Character Build/Leveling "Recipes" to Replicate old Adventurer Professions

I didn't know if this has been discussed, but has anyone thought of how proper selection of skills could enable one to replicate the old Ultima professions?

For Fighters, it's simply focusing on arms and armor, and physical development. For Mages, it's developing spells and mental abilities. But what about the other professions?

Bards: a half & half of combat & magic training, with an emphasis on ranged combat? What about bardic performance?

Tinkers: Much like bards, but really focusing on Crafting?

Paladins: arms & heavy armor, with a bit of sun & life magics?

Rangers: arms & light armor, with a bit of the nature magics?

Druids: Much like mages, but with a bit of arms and light armor, along with focusing on nature-themed magics?

Shepherds: Light armor and some "simple" weapons training, but no magics and more or less heavy on Crafting?

Some of the Ultima III professions could be determined as well: Barbarians using arms and light armor, focusing on raging; Alchemists focusing on Alchemy Crafting with some magics; Illusionists heavily using Moon magics; Thieves using light armor, ranged weapons, focusing on Stealth; even Clerics using Bludgeons and heavy armor with a lot of Sun and Life magics.

Didn't know if it's an approach considered by some of the players for their characters. Didn't know if ready-made templates of such professions could be an option during character creation to enable a player to just hop in and select a role/style/profession with all of the points allocated already.

 

Cool. I guess I am a Paladin! I think it would be nice to have some specialized bonuses though maybe. Although I do NOT want this to be a cookie cutter stuck in your specific role game. One of the best things about UO was being able to put things like halberd skill with magic use or things like that.

 

I generally like the idea of titles. I think it adds a bit to the game and still allows for us to make any custom build we like. I, like Hest75, generally try to paladin like. However, I have found that in single play it is nice to have some healing that also brings in the next target. I have been using death magic to do so and have been pleased with the result. Hope this doesn't make me a death dealer or anti-paladin. (I give to charity, does that atone for deathraying wolves?)

 

Dang it. Now I want to be a Druid or a Ranger. I almost always picked one or the other depending on how much magic I wanted to use.

 

I like the idea of being able to select from among many different paths, but I don't want to be able to jump into the game as a specific profession with the points already allocated.

jr

 

Backgrounds and base classes could work for characters if they started at, say level 5-10, and had a predefined set of skills (these could easily be re-rolled) and it was all optional. Maybe even a suggested line of skills to take while levelling up, some people do find it difficult making such choices and in those cases 'templates' can prove handy.

Last thing we need though is to pigeonhole players into a given class and railroad their skill choices, thankfully I think the devs have no intention of doing that at all. I am not however against the system helping those new to RPG games.

 

Well, assuming you start at level 1 instead of like level 5 now, I don't see that there would be much point in templates or recipes or whatever you want to call them. I would just include a help tooltip that pops up when you first go to your skills window that gives some suggestions about what skills certain kinds of characters would have and what kind of playstyle it would be. So it'd look something like:

Of course, there'd be more archetypes listed, but that was just an example.

And if you really want to be called a "Warrior" or "Mage" or "Paladin" or whatever, I'd suggest doing it something like what UO did, where it'd call you whatever your highest skill was, like "Bob the Expert Swordsman". Though instead maybe it'd look at several skills and if they all fall within a certain range it'd call you by some profession name. For example, if the majority of your points were invested in Death Magic and Focus and you had, I dunno, 50+ points in each, you'd be called a Necromancer and NPCs might start to call you that in addition to or instead of "outlander" or "adventurer".

 

I typically play a cleric type, it is hard to do with the ways the skills are set up. I have to spread out my skills thin to get something that resembles a cleric.
I start with life spells get my life power to 5, heal self and heal other, if im lucky I can get healing burst (which I think is pretty weak for being such a high level spell and costing so much! Since I cant get all the healing spells (which should all be in life tree, since there isn't any damage spells there) now I have to work up to healing rain, another terribly weak spell, and I have just spent a crap load of skill points to get it! Now I have to go to my primary weapon bludgeons and fill that up! by the time I get to focus to have the Intelligence to cast easily and spread of slots etc... im almost out of points drop the rest in tactics.

It would be nice to just have a healing tree (or life tree) with all the healing spells there! replace the healing spells in other areas, such as water replace healing rain with blizzard or something.

so the conclusion that ive come to is, you will never be able to play a pally or a cleric or a warrior until you reach level 50 where you have all these extra points to spend, and even then you will not be able to be pure anything. that's a problem for me personally about set up of skills, 50 levels ago I would have loved to have the basic skills of what class I want to play!

 

I dual wield spears with heavy armour and earth magic, not sure what you would call that class

 

A "classless" character system is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you have the freedom to develop and grow your character as you like; on the other, as was demonstrated in UO, players will cherry pick the best skills, and you end up with cookie cutter hordes of plate-wearing, halberd swinging, Corp Por-ing tank-mages. That was my greatest disappointment with UO, and my greatest fear for SotA.

 

Somewhat little-known game EYE: Divine Cybermancy had a class system like what is being mentioned in this thread. The game attached a "class" to you that had no effect, purely a title, which is exactly what it should be in SotA because its a "classless" system. When you hit level 25 and then 50, the game would check where you've been putting your points and then give you a new title to reflect that. Here's a link to the wiki page describing it