What do you think about further class specialization?

[Blasphemous]

I guess this is a pre-RFE discussion to gauge interest.

I was thinking about my undiminished interest in new class powers and class-specific features.
Then I figured out, a lot of games use specializations which sort of branch into separate routes at some point of char development.
The idea is to put emphasis on certain powers which suit a particular playstyle and enhance them while simultaneously remove or reduce those which are irrelevant for the specialty in question.
Perhaps some new class powers would only be obtainable for a given specialty, sufficiently cool and advantageous to entice players to give them a shot.
Some things understandably would have to be mutually exclusive, to ensure the meaningfulness of the decision.
I'd suggest level 25 to be the decision making point and at the same time be optional, for people that wish to play their chars in the old style, without forcing them to choose.

I have a few suggestions to better present my line of thought:

Mindcrafters:
- Mental Warriors would benefit from increased damage dice on offensive mindcraft (and reduced costs on those), better mental shield etc. plus get some new ones for more versatility, shock waves for constructs or destroying parts of dungeon levels, like a localized earthquake that damages anything in the room, warm/cold blasts against vulnerable monsters (rapidly compressed air increases in temperature, decompressed - cools down, all achieved with telekinesis ) etc.
- Mind Destroyers would, with the same Wi value, gain higher chance to force negative mental effects on npcs plus extra on-demand effects like stunning, panic/fear, paralysis, slowness, affecting hostility or more detailed info about monsters' resistances to particular forms of attacks or what special attacks they have.

Weaponsmiths:
- Craftsmen which work on non-metal items; they find use of woodcraft skill, they can make spears, leather armor pieces, impregnate those items against some elemental damage, improve wood/leather artifacts to a small extent (level 50 specialization power?)
- Artificers would function much like regular WS, with the exception of being able to create identified metal items from scratch, improve metal artifacts to a small extent (level 50 specialization power?)

Necromancers:
- Summoners similar in playstyle to NPC necros that summon undead creatures without the need for corpses, later summon more powerful undead or enslave existing hostile undead, depending on the necro's Wi, Ma and level, scare undead en masse for a 1dX number of turns that could also depend on attributes/PC level; with great level differences or very high attributes, hostile undead summoned by enemy NPCs might switch sides.
- Cadaverists (however ridiculous this sounds), which specialize in single but powerful, long-term undead slave, which could be upgraded as more desirable corpses are found, could be given items to use and wield, make potions like cadaverine from corpses, which could be thrown at undead slaves to heal them, finally become partially dead by replacing some portion of their bodies with engineered undead pieces (some nice bonuses and great costs as well).

Barbarians:
- Berserkers focusing on defeating enemies with brutal (tremendous blows etc.) and fast attacks, with disregard for personal protection, gain more polarized effects from berserking (even less DV, more damage), be able to true berserk with all items on, except armors (unless with that special prefix)
-Warlords would offer a more balanced tactical choice with additional AoE attacks, massive courage/tactics bonuses and better DV/PV relations.

Even classes like merchants and farmers could benefit from this:
Merchants could have better item specializations, with more categories that include more item groups:
- jeweler that focuses on items like rings, amulets and bracers
- dresser for all items made of cloth or leather
- apothecary that specializes in potions, herbs and food
- antiquary that deals in artifacts and higher metal items, etc.
All of the above would affect identification, prices, perhaps attribute bonuses and a number of other related features.

Farmers might elect to become:
- herbalists, finding more herb patches in dungeons, gaining more benefits from herb training, picking more herbs, healing more HP with spense or even be a sort of a witch doctor that could mix several herbs in varying proportions to get some desirable concoction for consumption or use poisonous herbs to coat weapons for some interesting effects, use corpses as fertilizers to quicken the growth of new herbs
- meat food specialists that get some extra benefits from corpses by employing different preservation and preparation methods, for example to ensure those St gains from giants or minimize negative impact of certain unique (and/or chaotic) corpses. They could have the power of greatly reducing the weight of cooked corpses while retaining their nutritional values (since they know exactly which parts are edible and which ones grant intrinsics, attribute increases etc.), their food preservation would be more effective and easier to train. They could even require less weapon marks to increase their skill in the use of daggers and/or axes, to reflect their proficiency with knives and cleavers widely used in their trade.

