Characters with Class

Here's a breakdown of how some various games have made distinctions between class roles.

PHB for reference [11 classes]
Barb
Bard
Clr
Drd
Ftr
Mnk
Pal
Rng
Rog
Sorc
Wiz

Interesting Classes that have different recharge and daily functional mechanics
Artificer
-Book of 9 swords guys
Binder [Changes roles on a day to day basis]
Psion
Warlock

Cook Book [11 classes]
Akashic [Skill monkey]
Champion [Warrior with a cause who gains themed low powered spell like abilities from the theme]
Greenbond [Druid variant with no shapechange]
Mageblade [Red Mage-ish]
Oathsworn [Monk type]
Runeblade [Red Mage-ish with a focus on leaving semi-permanent effects
Magister [Generic all-around caster]
Totem Warrior [Warriors with powers based off a
Unfettered [Lightly armed warrior]
Witch [themed spell casters around various elements]
Warmain [Metal warrior]

Final Fantasy 1
Fighter > Paladin
Thief > Ninja [+ some low lv black magic, and ninja themed stuff like Invisibility and speed buffs]
Monk > Awesomer Monk [Generic unarmed warrior]
Red Mage [Like a 1/2 powered fighter, black mage, and white mage.
Black Mage
White Mage [Just a team player, almost no offensive power]

Final Fantasy 4
**Seems to be a world where everyone on the face of the earth is a different class, since you almost don't encounter people that you'd expect to have the same class as any of the guys you get to play with. Also the casters are allowed non MP using weapon attacks that count.

Dark Knight [Fighter with a few shadow powered melee moves]
Dragoon [Fighter, but with in-world flavor and position]
Sage [Mystic Theurge, though Tellah has like idk 15 int and 15 wis, he has so little MP ;p]
Black Mage
White Mage [Rosa, the White Wizard in this game is also prof. with bows to the point where having attack with it does enough damage to help the other characters end the fight in less time. Unlike the White and Black Mages of FF1 whose attacks are so puny you wish you could skip them to let the rest of the fight go faster by not watching their animation ;p]
Monk [This time with a couple special unarmed attacks]
Summoner [3/4 powered White and Black Mage with the power for one shot summons which are aside from super cool flavor basically do the same stuff as White and Black magic. Though some spells do require special quests which Black and White magic don't require.]
Bard [Totally dumb in execution because he's basically a 1/2 powered weapon class, except he can get a Bard only weapon that can proc charm monster.... yeah... ;p]
Paladin [Like FF1, Fighter with a little white magic, gains the ability to take damage for weakened allies]
Ninja [Melee warrior+ some black magic + extra fast]

Final Fantasy 5
**This game features a job system where you can access to powers from gaining levels in a class, and while you are a class you gain access to all of its powers and can effectively equip a limited number of other class powers you've gained access to.
In DnD terms I'm not sure how to translate it exactly, but I haven't thought about it too extensively either, any ideas?

It has the FF1 and FF4 options
Berserker [Very Babarian]
Trainer [Can take control of a monster who is in charge of basically fighting for them, can only have 1 at a time]
Samurai [Melee warrior with focus on winning melee contests]
Blue Mage [Learns other people's powers, not sure how to translate this, I've seen people try on DnD boards and they just didn't work, but had some mechanics that might not have to be broken.]
Mimic [Copies other people's powers for a short time]
Elementalist [Uses elemental powers based on their location, also is a trap finder/disabler]

Final Fantasy 6
**Characters all have personalized classes, but some might be able to be made generic enough to act as classes]

Gadgeteer [Edgar has a bunch of tools that due a variety of weird and wacky things. Could be like a technology based sorcerer class or an alternate fighterish-type augmented with some more flavor filled special attacks.
Monk/Martial Artist [Sabin is all unarmed fighting and special unarmed attacks]
Dancer [Mog dances to do wacky things based on his environment or tries to force a new environment on his current area]
Rune Knight [Celes is Redish Mage with some built in countermagic ability]
Swordsman [ Cyan is all swords and special sword attacks]
Artist [Relm draws pictures of monsters to use their attacks]
Ninja [Shadow is a generic warrior mostly, but gets an animal companion that blocks and sometimes attacks for him, an unusual feature]

