are you not pure whatever?" It is certainly not important enough to make me not play but it is important enough that i might not play a multiclass character as a main if they are all mechanically weaker than their pure class brethren.

[Nihimon]

Void Ronin wrote:

I would really hate to start hearing the "why are you not pure whatever?" It is certainly not important enough to make me not play but it is important enough that i might not play a multiclass character as a main if they are all mechanically weaker than their pure class brethren.

Stephen Cheney wrote:

This bonus is pegged to making the pure build competitive with the best synergistic multi-role build...

[Void Ronin]

Thanks Nihimon, I missed that in there somewhere. That's enough to let me know they have a plan and that it's aligned with what I am thinking. Guess it is also time to inform my mechanically challenged guild-mates that mutliclass characters are back on the menu.

[Nihimon]

Void Ronin wrote:

Thanks Nihimon

Very glad I could help :)

[DarkLightHitomi]

Valkenr wrote:

...it will probably take like 17 years to learn everything. ....

Unless I missed something, it will actually take somewhere around 30 years and that's just for the core classes, add more time for every prestige and non-core base class.

[Andius]

DarkLightHitomi wrote:

Valkenr wrote:

...it will probably take like 17 years to learn everything. ....

Unless I missed something, it will actually take somewhere around 30 years and that's just for the core classes, add more time for every prestige and non-core base class.

Your not accounting for a single skill being a way to advance in multiple classes. For instance a stealthy dual wielding ranger may share a lot of skill with a stealthy dual wielding rogue, or a sword and board fighter may find it easier to train as a cleric and drastically easier to train as a paladin after he maxes both.

HOWEVER this is also assuming that you train every possible skill for a class to max it, and there are no skills that are entirely unrelated to classes.

Both these assumptions are likely incorrect.

I would say an estimate of 17 years to max all basic core classes isn't too far off, but to max all skills that are out at the time of release??? A long, long, long time.

[Being]

Nihimon wrote:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder....

Oh no! We must save her!

-or-
No wonder he seemed so grumpy
-or-
How did she manage that one?
-or-
Not again! <fume>

[Nihimon]

Being wrote:

Nihimon wrote:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder....

Oh no! We must save her!

You dug deep for that one. I actually searched the thread for where I said that in order to try to figure out what you meant. I'm slow sometimes... :)

[Darcnes]

The continuous skill training thing is such a boon. It's nice to know that for all the politics and role playing and bureaucracy one might get slogged down with, they'll still be able to go out and hold their own when they're not doing their part to keep life running smoothly for those that depend on them.

The balance being struck between a multi and single class build is icing on the cake!

Glad to see that the community is already playing such a big part in development.

[Dorje Sylas]

Good to see this getting changed. It was my hands down biggest rage point in your original design.

As I've said before I'm a dabbler when it comes to MMOs. This really came up in EVEs classless and highly skill driven system. The idea of locked capstones for dedicated class play, in a system that had very long time to reach master in a 'class' was really too much. Especially with a system where a single character can continue to obtain different classes and skill sets beyond the '20th' level of pen and paper game.

=======

On to comments on Dedication:

• Much better, thank you.

• I assume that 'slotted' things can be changed with some in-game method and are not permanently locked? The option to switch roles from a dabbler's POV is very much appreciated. For example if I was doing a Fighter/Wizard (or more likely my preferred Ranger/Bard), being able to "re-slot" into a dedicated focus on Ranger or Bard abilities (even if at a lower level/bonus then someone who's just focused one of those classes) is exactly the right spot.

• In short this system looks like it rewards the time you invest in playing, both up front and at the end, regardless of when you put the time in.

Bravo.

• As a side benefit could this not be used to help different Archetypes as they are presented in the Pen and Paper game? Take a Crossbowman, if for some reason Crossbows as weapons end up being outclassed by Bow builds on Fighters (and just fighters, were they're balanced on all others) a Dedication to Crossbows could assist in bring up that weapon group without wreaking the balance elsewhere?

• Capstoning classes. While a flashy ability seems cool for 2.5 years of dedication it'd have to be something that the player could enjoy while picking up a new class. After all they just spend 2.5 years (off and on) playing the same thing. Perhaps they'd like to finally take a break and try something different and bring a bit of their time commitment with them.