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Characters, Classes and Magic

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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by SAJewers »

8flight wrote:
Horikawa Otane wrote:plz dont die project
The project will start design-wise after a2mxbt:episode 1 and/or superb demo sisters is completed.

This is just for discussion currently.
You do realize that Episode 2, as well as ASMT64 are both starting after Episode 1, right?
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by swirlybomb »

Clemasterable wrote:Can you attribute different sprites to the same class? I doubt it? So here's an idea; what if we use the basic renamed classes for the first versions of the game and as we add more chapters and stuff to the game we also make everybody have their separate class so that they can have sprites differences but still use the title and stats they had in the earlier versions. Ex: 2 Fighters would have different sprites but they would still upgrade their stats like each other.
Slow down on the ambition there slightly!

I'm pretty sure it's totally possible to give individual characters different sprites within the same class, though it's usually minor stuff like a character with long hair in a class that normally has short hair, or something like that. But I think this is largely unnecessary until we actually have a cast of playable characters large enough to require different visuals for people. Having actually differently-named "classes" for people that are still technically within the same class seems a bit overkill too. If you want individual character flavor, if you open a character's status screen and press R to show the 'help/info' cursor and move it to their name, it gives a short description of them, which would be simple to change since it has to be done for every character anyway.
8Nairb wrote:How about a Gunslinger class? Or anything that has to do with guns as weapons??
Theoretically bows could be swapped for guns, but... guns kinda have this thing where they're rather fatal to be hit by.



A thought about magic: what about Danmaku instead of Wind? (making the three types Art, Danmaku, and Hack)
As for what replaces what... Dark > Hack seems like the most obvious match, since Dark magic has slightly more 'unique' effects than other magic and Shaman > Druid being changed to Hacker > ASMer seems really fitting.
Not sure about the other two, though; should Art replace Anima because Art has more 'creative power' to match Anima's varying 'elements' (fire, lightning, wind), or should Danmaku be Anima for the same reason that spellcards have a lot of variance as well? Should Danmaku be Light's replacement because being accurate but not dealing much damage is more appropriate (when the player is shooting, at least), or should it replace Dark because (boss/enemy) Danmaku is usually a whole lot of bullets spread over an area that can be "easily" avoided? Or is Anima good enough for being the middle ground?
And what about classes: if Troubadour > Valkyrie is actually going to be Artist > (different/better artist), then they should obviously use Art magic. Mage > Sage seems like it'd be a more fitting class to use Danmaku as well. Though since both those classes use Anima magic normally, should one to use Light instead (and then where would Monk/Bishop fit in?)? There's also the weapon triangle (Hack > Art > Danmaku > Hack, or Hack > Danmaku > Art > Hack) to think about, though since these 'elements' are somewhat abstract, that may be a non-issue.

...and so forth. Would love to hear others' thoughts on this...!


Also, regarding the actual magic list Clemasterable put up; the spells in each category generally range from weakest/most accurate at the top to strongest/less accurate at the bottom, although the highest-tier spells tend to have decent accuracy as well. The rankings go (Anima, Light, Dark) (no idea if this is actually useful to anyone)
E: Fire, Lightning - basic accurate/low-damage spells
D: Thunder, Shine, Flux - slightly stronger
C: Elfire, Divine, - good power, medium accuracy - Luna (completely ignores enemy resistance; additionally it has ridiculous accuracy and crit chance in FE7, so it needs to be nerfed to maintain balance), Nosferatu (user restores HP equal to damage dealt)
B: Bolting, Purge, Eclipse - magic that can hit long-range, though is relatively inaccurate and only gets a couple uses (Eclipse has super-low accuracy, but if it hits, cuts the target's HP in half)
A: Fimbulvetr (ice), Aura, Fenrir - big damage, slightly lower accuracy than C-rank
S: Excalibur (wind), Aureola, Luce, Gespenst - massive damage, high accuracy; being top-tier/legendary spells, you only get once tome of each
Forblaze is usable only by Athos the Archsage (powerful character you only get right at the endgame), and Erishkigal is the villain Nergal's super-powered final-boss spell (both are, of course, massive damage and high accuracy)
I think it should be possible to add more of the 'unique' spells (like perhaps having some that are effective against certain unit types) to spice things up, if necessary. But at the bare minimum all the spells ought to be renamed to something more fitting to their altered categories.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by TheFinalSentinel »

