Playable Character Races and Classes

[Grunker]

I know there is little chance it will be implemented, but I would LOVE that they included Monte Cook's Bard variant from The Complete Book of Eldritch Might.

Once again, Pathfinder is better.

 

[catfood]

Wow, no free Spell Selection at level up for Wizards ? That sounds kind of boring, one Wizard will be like the other - and it takes away even more Choices

You did get, that there are additional spells, that you learn by scrolls? They will make the majority and boost exploration a lot.

- "Wow, I found a vendor, that sells a spell I didn't know!"
- "I'm glad I took the rogue with my party. Otherwise I would have never found that secret chamber that held that mighty summon spell!"
- "Hmm. Should I spend my hard earned money to buy that magical armor for my tank, or do I empower my wizard even more? Though choice."
- "OK, our main task is in the south, but let's head north first. I heard there lives a Shaman in that forest. Might pay out..."

I think there are more than enough choices left. Especially if you cannot afford all that stuff, you possibly might obtain.
Another reason I already mentioned is balancing. Our game designers can present even more enthralling tasks and encounters, if they can assure that your casters cannot overcome the situations by a click of their fingers.
Third there are the new players, which do not have to choose between a vast amount of spells, they have never heard of, with every new level. D&D is great when you know all that rules and tweaks, to get the most out of your class. But it is a hell, when you do not have the proper understandings. Even more if you do not only play one but a big group of characters. It is not a bad choice to reduce that complexity and make character creation and levelup more facile.

Do you have wizard specializations? If so then would it be possible to recieve at level up only the spells which belong to the same school that he is a specialist of?

EDIT: for instance an enchanter would get charm person and sleep at 1st level.

 

[mangamuscle]

I know there is little chance it will be implemented, but I would LOVE that they included Monte Cook's Bard variant from The Complete Book of Eldritch Might.

Once again, Pathfinder is better.

I think you are missing the point.

a) The Complete Book of Eldritch Might is D&D 3.5 (which is the system CC core uses atm).
b) Monte Cook's variant bard is about an alternate magic system using music as the basis, not your usual "Let's just give bards arcane/divine spells and call it a day", please do check it out.

BTW, I do like pathfinder and hope the community does an implementation using the CC engine.

 

[Ferdator]

Do you have wizard specializations? If so then would it be possible to recieve at level up only the spells which belong to the same school that he is a specialist of?

Not in the base game.
But as our classes, along with their respective level progression, are completely defined within text files, it is no problem to have something like that for future updates or achieve it by mods.

 

[Grunker]

I know there is little chance it will be implemented, but I would LOVE that they included Monte Cook's Bard variant from The Complete Book of Eldritch Might.

Once again, Pathfinder is better.

I think you are missing the point.

a) The Complete Book of Eldritch Might is D&D 3.5 (which is the system CC core uses atm).
b) Monte Cook's variant bard is about an alternate magic system using music as the basis, not your usual "Let's just give bards arcane/divine spells and call it a day", please do check it out.

I know. One of my favourite adventure modules is The Banewarrens by Cook which uses Eldritch Might heavily, and directly uses variant Bards.

Pathfinder Bards are still better. With archetypes you have stuff much more interesting than even Cook's poorly balanced though clever bard variants. Please do check it out

 

[Koschey]

Third there are the new players, which do not have to choose between a vast amount of spells, they have never heard of, with every new level. D&D is great when you know all that rules and tweaks, to get the most out of your class. But it is a hell, when you do not have the proper understandings. Even more if you do not only play one but a big group of characters. It is not a bad choice to reduce that complexity and make character creation and levelup more facile.

Just like Ruins of Myth Drannor didn't allow players to choose feats on their own?


I don't see how taking the choice away instead of implementing a recommend feature is the superior solution to this specific problem. I can somewhat understand your worries about encounter balancing though. catfood's suggestion sounds like a good compromise there.

 

[Grunker]

^ A-fucking-men. Implement recommended-feature, don't use force for everyone.

