A non-rogue, city-based class.

[DesertT]

What about a base class that allows the selection of 2 or 3 subguilds?  Thought it would be neat to have a char that's a decent fighter, but with subguilds of house servant and doctor.  It'd be nice to be a healer and a crafter of sorts, without having to suck at fighting.

[Cale_Knight]

Too be honest, I don't think the game need's another non city based character, because, when it comes down to it, there is no city, or wilderness based characters. ... Their skill sets are compatible to it. We've only defined them as city based, and wilderness based, because of the guild's name.

Yes, I agree with this. What you're describing is one of great concepts of Armageddon: a character is not defined by his guild, but what he does.

Except that newbies haven't reached that point of realization yet. Nine of out ten newbies are going to say: "Alright, I'm a pickpocket/hamburglar/assassin. Better start pickpocketing/hamburgling/assassinating."

Then he's going to run afoul of a templar, some rinth-mobs, or, more likely, the crim-code, and he's going to die.

At the same time, a newbie who picks ranger is going to say: "Time to go ranging."

And he's going to get eaten.

That's why I said newbies are implicity forced rather than explicity forced. Nobody is actually forcing them to these ends, but most of the time it's the inevitable conclusion anyway.

This is not helping Armageddon Mud.

A class that is a clearly defined "city-dweller," and that can be pointed to as very newbie-friendly, would be a huge benefit to the game.

[Medena]

Except that newbies haven't reached that point of realization yet. Nine of out ten newbies are going to say: "Alright, I'm a pickpocket/hamburglar/assassin. Better start pickpocketing/hamburgling/assassinating."

[snip]

This is not helping Armageddon Mud.

Let's give a bit of credit to newbies' ability to learn and more than a bit of credit to the wonderfully addicting powers of Armageddon. The latter will ensure that the newbies do stay long enough to learn.

My very first character was a pickpocket. And, yeah, I said "better go pickpocket" and I died within a few hours to the crim code. My second character was a pickpocket and I said "better go pickpocket but I'll be more careful this time" and I lasted two weeks and managed to pick up the only (as far as I know) bad notes on my account. My third character was a pickpocket and I said "not even going to play the pickpocket thing this time except as a background" and that character went for 7 months until I retired her.

[HunterKiller]

It's been brought up before about picking and choosing skills.  I like the -idea- as it would alleviate some of the predictability of knowing what a character can do when you find out their guild.  In practice it'd probably be a pain to code and therefore wouldn't happen (is my guess) unless it was done on a special app basis.  I personally would only like it if experienced characters whose players have acquired enough karma to have access to that kind of option, but that's just me (if you could code it then more power to ya).  I know it would help with character background if you could do it at character creation but I'd still rather keep it to experienced / long-lived folk.  It'd be a nice little incentive not to kill off so fast.  :-P

I'm all for adding guilds, though.  The more options arm has the more appealing it might be to players.  I just don't know how to mesh a new guild in with the current system.

I've never gotten the merchant guild.  I'm not saying it's wrong, I'm just saying I don't get it.  I don't know if they should be changed or not, I don't know the numbers as to who is playing and who likes it.  If I've tried it before it was a -long- time ago and don't remember so maybe that's why I don't get them.  :-)  I might try it one of these days if I'm feeling brave.  Merchant (without the crafting part) seems more like a strong subguild to me than an actual guild.  It'd be kinda cool to split merchant up into two city classes so that both classes got about the same in merchanting but were better at different things.  I don't know what those things would be though.

- HK

[bloodfromstone]

Personally, I feel the more varied guilds/subguilds we can add the better. I'm a big fan of entirely skill based systems, but I've heard more than once that this sort of thing will likely never be implemented. This is sad to me. I dislike how cut and dry the guild sets are in Armageddon. It makes guild sniffing a breeze, which, in turn, leads to OOC information bleeding into the game. I recall eating some roots I'd foraged in a tavern and immediately having someone try to recruit me into their military clan, since they needed outdoorsmen who could navigate. I also recall hearing people being suspicious that so-and-so was a magicker simply because he was terrible at fighting. I would love, love, love to see a dozen takes on the same guilds and subguilds, adding droplets of skills and taking away bits of others just to make things more vague.

