[CF-Devel] Class/Race split (again)

[Andreas Vogl]

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      It's been proposed several times now to split classes and races.
     
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      Races would provide certain intrinsics, classes would provide others.
     
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      I will execute the whole project if there is a consensus in favor
     
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      (though I'll be glad to have help.)
     
     
Splitting races/classes is a great idea, I like it. I can´t
think of any reason why that should not be good.

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      My idea is that a player would first choose a race for his char,
     
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      and then choose a class, much like it is done now.  [...]
     
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      I propose the following races:
     
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      http://langmuir.eecs.berkeley.edu/~peterm/Race.html
      
      
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Basically that´s quite a good concept for races already.

Neverthless, here´s my thoughts in particular:

- I would remove the "denied fire" from trolls, it would make them too
  unpopular I believe. It´s quite easy to get a ring of Life (regen +2),
  so regen+2 does hardly justify even the vuln. fire IMHO.
  path_attuned: restoration would also fit into the troll-concept btw.

- What about removing the vuln. poison for quetzals? It´s already
  hard enough to get along with those fellows. And no way to collect
  pros/immus easily. Besides, I don´t know why a dragon should be
  vulnerable to poison anyways.

- In general, I would add a few more spellpath- and vuln/pro/immu-
  attributes to make the races more unique. In particular I´d say
  Half Orc and Northman are too similar to each other yet.
  What about: Northman - prot: cold,   path_repelled fire
              Half Orc - prot: poison, path_repelled turning (->holy word)

What I especially like about your race-proposals is that every race
fills a certain purpose.

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      For Classes:
     
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      http://langmuir.eecs.berkeley.edu/~peterm/Class.html
      
      
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Your proposal for classes is good too, and quite useable as it is.
But still, it´s so sweet - I must state some of my own ideas:

The monk will probably be used by fireborns only, but maybe that´s
not even all that bad? It provides the fireborns with an additional
stats-bonus "for free" (and meditation!). That might be a chombo
for quite devastating spellcraft... If the armour/ac bonus per level
would be adjusted a little - Maybe quetzals wouldn´t suck anymore?

What about providing the Priest with the "staff to snake"-spell as
startequip? That spell rocks for lowlevel priests and it would fit
extremely well (a certain Moses-effect).

Lockpicks for thieves? A must :-)

Viking seems to be more a race than a class to me. Could you imagine
a wraith, or an elf being a viking? Moreover, the purpose doesn´t
differ from the warrior very much. Since we´ve already got the
"northman"-race, maybe we should let go of it?

I guess the Wizard got Pow +3 rather than Cha +3, a little typo.
Btw - how about a cloak of minor protection for the wizz?

Ninja without karate-skill? He already got lots of skills, maybe
remove smithery or bowyer in return...?

Barbarian: Perhaps I played Diablo too much but... I would prefer
skill mountaineer instead of woodsman :-)


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      Discussion:  (On Races)
     
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      My problem is that humans seem very boringly vanilla:  what could
     
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      make them an attractive choice?
     
     
In almost every MUD you´ll find a seemingly boring human race
without any special abilities. Still, humans are allrounders
and usually very popular to start out with.

I´m really looking forward to that race/class-split thing.
It will create a lot of fantasy-atmosphere I think.

Ah, one last thing: We´ll need new icons for at least the troll and
the gnome. Too bad I suck at drawing. Perhaps someone could come up
with some cool pixmaps/pngs?
To save work, we could use the same race-icons for all classes
at first. But we could change their colours for example...


Andreas V.