Final Fantasy 7
**Characters don't have different classes everyone pretty much gains the same stuff level to level, and are separated only by fighting flavor. Tifa, Yuffie, Cloud, and gang all basically gain levels in Butt Kicker. Irl people like Barret would function differently since well he has a freakin' chain gun for an arm, and Vincent has guns, giving them range that other characters don't appear to be proficient in for the most part. The materia system allows to customize as you go characters and even have them swap powers with each other, not sure how that could be put into a real world reasonably, maybe to use X materia you must be this tall to ride rule, or materia equipped scale to a person's level maybe.

There are a few trade offs/oddities/more highly flavored people:
Red XIII is a red lion beast, he basically just has a different race tho, still gains Butt Kicker levels
Vincent transforms into mutant beasts that kick butt at a higher and weirder level for short bursts of time
Aeris got to trade in some generic butt kicking to get bigger numbers from materia magic.

Final Fantasy 8...
**One of the characters is a Witch, who is the only person who isn't basically gaining Butt Kicker levels, she's a kind of faux black mage. The Guardian system is the customization that people receive, though guardians can be shared [?] each person gains their own levels with each guardian allowing them to equip various power from the Guardians.

Final Fantasy 9
**Mostly a greatest hits of older FF classes
Swordsman
Summoner
Dragoon
Summoner #2
Theif - Acrobat [Main character is lightly armed warrior that gains some bonuses from it to make him a comparable combatant to the heavily armored swordsman]

Final Fantasy Tactics
**This has a job switching deal similar to FF5. I'll cover the classes FF hasn't had before
Chemist [They use items better, farther, stronger, etc.]
Bards and Dancers [Now with a variety of buffs, tho they are just team players in this game because it takes their turns unlike DnD bards]
Calculator [strike out]
Mediator [bardic style buffs and debuffs, talking people up or putting em down]

Dragon Warrior
Merchant [Class about making and finding money and getting good deals, passable at combat. Very strange concept]
Goof-Off [high crit and dodge rates, mostly sucks at fighting, has no other powers.]
Soldier [Fighter, weapons expert]
Monk
Pilgrim [White Mage]
Mage [Black Mage]
Hero/Prince [Red Mage]

Breath of Fire
Dragon Man [Either gene splicing, or through quests to get access to various forms can change into various powered up dragon hybrid forms for a limited time, otherwise is a reasonable melee warrior]


So I was trying to think which of these or unmentioned classes, or new invented classes would be the coolest and most useful to have. Or another way to look at it is what are the character concepts that we'd want to be viable and whats the smallest number of classes we could have that could allow them all to be playable.

A few example concepts, in the way I'm thinking about it could be:
Black Mage
Weapons Master
Unarmed Warrior
Treasure Hunter [Indiana Jones or Locke style]
Redmage/Duskblade, someone who can do reasonable at weapon combat but also gets spells that count
Monster Morpher [Either like Terra, Vincent, or Ryu]

Any thoughts on concepts we'd want playable, interesting classes not covered here, or other responses/commentary?

Here's one proposal of a combination of classes listing combo I was thinking of:
These martial classes would have access to warblade-ish recharge system maneuvers. I figure also there should be some class that features healing and recovery as a main power.


The Fighter - A Master of Arms and Armor.

The Medium - At the base a Binder type class whose source of power is the vestiges of entities from beyond.

The Black Mage - Part Wizard, part Warlock. WoW-style curses, warlock unlimited fire power, and limited use stronger spells.

The Dragon Ascendant - Warrior with the power to splice dragon genes to draw upon hybrid dragon powers: Breath weapons, claws, flight, etc.

The Monk - The unarmed warrior who is powered by the quest for physical and mental perfection.

The Runic Knight - A warrior who has access to lower tier of magic, and also countermagic powers.

Summoner - A weak spellcaster that primarily relies on a summoned companion to see them through in combat. Their spells focus on buffs and debuffs.