 

[Ferdator]

I don't see how taking the choice away instead of implementing a recommend feature is the superior solution to this specific problem. I can somewhat understand your worries about encounter balancing though. catfood's suggestion sounds like a good compromise there.

I'll try to explain it once again. Beside the spells you learn by default on levelup, there will be a vast amount of scrolls in the game, that teach your classes other unknown spells. So all we did is to take that choice out of the levelup progress and put it in the game world instead. Most of them will be accessible by vendors or trainers. Some others might be questrewards or treasures.

So choice is there. It's just not: "Hey you gained a level, now decide which of those twenty new spell, you never heard of, you wanna pick. By the way, half of them are useless the next 7 encounters, but I won't tell you which of them." But instead you will have: "Hey you gained a new level, here you have a spell that will come handy during the rest of your journey. If you have problems defeating the upcoming hordes of evil, I would suggest to visit that old man in the next village. I heard he has great knowledge and is willing to share it for some trade-off."

 

[mangamuscle]

So choice is there. It's just not: "Hey you gained a level, now decide which of those twenty new spell, you never heard of, you wanna pick. By the way, half of them are useless the next 7 encounters, but I won't tell you which of them."

I would not mind if it was a recommendation/suggestion of which is the best spell to choose, but instead you simply remove choice and you are basically telling the player "You are to dumb to choose on your own, so big brother is going to choose for you, smile citizen for the greater good has been served!".

 

[hoverdog]

I don't see how taking the choice away instead of implementing a recommend feature is the superior solution to this specific problem. I can somewhat understand your worries about encounter balancing though. catfood's suggestion sounds like a good compromise there.

I'll try to explain it once again. Beside the spells you learn by default on levelup, there will be a vast amount of scrolls in the game, that teach your classes other unknown spells. So all we did is to take that choice out of the levelup progress and put it in the game world instead. Most of them will be accessible by vendors or trainers. Some others might be questrewards or treasures.

So choice is there. It's just not: "Hey you gained a level, now decide which of those twenty new spell, you never heard of, you wanna pick. By the way, half of them are useless the next 7 encounters, but I won't tell you which of them." But instead you will have: "Hey you gained a new level, here you have a spell that will come handy during the rest of your journey. If you have problems defeating the upcoming hordes of evil, I would suggest to visit that old man in the next village. I heard he has great knowledge and is willing to share it for some trade-off."

Let's change that a bit:

"Hey you gained a level, now decide which of those twenty new feats, you never heard of, you wanna pick. By the way, 75% of them are useless for your character, but I won't tell you which of them."
but instead you will have:
"Hey you gained a new level, here you have a feat that will come handy during the rest of your journey. We also distributed your skill points so you won't get a headache trying to choose those viable."

Sorry, but that's still constraining and, most important, dumbing down the game for the casual audience. Seriously, do you think CC will appeal to them at all? It's supposed to be a hardcore game, with forums being on RPGCodex and all.
don't mind highlighting a recommended spell, but limiting choice to make the game easier for those that cannot read is just fucking STUPID.

 

[Grunker]

^

Ferdator, you still haven't answered why you can't just have one spell be recommended instead of forcing us to pick certain ones.

 

[catfood]

^

Ferdator, you still haven't answered why you can't just have one spell be recommended instead of forcing us to pick certain ones.

Another reason I already mentioned is balancing. Our game designers can present even more enthralling tasks and encounters, if they can assure that your casters cannot overcome the situations by a click of their fingers.

Linear game design. They're afraid that players well versed in the 3E system will be able to deduce which spells are shit and which are not, and they'll be able 'breeze' through their encounters. Crippling the player like this is a hamfisted approach into offering challenge, instead of actually creating well thought out encounters.

So what we're going to get is either:
a) they'll give us mostly shit spells, meaning that the game will have an artifical difficulty since we are poorly equiped to deal with the challenges that closely follow
b) they'll give us mostly spells which are specifically tailored to handle the next encounters. This is a lazy form of handholding used by AAA+++ developers.

