Some attacks depends on what weapons you've equipped:

- Strikethrough = you need a two handed weapon

- Wide Slash = you need two swords equipped

- Barrage = AOE attack, you need to have a bow equipped

Now this sounds very interesting indeed. Give every class at least some limited AOE options, and the tactical options multiply. (And I can safely get rid of the coward Riley, but that is just me ) I wonder what the optimum party setup will be? (Don't answer this, I want to find out during playtesting.)

Am I getting this right? Out of twelve classes, the warrior niche is filled by one called ranger? Surely there will be a more "fightery" class than that? I like to think of a ranger as a marksman who can still handle himself in melee combat and more importantly, can handle himself in the wilderness. Not a metal monstrosity who can take and deal a savage beating.



Anyway, hehe, from a practical perspective. Strikethrough should require a two-handed weapon that isn't a hammer, staff or axe. And Wide Slash sounds fine with a two-handed weapon, probably better even. The extra reach should allow for a greater arc than the combined one of two shorter weapons.

Twelfe classes? I thought there will be three classes... for eight party members.

Entirely possible. I have Loren 2 and SotW scrambled in my head I don't know which game is supposed to have what anymore.

In SOTW there are 3 classes for the PC: Ranger, Hunter and Druid

Then there are 6 characters that you can recruit in your party, each one has his/her own class. So the total is actually 9

About the ranger, it depends, on several RPGs the Ranger beside using the arrows can also dual wield or use two hand weapons (you remember Baldur's Gate Minsc? he was a ranger very good with a 2H weapon if I remember correctly).

The classes were also picked to fit the initial game setup, a small village in a permafrost area, living mostly by hunting.



At least, differently from Loren, you can play as magic user this time (the Druid)

Okay, so the classes are just for the siblings, gotcha. I like the lore behind it too.



I am a HUGE fan of Baldur's Gate so yes I know Minsc. But you gotta remember that rangers and paladins can't get as good with weapons as fighters can (max 2 proficiency points vs. max 5), and in third edition fighters just get way more feat points than everyone else, while getting pretty much no class features. Rangers do get some free dual-wielding feats albeit only on the condition that they use at most light (maybe medium? I think light) armor, and they have class features like limited access to druid spells. In my mind, rangers give up a bit of the tankiness and melee-awesomeness of the fighter for the druid and marksman skills. I don't really wanna see a ranger in full plate mail with a shield even if that was possible to do with Minsc.

My games don't follow all the general rules/lore of the other games though. I mean for some obvious things yes, like dwarves aspect (ahem except Dora ) but is not like I must follow the armor rules. I can limit the Ranger to medium armor but then I'm sure players could complain that you can't equip heavy armor on any PC (since of course Hunter / Druid won't equip that!).

So I'm thinking to allow the Ranger to use it, or worse case I can change the name of the class to something else (is not essential to the story/lore). But seems weird to use "Warrior" when you have Hunter / Druid. Or I could make up a new class name myself like "Protector" or whatever, as long as they can use heavy armors

Guardian - not related to any RPG-tropes I'm aware of. And established in PS as bearer of heavy weapons and armors

Wow I kept reading hunter as thief. I would say ranger and hunter would be very similar yeah. I do like protector better. When I test the beta I will think of a better name and a lore approach to motivate the class. If the region has a history of trouble you could always say the village always made sure to have a warrior to protect it

What about "Warden"? I like the sound of it, even in some RPGs if I remember correctly was more a spellcaster/bard type (thinking about GW2 or Everquest series).

Otherwise Guardian could work too

Or I could make up a new class name myself like "Protector" or whatever, as long as they can use heavy armors

There are a lot of names available, and some do suggest various specialties. Off-hand, renk_e already mentioned Guardian. There is also Sentinel, Mymidon, Warden...

Warrior, Guardian, Protector, Warden, Sentinel... all good names But yes, a character with the ability to use heavy armor would be good. Though I would probably go for a more stealthy char myself if I was playing.



Hmmm... never heard of Mymidon... "a member of a legendary Thessalian people who accompanied their king Achilles in the Trojan War. A loyal follower" ... hmmm... nice!

If you have an explanation for why the isolated hunting community would have someone specialized in defending against other civilized races or unnatural threats, then you can easily derive the name from said explanation. And it's a better approach than picking the coolest loosely defined class name and making it fit the lore. You can even let the village call those people rangers, the important part is why it would be considered plausible for them to have these warriors around. They aren't going to have a metal monstrosity hunt or tend the forest.



P.S. not unmotivated to give the hunter some degree of stealth capability, so I hope your dream comes true there even if it can't be a full-fledged assassin.

If you need a rationale for placing massively armed warriors in an out-of-the-way village you could use the Roman military as example: They had some kind of road police/military police placed everywhere in the empire, the job title was "beneficiarius" (I love the irony of calling crowd-control troops benefit-doers ).



PS afaik it should be myrmidon, with an extra R

I think had an idea while taking a walk, will call them "Guardian" (of the Forest). The equivalent of the human Paladin, they can wear heavy armors and have powerful but limited healing skills (thinking about a sort of "Lay Hands" with a big amount of SP needed or very long delay).



Like Paladins they can just be in a mission from God, or just wanting to do the right thing, or protect the citizens from wild beasts.



I'm having all classes some sort of heal/defense because I want to limit the potion-spamming technique that people used in Loren there'll be potions but they'll be much more expensive, so that you can simply stock 50 restore potions and then not fear any enemy

In Loren the potion-spamming is only possible against Bosses. If you do it against any random foe, you quickly run out of potions. Also, IIRC the stores had only limited quantities of potions. (you could aways grind, and sometimes a low-level potion would be dropped, but the time needed for this...) However, if you needed to heal in boss battles, potions had a lot less delay than any spells.



I did not think the balance was done that badly. If you wanted to keep it, why not?



On the other hand, a changed balance means having fun in figuring out how to fight best under the new circumstances, so the changes are fine with me too.

Ah OK, thought the potion situation was worse than what you explained

In any case there are so many differences that yes the balancing is completely different in this game, so not just for the potions, but for the classes that are more versatile than Loren. Even the tanks can heal (of course with some big tradeoff) and the hits don't do big damage like before, Thieves are more powerful, etc etc.



Of course will see once the beta starts if there are some big problems. Otherwise finding some "tricks" as long as aren't really game-breaking, I think is the fun part of RPGs

the hits don't do big damage like before

:'(



I tried to build a party in Loren completely optimized for quickness and high-yield damage (think all mages + thieves) - great at the beginning, middle- and end-game are nearly impossible as the possible damage done in the first round is not enough to kill or critical damage all enemies. Personally I'm not a fan of artificially prolonged combats (high hit-points, low damage), and your short sentence indicates that this approach is even broadened in SotW.



There goes my favorite tactic

Well what's the fun of a battle that ends in 2-3 turns anyway!?!?!?!?

Jokes apart depends on the enemies, some will also have less hit points or lower defense, some will be much lower level, and also on skills. I want to have skills that do much more damage, in Loren I had some doing 125% normal damage, here I want some to have 300% normal damage (of course they'll cost a lot of SP). So what you say should be possible this time but have side-effects

Not necessarily for SotW, but in future games you may also allow for 'natural' armors which can be as protective as metallic heavy armors. Maybe they are harvested from extraordinary, maybe even magical sources.



For example, in Magic Stones, you have spiders which weave silk as strong as steel. It isn't that much of a stretch to figure some people have domesticated that type of spider, and make a killing selling 'Steelsilk'.



If you are looking at trees, maybe there is an 'Ironbark' tree which allows one to craft a piece of wood armor...