Joan cat is in your post, leaving her marks...
Replies to your own posts don't count as new posts,=P

In this proposal of classes who heals people? The medium? That's who I'd place a guess on, 'cause it doesn't make sense any other way that I can see. And if they do things that aren't just healing the comrades that could make the class feel more interesting with no more 'taking the cleric bullet' that sometimes goes on.

I do find this summoner idea interesting. It's the one where you have your own little pet monster that gets more tough as you gain levels, right?

The Summoner would most elegantly either A) Have 1 pet monster that gets progressively cooler, or B) A small posse of monsters that all get progressively cooler [maybe only gaining some of these monsters at later levels], but can only have 1 active at a time, with a reasonably long time to switch between them like an hour or maybe a day.

Since my list only had 7 or so classes there's room for a few more, or of course to adjust the current ones to try to spread out coolness factor among them. The PHB had 11 classes so I figure as long as we don't bump over that we'll be doing all right.

taking the cleric bullet

Yeah I'm pretty sure nobody wants it to feel like there's one class that somebody is 'supposed' to be at least.

As for healing I was thinking in order of strongest healing to lowest atm an interesting line-up:
Monk
Runic Knight
Medium
Summoner
Dragon Ascendant
Fighter
Black Mage

I'm pretty sure every character should have access to some limited self healing, and that the healing power should be much more spread out than it was.

Another thought I had recently is to have a class that's like a Wind Waker Link. A guy that is mainly a warrior, but gets some spiffy magic utility powers [via the Wind Waker] in order to compete in a magical world. This might be the Runic Knight, the Fighter, bit of both, maybe another class.

Korohit wrote:Another thought I had recently is to have a class that's like a Wind Waker Link. A guy that is mainly a warrior, but gets some spiffy magic utility powers [via the Wind Waker] in order to compete in a magical world. This might be the Runic Knight, the Fighter, bit of both, maybe another class.

That sounds like how you described the Runic Knight. Face stabbing dude who also gets some limited magical powers.

How were you going to handle healing for those classes? Spells? Cool down style a la the Buer Vestige? Pool of healing per day a la Lay on Hands? Some new kind I don't know about? More questions straight than is grammatically appropriate?

The more I hear about this Summoner the more I'm interested.

How to handle healing is very important, and is very near the core of how to balance classes vs their expected foes and lives. I'm not sure what the best mechanic / or mix of mechanics is for it. Building systems from close to scratch can be complicated like that ;p. Sorta have to pick a cornerstone to build from, see how far you can go from it, then have to rewrite a lot for consistency and elegance later =p.

Various healing mechanics/systems:
Wands of CLW: Your party's HP is now full given a few minutes. In 3.5 starting from lv 7-10 or so this becomes a reasonable strategy, as you get money from using the wands faster than how fast they should be costing you money ;p. Binders are like this on the cheap.

Clerics: Limited Pool / Alternate preset uses for cures. Limited daily healing that competes directly with alternate spells that probably don't effectively 'heal' as much seems like a bad idea. I'm pretty sure healing should not be detracting significantly from one's ability to do other stuff.

3.5 Monks: Personal HP reserves

3.5 Paladins: Like monks but may share.

Dragon Shamans: Can always heal 1/2 back up given some time via the heal aura, also have a limited pool like lay on hands.

Mieriel: Another way to handle combat healing is to only have it apply to damage you took within the past round. Unfortunately the person with this power has the incentive to not do much more than heal. I suppose it would be possible to combine Mieriel combat healing with an attack or buff though.

Most characters: Go visit one of the above guys

There's definitely some healing paradigms I didn't mention here, feel free to fill in the blanks.

It would take more work, but if we created something similar to what Kevin was considering a while ago for spellcasters, where there are many types of Mages (Red Mages might do evocation, Green Mages might do nature spells, White Mages cure, Blue Mages create illusions, etc), that might solve a lot the problem of spellcasters doing everything you do, but better. All Mages might get a few spells, to give them a bit of versatility, but limit it so that they can't do everything.

The current system of: Spells can do Anything, is right out.