But how about option
c) as mentioned earlier, have a 'recomended' list of spells that a player who is not familiar with DND can pick if they want, but at the same time it allows veteran DND players to customize their wizards any way they want.

Let's take as an example: the player is about to face fire elementals in the next couple of hours a play. His wizard just leveled up. You can have the 'recomended spells' screen tell the player that he should pick 'ice storm'. A newbie would probably go with whatever the game recommends him to. A more advanced player can pick something else, for instance a fireball spell. Yeah, sure it might not do him much good against the fire elementals, but hey it was his own choice, now he has to deal with it. Maybe he has to buy or find a new spell (or item) on his own if he finds the fire elementals too much for him. I don't think I'm the only one here who prefers this method instead of an on a rails character development.

 

[Ferdator]

Let's take as an example: the player is about to face fire elementals in the next couple of hours a play. His wizard just leveled up. You can have the 'recomended spells' screen tell the player that he should pick 'ice storm'. A newbie would probably go with whatever the game recommends him to. A more advanced player can pick something else, for instance a fireball spell. Yeah, sure it might not do him much good against the fire elementals, but hey it was his own choice, now he has to deal with it. Maybe he has to buy or find a new spell (or item) on his own if he finds the fire elementals too much for him. I don't think I'm the only one here who prefers this method instead of an on a rails character development.

Good example. I will try to bring up some ideas based upon it, to show you, why I think, that automatic choice is favorable to free choice.

- Let's say you thought you know it better and picked the fireball spell instead. So now here you are, having nothing to put against that elementals. What will you do? You walk to your next trainer hoping he has that ice storm spell. What if he doesn't? What if you cannot afford it? If you can what would be the difference, if you had instead gotten that ice storm automatically and than have picked up your choosen spell at the trainer?

- Ok, you did choose the fireball instead and made it through all elementals. You get rewarded with a very mighty scroll. It is 'Fireball'. Wait what? So what if we want to make some spells very unique and only accessible by quests or exploration? We have to limit you choices on levelup. How does that look, if you can choose your spells on levelup, but there is no fireball at all?

- Let's turn that example to the opposite. We did give you fireball on levelup. Never the less we put a lot of fire elemetals against you, and you have to think of some really good tactics, to overcome them. What if you had the choice instead? On your next playthrough or by loading an earlier savegame you can completely destroy our efford to give you a good challenge, by choosing that ice storm instead. This is no problem in pen & paper, cause this game is based on reaction and counterreaction. Your GM can always assure to give you the best challenge. One way for us to achieve this is to eliminate as many unknown variables as possible.

We did have some reasons to walk that way. Yes it is streamlined and you could call it casual. But we did it to give you a better ingame experience and greater immersion. Don't you think it is more challenging to empower your wizard by exploring the game world and collecting as many scrolls as you can, but instead by picking the best spells in an interface overlay on levelup?

 

[tuluse]

Are you going to have specialist wizards who get different spell lists or is it just one arcane spell list for every wizard in the game?

 

[hoverdog]

Sorry, but that's just plain bullshit.

- Let's say you thought you know it better and picked the fireball spell instead. So now here you are, having nothing to put against that elementals. What will you do? You walk to your next trainer hoping he has that ice storm spell. What if he doesn't? What if you cannot afford it? If you can what would be the difference, if you had instead gotten that ice storm automatically and than have picked up your choosen spell at the trainer?

what the flying fuck? If you controlled only one party member - the mage - your example could make sense, but you seem to forget that we can have five characters. And that the mage himself can cast other spells. Is this Ice Storm spell so OP that it's absolutely needed to counter fire elementals? Well, that's shitty design if I ever saw one.

- Ok, you did choose the fireball instead and made it through all elementals. You get rewarded with a very mighty scroll. It is 'Fireball'. Wait what? So what if we want to make some spells very unique and only accessible by quests or exploration? We have to limit you choices on levelup. How does that look, if you can choose your spells on levelup, but there is no fireball at all?