swirlybomb wrote: Theoretically bows could be swapped for guns, but... guns kinda have this thing where they're rather fatal to be hit by.
Tell that to every FPS, every RPG that has them, every... well pretty much every video game that has guns in it, bar if it's in a cutscene or something.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by 8Nairb »

swirlybomb wrote: Theoretically bows could be swapped for guns, but... guns kinda have this thing where they're rather fatal to be hit by.
From what I know, any weapon is fatal enough to be hit by.
But I like that Danmaku Class idea though. How about Miko > Lunatic as classes for Danmaku ?
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by swirlybomb »

okay okay

THEORETICALLY fatal to be hit by.

...In comparison to other medieval-themed weapon types.
"hey there guy, I have a sword"
"really now, I have a gun how about that mister"



or something guns just seem really out of place to me in this context
unless everyone really wants guns
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by KingTwelveSixteen »

swirlybomb wrote:okay okay

THEORETICALLY fatal to be hit by.

...In comparison to other medieval-themed weapon types.
"hey there guy, I have a sword"
"really now, I have a gun how about that mister"



or something guns just seem really out of place to me in this context
unless everyone really wants guns
I really don't see what's so much more lethal about hitting them with a really fast bit of metal compared to hitting them with a really sharp piece of fastish metal.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by Dizzybelle »

A lot of fantasy games have guns, a few of the Final Fantasies, Tactics Ogre, Disgaea, Tales of the Abyss, loads of games. Albeit not like SMGs or anything fancy, but yeah, guns aren't really uncommon.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by Bwarch »

And sometimes fantasy games just can't choose.

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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by Sorel »

We need moar gunz
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by Septentrion Pleiades »

Horikawa Otane wrote:
Bwarch wrote:And sometimes fantasy games just can't choose.
can i have a gun that is also a crossbow that is also a motorcycle that is also a dragon
As long as you can get a spriter to do it. I don't think anyone has stepped up to it.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by swirlybomb »

Hey, so I don't think any kind of "final decisions" were ever made regarding this, so let's take another look at it?

I drew up this list of suggestions based on Septentrion's own lists, and what a couple others have said in this thread;
(see also viewtopic.php?f=50&t=14581#p205279 for a basic rundown of the actual classes)

Foot units:
Myrmidon -> Swordmaster ... ??? (Sept said Katana Guy -> Swordmaster)
- sword
Fighter -> Warrior ... Fighter -> Revolutionary (perhaps Freedom Fighter for the first one?)
- axe, +bow on promotion
Archer -> Sniper ... Shootguy -> Marksman (kinda silly)
- bow
Mercenary -> Hero ... Maverick -> Captain? (because they sound cool, and Mercenaries/Heroes are probably the most 'awesome' class?)
- sword, +axe on promotion
Knight -> General ... ??? (Sept said Sheep Rider -> Fluffy Tank, but I don't think that's really appropriate because they don't ride on anything, they're just clad in heavy armor)
- lance, +axe on promotion
Thief -> Assassin ... Ninja maybe? (Sept said it could stay as-is)
- sword
Pirate -> Berserker ... Furry > Berserker
- axe

Mounted units:
Cavalier -> Paladin ... Canadian -> Mountie (riding a horse)
- sword, lance, +axe on promotion
Nomad -> Nomad Trooper (Ranger would probably be a better 'vanilla' name for Nomad Trooper) ... Elf -> Elf Hero (riding a horse)
- bow, +sword on promotion
Pegasus Knight -> Falcoknight ... Horse Knight -> Horse Master?/Blue Horseknight? (riding a yoshi)
- lance, +sword on promotion
Wyvern Rider -> Wyvern Lord ... Llama Rider -> Llama Master (riding a cat-llama)
- lance, +sword on promotion

