Now, as I've mentioned, there are four stats: Mental, Agility, Physical, and Social, so we're going to have classes that correspond to those.
So let's map out the corners of this square.
- Mental: Fire Mage - The traditional magical artillery. Fragile, can't wield regular weapons (well?) or use much armor, but can cause area damage at a decent range.
- Agility: Thief - Lots of skill points, can get most of the movement and detection skills (climb, hide, see traps, listen etc) for cheap. Opens doors, sneaks around, disarms traps,
- Physical: Fighter - Wears armor. Hits slime with pointy metal.
- Social: Diplomat - Grants bonuses to party. Gets better rewards from NPCs, and unlocks quests earlier. Can intimidate enemies.
So the points between the corners are
- Mental/Agility - Shadow Mage
- Mental/Physical - Warlord
- Mental/Social - Healer
- Agility/Physical - Bowman
- Agility/Social - Dancer
- Physical/Social - Knight
Some of them are, at the moment, more distinctive than others. A Knight combines the Fighter's combat durability with a Diplomat's party bonuses, perhaps with some extra minor abilities (like repelling slime). A Healer is quite different from a Fire Mage or a Diplomat. A Dancer gives party bonuses and inflicts various penalties on enemies, confusing, blinding, or slowing them, for instance. I'm not ready to go on record about what a Shadow Mage or Bowman can do right now.
The four secondary classes are are Blue Mage (Mental), Acrobat (Agility), Gladiator (Physical), and Leader (Social).
They're not available as a primary class and they serve to enhance your primary class' abilities. Silver_Blossom, for instance is a Healer/Blue Mage. The Blue Mage class doesn't give her any extra spells, but it can do things like increase the range of her healing, increase the number of people she can heal at a time, and decrease the cooldown time.
You can only choose a secondary class that shares a stat with your primary class. If you're a Bowman (Agility/Physical) you cannot multiclass to Blue Mage (Mental) but you could take Acrobat or Gladiator. If you
You can choose any primary class as your multiclass, though. You could be a Thief/Diplomat, for instance. It'd be similar to a Dancer but not quite. You could be a Bowman/Healer or a Warlord/Dancer, for instance, which would mean emphasizing every one of your stats (PA/MS or MP/AS in the above cases). You'd have a very diverse skill list, but you probably wouldn't be exceptionally good at any of them.
So, what about the other classes I've mentioned previously? Well, it wouldn't surprise me if we've referred to Joy's character as a healer, cleric, and priest at various times. I had originally considered having two classes between each corner (so there would be, for instance a Paladin who was mostly Physical with a little Social, and a Commander who was mostly Social with a little Physical). Right now, with 14 classes, I think we've got enough to play with. I can't justify adding six more to the design document. As is, there are 72 different class combinations. I can't justify more than that and I'm wondering if I can really justify that many.
Noob is the undecided class everyone starts with, until they pick something permanent.
So there you have it. The FBAO class list. At least until we come up with more or change them.