Well duh. I got a fireball scroll. Tough luck - I can sell it or use as a consumable. Nothing's wasted.
BUT! Say my fighting characters picked axes and hammers as their weapons of choice, and the game rewards me with a magic sword. SNAP BAD DESIGN ALERT!!1! now we the developers pick feats for you so you get weapons catered specifically for your party. INSTANT GRATIFICATION!

- Let's turn that example to the opposite. We did give you fireball on levelup. Never the less we put a lot of fire elemetals against you, and you have to think of some really good tactics, to overcome them. What if you had the choice instead? On your next playthrough or by loading an earlier savegame you can completely destroy our efford to give you a good challenge, by choosing that ice storm instead. This is no problem in pen & paper, cause this game is based on reaction and counterreaction. Your GM can always assure to give you the best challenge. One way for us to achieve this is to eliminate as many unknown variables as possible.

Wow, save-scumming is bad, who would have thought? That's hardly a reason. I could save and reload before boss battles to see how I should prepare, or before a choice to see which outcome is better. I theoretically could also save before leveling and then, two hours later in the game, reload because I've chosen Fireball and there are fire elementals in the next room. Yeah, there probably are these kinds of people. However, you won't trick them nor cure them by such artificial restriction.

We did have some reasons to walk that way. Yes it is streamlined and you could call it casual. But we did it to give you a better ingame experience and greater immersion. Don't you think it is more challenging to empower your wizard by exploring the game world and collecting as many scrolls as you can, but instead by picking the best spells in an interface overlay on levelup?

Better ingame experience? How exactly? Greater immersion? R00fles! What's "immersive" in gaining a spell not by your own choice, but set by the developers based on what? Whim? Or - worse - the upcoming challenge? "Hmm... I got Ice Storm on level-up... There are surely fire creatures ahead" IMMERSHUN!

 

[Grunker]

Sorry, but that's just plain bullshit.

- Let's say you thought you know it better and picked the fireball spell instead. So now here you are, having nothing to put against that elementals. What will you do? You walk to your next trainer hoping he has that ice storm spell. What if he doesn't? What if you cannot afford it? If you can what would be the difference, if you had instead gotten that ice storm automatically and than have picked up your choosen spell at the trainer?

what the flying fuck? If you controlled only one party member - the mage - your example could make sense, but you seem to forget that we can have five characters. And that the mage himself can cast other spells. Is this Ice Storm spell so OP that it's absolutely needed to counter fire elementals? Well, that's shitty design if I ever saw one.

- Ok, you did choose the fireball instead and made it through all elementals. You get rewarded with a very mighty scroll. It is 'Fireball'. Wait what? So what if we want to make some spells very unique and only accessible by quests or exploration? We have to limit you choices on levelup. How does that look, if you can choose your spells on levelup, but there is no fireball at all?

Well duh. I got a fireball scroll. Tough luck - I can sell it or use as a consumable. Nothing's wasted.
BUT! Say my fighting characters picked axes and hammers as their weapons of choice, and the game rewards me with a magic sword. SNAP BAD DESIGN ALERT!!1! now we the developers pick feats for you so you get weapons catered specifically for your party. INSTANT GRATIFICATION!

- Let's turn that example to the opposite. We did give you fireball on levelup. Never the less we put a lot of fire elemetals against you, and you have to think of some really good tactics, to overcome them. What if you had the choice instead? On your next playthrough or by loading an earlier savegame you can completely destroy our efford to give you a good challenge, by choosing that ice storm instead. This is no problem in pen & paper, cause this game is based on reaction and counterreaction. Your GM can always assure to give you the best challenge. One way for us to achieve this is to eliminate as many unknown variables as possible.

Wow, save-scumming is bad, who would have thought? That's hardly a reason. I could save and reload before boss battles to see how I should prepare, or before a choice to see which outcome is better. I theoretically could also save before leveling and then, two hours later in the game, reload because I've chosen Fireball and there are fire elementals in the next room. Yeah, there probably are these kinds of people. However, you won't trick them nor cure them by such artificial restriction.

