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My idea(s) for possible "Nature" class
Ardiguan The Guardian
Member
I would like to start by thanking Steven and everyone at Intrepid Studios for making this incredible project a reality!
I can't help but feel concerned for the lack of a directly Nature related class (yes, something like a Druid) a guardian of the woods and everything that calls the woods their home, a Keeper of the Grove if you will.
Here are some BASE ideas for a unique Nature wielding class Archetype.
Primary role - Healer
Type - Arcane?
Spell/ability Resource - Health (more health than any other class, mana/health merge to make one resource pool)
Hybrid of magical/physical abilities (some spells deal physical damage I.E. launching a chunk of Verra at the target to stun, or binding a enemy with thorny roots, while the more arcane related spells would be for healing/buffing or maybe even some form of mobility)
The option to "cook" your spells (The longer you hold the spell button the more %health you dump into the spell increasing the effectiveness of cooked spell, absolutely having the possibility to misjudge and kill ones self, providing a very "high risk, high reward" style of play)
I think I'll leave it at that, and let the community add/subtract or all together tear apart my idea.
P.S. I'm not much of a forum poster, so if anything about the layout of my post upsets you, I apologize.
I can't help but feel concerned for the lack of a directly Nature related class (yes, something like a Druid) a guardian of the woods and everything that calls the woods their home, a Keeper of the Grove if you will.
Here are some BASE ideas for a unique Nature wielding class Archetype.
Primary role - Healer
Type - Arcane?
Spell/ability Resource - Health (more health than any other class, mana/health merge to make one resource pool)
Hybrid of magical/physical abilities (some spells deal physical damage I.E. launching a chunk of Verra at the target to stun, or binding a enemy with thorny roots, while the more arcane related spells would be for healing/buffing or maybe even some form of mobility)
The option to "cook" your spells (The longer you hold the spell button the more %health you dump into the spell increasing the effectiveness of cooked spell, absolutely having the possibility to misjudge and kill ones self, providing a very "high risk, high reward" style of play)
I think I'll leave it at that, and let the community add/subtract or all together tear apart my idea.
P.S. I'm not much of a forum poster, so if anything about the layout of my post upsets you, I apologize.
1
Comments
Just to clarify, I get the idea of using one's life force to power spells from the Eragon books.
Now, you wouldn't be wrong by seeing this as some sort of "Bloodmage" though I think that would be a awesome class name for a Cleric secondary archetype tapping into the "death magic" side of a Cleric.
The only reason I included the bit about using health instead of mana is to break the mold on what people expect from a caster.
Also a healing class that uses health as a resource sounds pretty strange to me. Would you be able to heal yourself? is it a 1:1 trade of health? If you get more healing than you spend, would you then be able to heal other druids and essentially have an infinite source of healing between the 2 of you? would you have super strong health regen so you can keep healing in long fights? It all seems very hard to balance. My concept for implementing such a system would be something along the lines of planting/growing trees and other plants. Essentially you spend health (or mana if you want to be more tradiitonal) to spawn trees or other types of plants that then provide the healing or buffing, or that give you a different resource that you can then spend to heal others. That way it differentiates from a more traditional healer (cleric) which starts the fight with full mana and spends it to heal, and instead starts the fight with nothing and has to build up it's tree/plants before it is fully effective. It would also add an additonal layer of positioning and mobility limitations as the plants for the most part would not be able to move. Regardless seems tough to balance but love the theorizing. Also i love the "cook your spell" idea.
I would say the druid would not be able to be directly healed even by another druid, but has to absorb health over time from the enemy or maybe something like you said sprouting little trees(totems) that provide a HoT/buff for self/party.
The magic guardian of nature, the magic of the wild etc. It has the same importance of a warrior or a mage, instead of summoners and bard that are optional classes and secondary archetype of a class archetype.
I'm happy to see that i'm not alone
I made more post/discussions to adress other problems with the game, if you are interested to.
Ooo what if the druid embodies the aspects of plants. So rather than mana they have abilities that take in debuffs, spells, attacks, etc and turn them into powerful healing/buffs. So It would be an HP caster that gains "energy" through absorbing negative effects/damage then releasing that energy back out to heal/buff allies. This is inspired by the plants ability to take in carbon dioxide and let out oxygen. It could revolve around the purification of negative energies to help maintain the health of the lands.
Edit: This would most likely be the combination of Cleric/Tank or cleric/ranger as the basis. Healing/buffing being the primary goal with tank bringing in their toughness and ability to take damage from others with shields or pure damage transference.
I think if you do that, completely remove HP casting and make it a separate resource that generates when you take damage/debuffs.
Well unless you made some spells cost nothing, it would require some health to be spent to kickstart the whole thing. that or taking damage/debuffs directly.
I'm loving your idea here, especially the connection to plants being a filter of sorts, taking in the negative and converting it to a positive.
Let's just stop right at the bold spot and realize you've gone right off the rails for anything that resembles game balance
I've come to the conclusion that I don't like "balance", it appears to me that "balance" has been the driving force that has turned once great gaming experiences into a homogenized unimaginative "everybody is equal" experience where there is less class disparity.
I think I would much rather see a Rock, Paper, Scissors approach where each "class" has it's obvious strengths and weaknesses.
Paper > Rock
Scissors > Paper
Rock should have advantages over Scissors, but if Rock is less skilled or makes to many mistakes and Scissors is higher skill and makes less mistakes Scissors should be able to win through attrition.
I 100% agree with you, class counters create a balanced ecosystem where "this fish eats that fish".
Where I will respectfully disagree with you is the with so many variables that go into designing and coding it's "impossible" for me to believe it's not possible.
I gotta agree with arudiguan on this one, the simple fact of having a class with more health than the rest presents difficulties with balancing sure, but it does not inherently mean it can't be balanced. There is a big difference between health pool and effective health pool in a fight. effective health is a combination of your base health at the start of the fight and factors such as health regen, mitigation, and health spent (if talking about a class which spends health to cast spells). you could potentially make a class that has high health but a "normal" amount of effective health because it has to spend said health on spells or be useless in the fight.
If we're being honest, we can say that in battle health regeneration is ridiculously in games. It is either tied to an ability, or some sort of exclusive passive. Health totals can alter the balance between player classes too much, which is why most games only give a certain set of classes higher pools, or has the stat that gives health be a strong bonus to hate/aggro.
Classes that use their own health as a source or fuel aren't a new idea, and several games have them. But there's a reason those games don't say here's a big health pool which is effectively your health and 'mana' combined, they recognize that such an ability set is an inherently risky playstyle, and have it be a high risk high reward setup. Sometimes with later abilities setting up some safeguards (reduced costs, pop heals, life drain etc.)
*In a PvP setting - Cleric uses "Life's Balance" solution... kill totem. Problem?
That's my mistake, for a moment I mixed "Stolen Blessing" with "Life's Balance" thank you for pointing that out.
Agreed, though I personally don't have any developer/design experience I cannot provide the best answers, I still don't believe it's impossible to find reasonable balance, a challenge for sure, but not impossible.
super rough idea here so any help appreciated.