Magic units:
Monk/Cleric > Bishop ... Patcholite/Healer -> Patcholite Priest (the church of Patchouli, of course)
- light/staff, +staff/light on promotion
Troubadour > Valkyrie ... Artist -> Art Wizard (or Better Artist/Good Artist) (riding a horse)
- staff, +anima on promotion
Mage > Sage ... Miko -> Lunatic (more Touhous)
- anima, +staff on promotion
Shaman > Druid ... Hacker -> ASMer
- dark, +staff on promotion

Dancer/Bard ... ??? (Sept proposed the idea of a 'Cat Planet' class, which are enemy-only and can give enemies an extra turn like Dancers/Bards can, but are super-weak and have just 1 HP, making them a priority target. Could be a neat idea?)



...So as far as the magic units go, I'm operating under the idea of the magic type replacements being
Light -> Danmaku
Anima -> Art
Dark -> Hack
which I'd like to think is a nice balance and such. Further, perhaps the divvying of magic use could be changed to something like this:
Patcholite (Danmaku) / Healer (Staff) -> Patcholite Priest (Danmaku, Staff)
Artist (Art) -> Art Wizard/whatever (Art, Staff)
Miko (Danmaku) -> Lunatic (Danmaku, Art)
Hacker (Hack) -> ASMer (Hack, Staff) (this could just stay as-is)

This way, Artists can use Art magic right away instead of needing to wait for promotion, and Lunatics can be more of a straight offensive class as opposed to using the same weapon types as Art Wizard but not being on horseback. However, this also means that there's only one 'basic' healing class (Healer), and also two different 'basic' light/danmaku users (Patcholite and Miko), so maybe it's not perfect. But whatever the case, the magic-using classes are the easiest to change weapon-type-usage for, since they would have the same 'casting' animation regardless of what kind of magic they're using, which is why the re-shuffling comes to mind.

For the mounted classes, although it'd theoretically be cool to, say, replace all horses with cat-llamas, it'd be a lot less work to only have to change them for one class (Wyvern Riders changed to Llama Riders, that is); the same statement could be made for Pegasus Knights/Horse Knights too. And this is just me, but perhaps changing Wyvern Lord/Llama Master's swords to axes would help vary the weapon usage as well, without being too much work (just changing the swords to axes on their sword animations).

Pirates/Berserkers being changed to Furries would also need sprite replacements, but again, it's just for that one/two class(es) so it should be plausible?
Another little thought is that, of the 'specialist' foot units (that is, those that use only one weapon type), Swordmasters and Berserkers get a +15% critical bonus, and Assassins have a small chance of instantly killing an enemy, but Snipers don't have anything; so as the not-uncommon "let's make Archers/Snipers better" thing, perhaps Snipers could get a +15% critical bonus too? Just putting it out there.



Sorry for the big ol' wall of text, just trying to get activity going again and trying to contribute if possible!! Please share your thoughts as well.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by TheFinalSentinel »

swirlybomb wrote: Pegasus Knight -> Falcoknight ... Horse Knight -> Horse Master?/Blue Horseknight? (riding a yoshi)
A: Isn't that basically saying the same as Cavalier -> Paladin, just simplified wording? :/
B: I get the joke, but wouldn't that be better for plain ol' Cavalier -> Paladin? Yoshis don't fly (save Brawl); they kinda just hover, so...
C: That would bring up what we'd then do with the Canadian -> Mountie idea.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by swirlybomb »

Winged Yoshis.

Also winged cat-llamas (funny you didn't bring that up as well :v ).



