Custom Classes

[jenx]

Certain talent trees should be incompatible, to prevent overpowering.

[Dude892]

Like all the trees that have sustains that add damage to your attacks, like the Shadowblade dark magic one and the temporal one with weapon folding(?).

[Emetivore]

I think perhaps we have two completely different ideas going here:

a. A special mode where players can make interesting character types without worrying too much about balance because you can't unlock or achieve, and
b. A "random" mode where players "roll the dice" and see what type of character the game comes up with for them (not unlike choosing a random class). This mode should be balanced, and overpowered combos should be prohibited.

[edge2054]

I think the best bet for this would be for someone to make an add-on.

There's a reason the 'adventurer' class in the birth files is a reward for winning the game, because it's impossible to balance this much cross pollination of class skills. Darkgod's concept of an adventurer class isn't balanced and the goal isn't to balance it. The goal is to give players something neat to goof around with after they've already finished the game.

Something like that before the game is finished, should be an add-on in my personal opinion.

[Dude892]

I think that the the first one that Emetivore listed would probably be the favorite. I also agree with what Edge said with the to hard to balance.

[jenx]

I'm thinking of stamina regenerate talents stacked, so that players couldn't keep a -10 stamina per turn talent on all the time, for example.

[Grey]

Making crazy imbalanced combos would be part of the fun to me. It's only for people who have already won, and it's clearly separate from the traditional classes. Making crazy weird classes would be a whole element of fun to itself.

[marvalis]

So essentially you would need a new character creation process, with a number of preset options and the ability to fully customise it.

Each talent tree that you take would costs an amount of points. Taking one might make others more expensive. Choosing new talents with a resource that you do not have is more expensive. Etc. This would all be based on some kind of point system.

Perhaps you can also put points in stats (start with less talents and more str or dex or whatever), with diminishing returns.

[Emetivore]

Choosing new talents with a resource that you do not have is more expensive.

That's actually a really good idea. Applied to my suggestion (a) above (not random!), make skills that use a different resource require an additional category point to unlock.

So, you give the player 10 category points at the beginning of the game. He chooses 3 stamina categories, which is 3 points (1st resource is free). Then he takes a Vim category, which costs 2 points (1+1 to unlock). Next he takes 3 more Vim categories, costing 1 each (since he's already paid to unlock Vim now). With his last 2 points he unlocks a Magic category for a total of 8 unlocked trees and 10 points spent.

This discourages cross-speccing across a lot of categories and encourages experimentation with one or two.

Nice idea marvalis .

[hamrkveldulfr]

I like the idea of both choosing a unique set up and getting a random mix..
Perhaps we could have a weirdling race that is almost 100% randomized?
Or go a step further and have a new race and you choose a resource or two instead of a class and it randomly slaps some talents together for you?

[lukep]

Or go a step further and have a new race and you choose a resource or two instead of a class and it randomly slaps some talents together for you?

If this was done, make sure that you give the player a reliable way of recovering the resource, otherwise that awesome paradox/equilibrium mix quickly becomes useless, the same as negative energy with no twilight surge, or psi without shields, regen, or leeches.

[Sirrocco]

I'm not seeing where "overpowered class" is a problem as "single-player reward class for wining the game".

Even without the "I get to use all resources" factor, this class is going to be pretty overpowered for anyone who knows what they're doing and takes the time to craft it. There are plenty of classes out there that have one or two trees that really make them shine, or a few trees that wring large amounts of utility out of small numbers of points. So?

Actually, if you're going to make it a reward for winning the game, and you *really* want to discourage birth-scumming, have it be a limited reward for winning the game. Every time you win the game, you get a certain number of shots at it. With that and the random trees, it'd be a real testament to skill/perseverance.