I could go on and on, with some (in my opinion) very interesting ideas for monks, duelists and assassins, but this is just a bunch of ideas off the top of my head, not necessarily suitable or balanced.
I frequently catch myself discarding a lot of items I could do something with but the game doesn't have that feature.
I drop tons of stuff around because it's a waste of time dragging them to a shop and selling them.
Wizards have been skipped because this class could very well be split into 5 different specializations and still lose nothing.

I'd like to play the proposed weaponsmith variation that works with non-metal items, or the necro that can continuously work on his favorite slave, adding quickling blood (or undead quickling legs) for speed or increasing its PV with more bones in case it's a skeletal warrior, or even adding an acid attack with some piece of a giant slug. I'd love to have a mindcrafter that can do something more than confuse monsters then bash them to death with a club, waiting for level 30 to switch to GTB.

Would any of this be worth the effort? Perhaps not all classes need this while some might need more than two?
I realize this would require a lot of work to implement but there's a high potential for extra fun, both for new players and old ones, lots of room to revive some overlooked game features and give them a new purpose.

[_Ln_]

I don't think this is too much to implement.

You reach, say, level 20, you get a prompt - "do you want to choose the path of the 'b'erserker, the path of the 'w'arlord or 's'tay true to your own path"? Choose one and get a specific set of remaining class powers and maybe retroactive change to chosen powers. And maybe some primary/secondary/hidden attribute changes, no biggy.

Then all you have to do is to design more sets of class powers which can be reasonably done through community participation and voting.

The system to switch class powers is already in the game (Chaos Knights), all that is left is balancing.

EDIT: Apparently I can't read.

Anyway, I'm up to some mental crafting in spare time.

EDIT2:

>>>impregnate those items against some elemental damage

Requesting comic on this one.

[Garresh]

I'm kind of against it because it feels out of place. Adom is not like other rpgs. Your character is defined by overall trends, not quick changes. What you find, how you use it, and how you fight affects stat growth and skill advancement, along with weapon skills and spell ranks. 10 characters with the same starting race class and stats may well wind up playing completely differently by midgame, and being borderline unrecognizeable by endgame, especially due to corruptions. I'm not against more options, but Id rather it be more races and classes. Specializations would pidgeonhole you to be forced to play to those strengths rather than adapting to the more organic progression Adom does so well.

Off the top of my head, races that could be implemented:
Quicklings
Black Hurthlings

Classes:
Chaos Monk
Summoner
Sage

[Blasphemous]

I'm kind of against it because it feels out of place. Adom is not like other rpgs. Your character is defined by overall trends, not quick changes. What you find, how you use it, and how you fight affects stat growth and skill advancement, along with weapon skills and spell ranks. 10 characters with the same starting race class and stats may well wind up playing completely differently by midgame, and being borderline unrecognizeable by endgame, especially due to corruptions. I'm not against more options, but Id rather it be more races and classes.

Wouldn't you agree the game currently defaults to a very similar playstyle for the vast majority of chars?
What happens at around level 30-35? You have a set of items, potions and wands that pretty much force you down a particular path, irrespective of races and classes.
Some stuff is so good, you're going to end up using it anyway, no matter what your race or class.
Instead of that, I'm advocating class powers that would replace the advantages of powerful items.
With at least some of the possible class specializations, you could avoid that similarity I mentioned since the allure of creating things on your own would be too great to skip.

