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Today I finished the class selection screen. I opted for some coloured spheres as icons, I think the final effect is nice 🙂 In total there are 12 classes available in the game. I’ve decided to allow all classes selection in the first episode, since now each class in practice is only a definition on how fast your character level specific skills, and what skills can’t learn.

For example the Necromancer class is very skilled in Black Magic (that focus on death), but is totally unable to learn White Magic (healing spells mostly). Another example is the Paladin that can’t learn Dual Wield or Lockpicking.

Next step is the skills allocation screen. In that screen I’ll show a summary of all the 24 skills and the starting values. Then you’ll be able to allocate XX extra skill points. The XX value will depend on the race chosen, humans for example will have 8 skill points each level up, while Ice Elf only 4.

You could ask me, how this will balance the game? through the deities/spells screen, and attributes.

Humans will have lower starting attributes compared to Ice Elves, and also their deities prayers (spells) will have less power/usefulness than the Ice Elves ones. Of course that doesn’t mean that they’ll be crap! just less powerful, to balance the races powers.

Ok today I made my final decision about skills and spells.

It will work this way:

1. all races can be any class. some are more inclined to be casters than fighter, but they will be able to be good fighters anyway
2. there will be 3 main stats: hit points, mana points and fatigue.
3. there will be 2 main classes type: fighters and casters. Plus some hybrid like druids or skirmishers that can do both.
4. The fighting classes will use fatigue to use special attacks that learn automatically as they level up and that unlock based on skills or attributes. Example there can be a special attack called “Swing Strike” that will require slashing skill >20 and dexterity > 10.
5. The casting classes will have the spells based on their deity. Each deity has a set of different spells based on different aspects. So you will have a wizard dwarf that will be specialized in nuking opponents and create magic item for example. Or a human that can cast protective and self-empowering spells.
6. For the casting classes, they’ll have restrictions based on the skills of a specific school of magic. Example, White Magic (the life magic) will include most healing spells from all the deities. Obviously the class healer will have more initial skills and will have a higher skill cap than any other class for White Magic.

I think this system rulez, because each deity will have his own white/black/red magic and so on, leading to lot of variety in spells. That’s why also I made “only” 3 races in the first episode. Those 3 races generates 6 different subset of spells list, and each spell will be of one of the five schools below:

This way, the classical pure fighting classes like warriors will still have special attacks, based on their race/skills, but won’t be able to cast spells. Hybrid classes like skirmisher and paladins (and probably future ones like bards/rangers) will have both special attacks based on fatigue but also some spells based on their deities.

One thing is sure, will be a mess to program, even with just 3 races! 😀