theWulfen 2 – Blog

Classes and Stuff

March 10, 2008 on 11:09 am | In Classes, Game System | No Comments

Currently I want to implement a pretty unique class based levelling system for W2.  I want to maintain a Feral feel to the whole game, so don’t want to use a regular warrior/mage/rogue type of class system.  That said, I do want magic (Magik) to exist in some form or other within the game.  I personally dislike regular levelling systems where you grind so much XP to gain a level and a skill point and/or stat points.  Having said that, creatures will require some kind of level in order to know what they should be fighting and how far they’ve progressed.

Anyway, levelling is for another post.  When it comes to classes, I am currently veering down the following thought line.  Each creture falls broadly into one of four categories.  Either a Fighter, Caster or Hyrbid (i.e. fighter with casting skills and the other way around).  As a creature battles they will fight in a particular manner, which will result in them going down a specific specialisation class (i.e. a sub-class, but not in a minor way).  This means that if a player wishes to end up with, say a Beserker, then they must play in that style from day one.  I’m currently tempted to make all starting creatures the same in terms of class, so they might all be able to fight with a sword and cast a small fireball initially, but once they gain their first level, they loose unused skills.  Hybrids would be difficult to begin with as you’d need to keep the Magik and Melee damage within sight of each other.

This would work relativly simply, by watching the amount of damage caused by a creature via their starting skills.  This could actually be quite straight forward, if all creatures start at level 0, then they could have a quest to kill 10 rats (i.e. the obligatory rat killing quest).  When the quest gets handed in, they get told ‘you are following the way of the <whatever>’ and then all their starting skills get replaced.  So a Hybrid would get a spell to imbue their sword to do magikal damage, Fighter would get a low powered melee attack and Caster would get a new magic missle.

Currently I’m thinking along the lines of the following Specialist classes:

• Blademaster/Gladiator – Weapon specialist, low armour, but high avoidance
• Beserker – Very high ‘in your face’ damage, but low defence
• Knight(?) – Fighter with magical skills
• Exemplar – Has self buffs and opponent debuffs
• Elementalist – Fire & Water caster
• Voodoo – Life & Death caster – heavy on debuffing and dot
• Arcanist – Lightening caster
• Spirit Walker – Ethereal damage
• Pyremaster – Fire & Death caster

Ok, ok, I have too many casters and not enough melee