In a New Edition view of wizards, or any spellcaster they'll have a limited known list, and the list from which those spells can come from will be more specific and limited in scope. Really the concept of being able to copy everyone else's powers, at a cost, is broken on first principles.

Oh, definitely. But there's still the question of whether we want one nerfed Wizard, or if we want to have a bunch of nerfed Wizards, to give different options.

I'm a fan of the idea of various types of wizards in a somewhat earlier Final Fantasy style. In other words, the whole concept of red, green, blue, etc. for the different schools of wizardry/sorcery.

What about healing?

I'm not sure a white wizard would work out. It's somewhat hard to figure out how to work out healing. The Mieriel way of healing was kind of nice, but there is the drawback of that's probably what they're going to want to do. Perhaps a lesser attack version of the wand she carried - a sort of warlocky attack? I'm not sure.

Joaneh wrote:I'm not sure a white wizard would work out. It's somewhat hard to figure out how to work out healing. The Mieriel way of healing was kind of nice, but there is the drawback of that's probably what they're going to want to do. Perhaps a lesser attack version of the wand she carried - a sort of warlocky attack? I'm not sure.

Maybe they could wield some sort of big honkin' hammer? Seriously though, I see no reason that they can't be proficient with weapons. Adding an attack spell aspect doesn't feel right for the white wizard.

And instead of a bunch of different classes it would prolly be better to just have one class that has you make a choice at lv one for which path to take. Kinda like how you pick what kind of witch you want to be and only get options from that part.

Oh, definitely. But there's still the question of whether we want one nerfed Wizard, or if we want to have a bunch of nerfed Wizards, to give different options.

I'm thinking we would want to minimize the number of caster classes, as I was saying as long as concepts could advance in the same mechanical fashion one should try to keep them in the same class. Like Cook Book's take on Witches, Champions, and Totem Warriors.

I'm not sure a white wizard would work out.

Someone who can only heal does not feel like much of a character. White Wizards, from FF flavor at least get a bunch of interesting buffs/debuffs, status recovery, and damaging powers vs. Undead. Rosa, FF4, even has passable bow proficiency. Still though it seems like combat healing should be an additional on top of taking some other action. Like maybe a weak ray attack that puts a blip on an enemy, that goes off the next time they are dealt damage by a friendly character, healing that friendly character. Or instead of a ray, a big honkin hammer hit, or arrow shot.

Oh, I wasn't saying that they wouldn't be proficient with other things. Just most lower level characters with a healer in the party have the healer running around healing. It's not always as bad once you get to higher levels. Look at Adleeya for instance, she's straight cleric, but has a weapon she's proficient with and uses her spells offensively. However, there is still the hang ups of always curing earlier on.

A big honking hammer just makes me think of Rita from Suikoden Tactics, =P.

- - -

Something like the witch systems for wizards/sorcerers could be pretty neat and would somewhat solve the problem of having so many different flavors so to speak.

I don't remember what the Witch does - could someone fill me in?

Basically you pick from a list of flavors which witch you want. Then you get different spells and special abilities based on the choice you made. And they're all pretty different so it'd be kinda cool if the abilities were better.

Cook Book Witches have in common that they are all 2nd rate spellcasters to the Magister class. This is significant because cook book magic doesn't have spell lists by class or under particularly schools that certain classes only get access to [which would be like class lists]. All classes have access to all spells of each level up to their proficiency level. Where the tiers are simple, standard, exotic. Magister is the only class that gets standard prof. automatically. Classes are differentiated though by when they get access to different spell levels and how many per day of each level.

Right, same spells different abilities, My bad.

As for the White wizard, I'm gonna make a stand that they should be like the arcane casters and get punished from armor. So they would probably need a ranged proficiency to make them useful in combat. Even though I still like the FF1 white mages and their big ol' hammers.

I was thinking of going the other direction and allowing everyone the benefit of wearing armor of some kind or another.

Of course there wouldn't be any caster like the cleric who automatically has access to all their spells known, its too much work on the player's and DM's side to know what every single spell does of all levels. There's also flavor and fun to be gained from having casters choose spells to gain each level.