Goblin Squad Member
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I'm unclear on what the dedication bonus is. Can anyone enlighten me?
I've read that there is a "Dedication Bonus" which provides benefit if you have pursued training in-line with a specific traditional character class.
However I've also read a developer (Stephen Cheney) state that "your sorcerer or bard with a greataxe ....... won't be considered to be slotted for multiple roles unless he puts some Fighter-specific attack feats on the weapon"
Stephen seems to be suggesting that there might be a penalty or loss of advantage if your character is 'slotted' or configured at any point in time as multi-class.
Is Stephen talking about the dedication bonus, or a different system?
Is the access to the dedication bonus based on currently configured skills & feats, or skills known?
If I were to play a wizard and I learned a sword skill for the Gandalf effect, would that mean I can never have a wizard dedication bonus even if I switch back to carrying a staff rather than the sword?
I can understand why a dedication bonus (or penalty to cross classing) might be necessary to manage game balance. Otherwise everyone would take some druid/ranger skills to have an animal companion, everyone LG would take some paladin skills to have a magic mount, and every fighter would take some thief skills to backstab.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Here is the original post on the subject by Stephen, but in effect, it is a bonus to help balance a single role character against the synergy of dipping across multiple roles.
Each role will have role specific abilities, and there will also be a pool of general abilities open to all roles. These general abilities will probably be things that you could normally get with feats in TT (like weapon and armor proficiencies), general skills (Perception, Sense Motive, etc), and things that are common to all classes (some HP, save bonuses, BAB, and the like).
Your access to the dedication bonus is based on the skills you currently have slotted, not the ones you have trained. So a single character could have Wizard mode and Fighter mode, and still have a dedication bonus in each.
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Goblinworks Game Designer
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The plan is that there are basically three types of Feat:
- Single-Role feats are linked to a single role like Fighter, Wizard, etc. Past the simplest ones, you probably have to have levels in that role as a prereq for purchase. So things like Weapon Specialization (Fighter) qualify.
- Multi-Role feats may count for a short list of roles. So if there are Divine feats that make sense for both Paladins and Clerics, we'll probably just make them count towards either role rather than inventing slightly different versions for each. But they still wouldn't count towards Fighter, for example.
- General feats are effectively multi-role feats for every role. These are fairly common for attacks, and there are a decent number of them for passive feats (iron will, toughness, etc.) and other sections. But there aren't any for things like the role feature slot (just to head off the "what dedication bonus do I get if I have only general feats slotted?" :) ).
You'll get the dedication bonus if all your slotted feats fit a single role, either because they're single-role for that role, multi-role and include that role, or general.
This is all good news, i was a bit worried that the "class feature slot" would make it very hard to have a viable multi-class character. i hope that this dedication bonus will stop the trend to splash(hand pick feats) from other classes to max out there damage.
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Goblin Squad Member
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i hope that this dedication bonus will stop the trend to splash(hand pick feats) from other classes to max out there damage.
As folks have pointed out in several threads, the current perception of the dedication bonus's purpose is to offset the natural benefit multi-classing gives. I have no doubt at all we're going to see a lot of it, and I don't see a problem with that.
In EVE, there's no "flavour of the month" because characters' skills are numerous and broad in scope, time-consuming to learn, and there's a myriad of roles for players to perform. I think Ryan's tried to communicate that his goals for PFO are similar.
I'm an old school AD&D gamer at heart, multi-class had to be within 2 levels of each other and you could only have 2 classes.
and now we can take a few levels of rogue for evasion and back stab, splash barbarian for rage, monk for wis ac bonus,mage for.. and so on.... This still feels wrong to me. but that's life, its a new day and i moved on.
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Goblin Squad Member
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...now we can take a few levels of rogue for evasion and back stab, splash barbarian for rage, monk for wis ac bonus,mage for...
Also remember the language we've seen GW use so far: we'll have "slots" of some sort for skills and abilities. Who's to say that the slot where you put "back stab" won't be the same slot for "rage", thus you can't have both at the same time? Extend the concept, and...
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Goblin Squad Member
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I'm an old school AD&D gamer at heart, multi-class had to be within 2 levels of each other and you could only have 2 classes.
and now we can take a few levels of rogue for evasion and back stab, splash barbarian for rage, monk for wis ac bonus,mage for.. and so on.... This still feels wrong to me. but that's life, its a new day and i moved on.
The challenge will be to make sure it is not viable to have all of that going on at the same time. There are a couple ways they might do that. You might have to equip your passives as well as your active slots. Or feats can be tied to the type of equipment you have, etc, etc.