We did have some reasons to walk that way. Yes it is streamlined and you could call it casual. But we did it to give you a better ingame experience and greater immersion. Don't you think it is more challenging to empower your wizard by exploring the game world and collecting as many scrolls as you can, but instead by picking the best spells in an interface overlay on levelup?

Better ingame experience? How exactly? Greater immersion? R00fles! What's "immersive" in gaining a spell not by your own choice, but set by the developers based on what? Whim? Or - worse - the upcoming challenge? "Hmm... I got Ice Storm on level-up... There are surely fire creatures ahead" IMMERSHUN!

 

[Ferdator]

Yeah, you're right!
Why ever try to build a deep challenging gameplay, when all you ever need is a 'Levelup-Simulator', where you could spend endless hours in ugly interface frames, to make the choices that really matter.

 

[hoverdog]

Yeah, you're right!
Why ever try to build a deep challenging gameplay, when all you ever need is a 'Levelup-Simulator', where you could spend endless hours in ugly interface frames, to make the choices that really matter.

Way to refute my points.

 

[Ferdator]

Way to refute my points.

You did have other points than

Sorry, but that's just plain bullshit

?
Sorry, I must have missed them.

 

[AbounI]

We should be able to gain the spell we desire to learn for our wizard when they level up.
Imagine a team where there is two wizard of my own creation.Each time they level up, your design would mean they will be granted with the same new spell, that's awfull.If I create two wizard for my dream team, I want them to be complementary (one learns Fireball when the other learn an Ice spell), not clone (with twice the same spell)!!!!
If you really want to make an auto new spell when levelling-up, it concerns hired NPCs, not my PCs

Let the players play how they want.Newbes will learn from their bad choices, like it is in DarkSoul or even in Age Of Decadence, which is designed in that way.It is said Chaos Chronicle is a niche hardcore RPG, do it so please

 

[hoverdog]

Way to refute my points.

You did have other points than

Sorry, but that's just plain bullshit

?
Sorry, I must have missed them.

Oh, poor you. Either go buy some glasses or get over your righteous butthurt.

 

[evdk]

Way to refute my points.

You did have other points than

Sorry, but that's just plain bullshit

?
Sorry, I must have missed them.

The point is that automatically selecting what spell you get at level up with the justification that you've offered is one step away from quest compass. It's doubly hillarious that in another thread you have a discussion about different currencies, the weight of money and other stuff and here you are giving off a clear "players are morons" vibe.

 

[Fenris 2.0]

You know, playing the role of a Wizard with a fixed Spell List is a bit like playing the Role of the Master-Chief, who gets a new gun now and then... the more I hear about CC, the more it sounds like a Adventure with strategy-riddles then a role-playing game (It could still be a great Adventure with strategy-riddles though).

 

[AbounI]

I really don't understand where you want to go with such design.From all the good old games where you find inspiration, is there at least any one where a wizard/mage/sorcerer canno't FREELY choose the new spell to learn during a level up sequence?Remember:

We try to pick the best elements from famous games from the past and bring them together in one product.

From the early days, when Chaos Chronicles was called Myth Of Glory, and was designed as an Hack & Slash, this imposed design perhaps could have fit, let me quote our interview:

The project name has indeed changed. First of all because we thought that “Chaos Chronicles” would fit better. But also because of a thing which you mentioned in the question. See, when the development started “Myth of Glory” was outlined as a hack & slay and more in the footsteps of “Diablo”. But it soon changed. For the better I think. And to make a line under the old idea a change of the name was needed

But now, we're talking about Chaos Chronicles, wich is a Computer Role Playing Game, so you canno't give away our freedom to built wizards like we want (that means let us learn spells we want to learn).It's a matter of choices & consequences, which concerns the players afterall

 

[Grunker]

Hoverdog: Provides sensible arguments.

Ferdator: Explodes in unjustified butthurt.

Grunker: Saddened at the realization that HobGoblin42 might be the only dev capable of sensible response to criticism on the CC-team for all he knows.

Seriously, what the fuck was that? Plenty of solid, down to earth arguments were provided, and all we get from the dev is "you're retarded"? I expect that crap from shitposters.