Now, fully on topic, a basic commoner class would be really awesome. Low fighting ability, low roguish ability, etc, etc. Tons of skills without being particularly good at any of them. Including new skills involving mining, salt grebbing, and whatever those crazy Northerners do for money would be especially nice. If the right skills and code were provided, we could even create some new ways for city-based commoners to make a little dough.

[X-D]

Merchant guild needs a bit of work on them starting skills.

I wish pick pocket and burgler would be merged into one guild.

And I'd love to see a city based "jack of all trades, Master of none" Guild.

A guild that can branch a LARGE range of skills, but at low maxes, and in most cases the branched skills would not be anything more then other guilds start with.

Starting skills say start at 10% and max at 50%, branched skills max lower.

Great class for a bard I'd think. Or nobles, Merchant house family members, But specialy people that just wanna play Joe the commoner.

Would be even better if there was a northern style and a southern style.

[jhunter]

I agree with merging the burglar and pickpocket guilds into one Thief Guild that can serve easily as either. Doing that, and adding this sort of Commoner Guild would be sweet.

[spawnloser]

You know, I'd never thought of a pickpocket/burglar merge before...and I like it.

[Cuusardo]

Something that some newbies don't seem to understand about Armageddon is that a PC is not defined by its skills.  Skills are just things the PC knows how to do, and do not necessarily determine profession.

For example, a person creates a character that is an assassin/stonecrafter.  This PC learned how to be sneaky from his older brother while growing up, and picked up making things out of stones from his parents, learning their profession.  The PC decides that he needs to get a good job so that he can help support the family with his income, and hears that Lady Prissypants is looking for an aide.  So, he approaches her, interviews, and gets the job.  He is allowed to train occasionally with the guard to get better at using weapons, so that he can help to protect Lady Prissypants if she is attacked.

I think the reason that a lot of newbies don't realize things like this at first, and therefore go through the experience of getting PCs killed due to hasty mistakes.  Some of them will take a while to realize this and some never learn.  I would wager that the majority of newbies DO learn this within a year of playing, and go on to find themselves in great roles in the game.

[Rindan]

Personally, I think a "commoner" class would be awesome.  Screw the newbies, I wouldn't mind such a class.  Sure, I can generally kludge into place whatever kind of 'class" I want, but a few more options wouldn't hurt.  I don't like the idea of a class with a bunch of low skill capped skills.  A low skill sneak is a worthless sneak.  You are better off not to give someone the illusion that their skills work.  They should have skills they excel at.    If I could make a commoner class, it would have the following:

They would have a ranger like fighting ability, but with no ability to branch any skills.  So, they would start out fairly beefy in terms of combat, but probably never been anything greater then a sub-par mercenary due to the lack branching any support combat skills.  They would have merchant like abilities for "commoner" crafts like cooking, tailoring, basket weaving, tool making and things of that nature.  Throw on top of that some low skill capped other crafts like wood and stone working.  Add in some pick pocket like capped haggle and value, and I think you would have a wining combination.

Could you kludge a pick pocket into looking sorta like this class?  Sure.  Then again, I could kludge a burglar into looking like a pick pocket.  I don't think the option would hurt, and it would make a nice open class that can really go any way the wind blows.  They could easily end up fighting in the Byn, crafting as a Kadian, merchanting as a Kuraci, or serving as a noble aid.  I like the idea.

[My 2 sids]

Okay,  building from another thread... what do we do with a "Jack-of-all trades"?
The game simply isn't set up for characters that never practice enough to specialize in certain skills.  My question is how would we implement such a guild?  We're not talking about a few freak characters but a actual percentage of characters.



Here's my answer (separate from my actual question which is what I hope this thread will be discussing)

Have more 'part-time' work.  This would allow characters to be employed in a wide variety of jobs (cook, aide, etc) without taking so much time the player becomes bored.

[Maybe42or54]

Half merchant-like/half warrior like

That is what I want. One where I can pick to master a few craft skills, and a few fighting skills. Then I'd be set. I don't even use half the skills I own most of the time. Then the ones I do use, I usually can't master. What a rip off.