Yeah but I doubt you'll be able to be a plate mail ninja with lightning bolts out your bung.
Goblinworks Executive Founder
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...now we can take a few levels of rogue for evasion and back stab, splash barbarian for rage, monk for wis ac bonus,mage for...Also remember the language we've seen GW use so far: we'll have "slots" of some sort for skills and abilities. Who's to say that the slot where you put "back stab" won't be the same slot for "rage", thus you can't have both at the same time? Extend the concept, and...
I think the keyword system on your equipment is the basic way that will be handled: "back stab" and "rage" would be boosted by different keywords not readily available on the same weapon. Rogues might do more damage and/or cause bleeding with weapons that have the 'sneak attack', 'finesse', or 'concealable' keywords, while raging might gain damage or knockdown from different keywords. There's still the possibility of dual-wielding a bastard sword and a dagger to do both kinds of things, with some opportunity costs involved.
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Goblin Squad Member
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i hope that this dedication bonus will stop the trend to splash(hand pick feats) from other classes to max out there damage.As folks have pointed out in several threads, the current perception of the dedication bonus's purpose is to offset the natural benefit multi-classing gives. I have no doubt at all we're going to see a lot of it, and I don't see a problem with that.
In EVE, there's no "flavour of the month" because characters' skills are numerous and broad in scope, time-consuming to learn, and there's a myriad of roles for players to perform. I think Ryan's tried to communicate that his goals for PFO are similar.
There can be flavors of the month in EVE, but they're usually based on corporations and alliances wanting to field consistent fleets, rather than particular ships and gear being optimal. "Okay guys, we're changing our doctrine to fly Ship X with equipment package A and Ship Y with equipment package B. If you haven't trained Skill 1, Skill 2 and Skill 3, get busy learning them."
Particular ships and pieces of equipment also become flavors of the month occasionally, usually after CCP changes their stats.
The big difference from other MMOs is that literally any character can eventually learn to fly any ship and equip any piece of gear, so the feeling that you've "wasted" time training other skills is usually less severe, and there's never a need to delete a character and start from scratch due to your skill choices. (People are more likely to delete a character to escape a really terrible reputation.)
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Goblin Squad Member
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The plan is that there are basically three types of Feat:
- Single-Role feats are linked to a single role like Fighter, Wizard, etc. Past the simplest ones, you probably have to have levels in that role as a prereq for purchase. So things like Weapon Specialization (Fighter) qualify.
- Multi-Role feats may count for a short list of roles. So if there are Divine feats that make sense for both Paladins and Clerics, we'll probably just make them count towards either role rather than inventing slightly different versions for each. But they still wouldn't count towards Fighter, for example.
- General feats are effectively multi-role feats for every role. These are fairly common for attacks, and there are a decent number of them for passive feats (iron will, toughness, etc.) and other sections. But there aren't any for things like the role feature slot (just to head off the "what dedication bonus do I get if I have only general feats slotted?" :) ).
You'll get the dedication bonus if all your slotted feats fit a single role, either because they're single-role for that role, multi-role and include that role, or general.
Now that there is some experience with Alpha, what is the level of bonus for dedication? if the base weapon is 40 and each word adds +5, how much would dedication add?
Does it affect probability of hit, damage, or both?Are spell, catnap. orisons different? Are some of these guaranteed to hit? (e.g. in TT Magic missile does not need roll to hit)
HOw does this affect harvesting, refining, and crafting?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The challenge will be to make sure it is not viable to have all of that going on at the same time.
I would replace "viable" with "an obvious choice". If they aren't going to make multiclassing viable then they may as well not add it to the game and just block you from taking multiple role's skills at once.
I personally look forward to seeing how people manage to pull off lightning flinging full plate ninjas and other custom roles. Just so long as they aren't significantly more powerful than single role characters.
Now a few questions for the devs:
-How powerful are dedication bonuses?
-How soon will they be implemented?
-How nerfed will people training for as of yet non-implemented core roles be while they wait on their dedication bonuses?
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Goblin Squad Member
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The devotion mechanic was replaced with the role feature system. Some feats can not be slotted unless you also have a feature from the matching role slotted, and some attacks and expendables will match against keywords on your role feature, but otherwise there is no devotion bonus or penalty.
For those who want to multiclass, devs mentioned that they will able to build multi-role features (such as a feature that matches some fighter and some wizard keywords) as part of the faction training system.
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Goblin Squad Member
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Ah, I see where I went wrong. Dedication replaced capstone; dedication was not replaced.