I fully understand the concept of ADOM not being just another RPG, I couldn't agree with that more.
On the other hand, I don't think it can't or shouldn't change. What I propose doesn't feel out of place to me, some of this stuff already sort of exists in the game.
We have Glod and we have Kherab, there are summoning necros (regular ones) and more specific ones (Nonnak, notably resurrecting a version of Rolf as his single most powerful undead slave).
There are dwarven chaos knights and chaos warlords, barbarians and berserkers.

I fail to understand what do you mean by overall trends?

Specializations would pidgeonhole you to be forced to play to those strengths rather than adapting to the more organic progression Adom does so well.

That's not true, I suggested the specializations to be optional - they could be selected or ignored. With proper documentation in the manual, all of this could be a 100% player decision with full awareness of the consequences. It would in fact enhance the concept of gain-loss exchange, by offering stuff in exchange for losing access to some other stuff.
How far that would go depends on the player.

[ghostjghost]

I like the concept, I especially like the branching you suggested for necromancers - it adds a lot more depth to a class which I mostly ignore.

Balancing could be a major issue though - The more specific effect an ability has the more abusable it can become - the current class powers while not much more than a nice bit of flavor atm at least won't break the game.

[JellySlayer]

This is one of those ideas that I think would be unlikely to see the light of day at this stage of development. Considering how many comparatively straightforward RFEs and bugfixes have languished for months/years since the Resurrection campaign, not to mention stretch goal areas like the volcano, I have a really hard time imagining that a complete rework of every class and adding a bunch of new mechanics is going to be in the cards.

[grobblewobble]

This is one of those ideas that I think would be unlikely to see the light of day at this stage of development. Considering how many comparatively straightforward RFEs and bugfixes have languished for months/years since the Resurrection campaign, not to mention stretch goal areas like the volcano, I have a really hard time imagining that a complete rework of every class and adding a bunch of new mechanics is going to be in the cards.

Very well put. I agree completely.

[mjkittredge]

Those are cool ideas and it would be great to have them as optional so purists wouldn't scream and cry about it.

In addition to that, and hopefully before it, I hope all the class powers get a second look and most are revamped to be more useful & interesting. I think existing content should be fixed before adding more content.

[Soirana]

I'm kind of against it because it feels out of place. Adom is not like other rpgs. Your character is defined by overall trends, not quick changes. What you find, how you use it, and how you fight affects stat growth and skill advancement, along with weapon skills and spell ranks.

While I agree, that could be combined with OP. Let say for barb specialization you would need rank x in two-handed weapons and so on. So you could either remain flexibale or aim at something. Although I imagine players would just grind the requirements.

This is one of those ideas that I think would be unlikely to see the light of day at this stage of development. Considering how many comparatively straightforward RFEs and bugfixes have languished for months/years since the Resurrection campaign, not to mention stretch goal areas like the volcano, I have a really hard time imagining that a complete rework of every class and adding a bunch of new mechanics is going to be in the cards.

On the other hand if you look how fast and nearly flawlessly new races and new classes happened...

[Blasphemous]

I understand the notion about easy RFEs, there's plenty of good ones with overwhelming support, still without so much as acknowledgement, not to mention implementation.
My aim is rather to propose possible future changes to the game that would go beyond minor adjustments, balancing and semi-bugfixing.
I think many people will agree that the recent changes have been underwhelming in terms of content.
Of course, the GUI, sounds etc. continue their consumption of considerable resources as these things attract potential new players, which would be impossible with just pure ascii.
I'm just saddened that this idea of new stuff being implemented has been marginalized in favor of something much less desirable from the perspective of a veteran player.
Maybe I'm just too selfish and can't look beyond my own expectations, fail to broaden my own horizons.

What I'm saying is, as a player that doesn't give the slightest damn about tiles, noteye and all that fancy stuff, the game has not moved forward in a long time.
To compare it to a human being, it grew fatter, it spread sideways and got a bunch of new clothes and shiny jewelry but inside the head - pretty much nothing changed, no new skills, abilities, except for a bunch of magic tricks that grow old very fast.