A quick idea to 'fix' the redundancy of my magic-swapping proposal... perhaps it would work if Monk was removed and the Patchoulite name given to Cleric/Healer instead? That way the base magic classes would be:
Patcholite: staffs
Artist: art
Miko: danmaku
Hacker: hack
Again, just my own ideas. Would like to hear what others think still.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by TheFinalSentinel »

swirlybomb wrote:Winged Yoshis.
Oh, right. Been too long since I've played SMW, and that doesn't seem to happen too often in hacks.
I digress, that's still all of 2 seconds that Yoshis fly.
swirlybomb wrote:Also winged cat-llamas (funny you didn't bring that up as well :v ).
The way I look at it, cat-llamas are a complete wild card. While Yoshis have appeared in many games, cat-llamas are relatively new, appearing in what, 4 games? A Talkhaus thing. Their quote, unquote canon hasn't really been fleshed out. Though you do have a point, they haven't been seen flying, so they very well might not be able to.

Well, whatever. I don't really have any better ideas at the moment anyway. :/
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by swirlybomb »

(just for clarity, I'm not meaning to say you're dumb or anything, I appreciate at least responding at all for sure)

Yoshis in Super Mario World can fly indefinitely as long as they have a blue shell; it only 'runs out' once they eventually swallow it. But the point is that I'm pretty sure it's not going to matter terribly to slightly 'fudge' canon to give Yoshis/cat-llamas permanent wings for this game.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by Sorel »

we need to call the strongest late game class the Janitor.

that would be mindblowing.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by TheFinalSentinel »

(Really need to play SMW again apparently)

You're right, I just think we can think of something better; if we can't oh well I guess.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by swirlybomb »

Fluffi-dono wrote:we need to call the strongest late game class the Janitor.

that would be mindblowing.
There isn't necessarily a "strongest late-game class" (unless there is?), but I can agree that Janitor would make for an amusing inclusion.

...What about Theif -> Assassin being Ninja -> Janitor? It could perhaps be ridiculous enough to work?
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by TheFinalSentinel »

swirlybomb wrote:
Fluffi-dono wrote:we need to call the strongest late game class the Janitor.

that would be mindblowing.
There isn't necessarily a "strongest late-game class" (unless there is?), but I can agree that Janitor would make for an amusing inclusion.

...What about Theif -> Assassin being Ninja -> Janitor? It could perhaps be ridiculous enough to work?
We could do Janitor -> Ninja Janitor for the Thief classes.
Get all Dustforce on it.

I mean, what do you think Janitors do with spare change they find lying around? It makes sense if you don't think about it.

P.S. I think I'm gonna go whole hog pushing for my idea of Artist -> Better Artist. Any seconders?
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by Clamestarebla »

Better artist IS pretty funny I must say.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by Dizzybelle »

swirlybomb wrote:...What about Theif -> Assassin being Ninja -> Janitor? It could perhaps be ridiculous enough to work?
Perhaps instead of Ninja, it could be "Lurker -> Janitor"? I feel that'd work a little smoother.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by Chdata »

We all know fire dragon is Red Yoshi
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by swirlybomb »

I like Lurker -> Janitor as the Thief -> Assassin replacement.

Also maybe Maverick -> Renegade for Mercenary -> Hero, instead of 'Captain'...?


...Kinda afraid there's no longer interest in this project >->
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by Mabel »

swirlybomb wrote:I like Lurker -> Janitor as the Thief -> Assassin replacement.

Also maybe Maverick -> Renegade for Mercenary -> Hero, instead of 'Captain'...?


...Kinda afraid there's no longer interest in this project >->
I made another map but I need to do more work on it and I have 0 free time lately

So far yea not much going on here right now.
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Re: Characters, Classes and Magic

Post by TheFinalSentinel »

swirlybomb wrote:...Kinda afraid there's no longer interest in this project >->
I've been working bit by bit on my map, but there's so little time in the day!
I really only have the basic concept done, haven't even started translating it into actual tiles and stuff.
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