Class penalties/restrictions that make sense

[Nick]

Originally Posted by Derakon

I am all in favor of class restrictions that make for interesting decisions, ideally also while maintaining some degree of verisimilitude. I'm not convinced that the sharp weapons penalty does that. I'm sure we could have a long and productive thread arguing over what kinds of penalties/restrictions would make sense though!

OK, people, long and productive. Hop to it.

[Pete Mack]

Well, there are other variants which may be instructive. The most notable example is armor weight, which may have much more severe consequences. (CPB Ninja mentioned recently; also Sil stealth penalty.) Another is weapon weight, which makes rather more sense for mage casters than gloves. Carrying around a MoD will *really* make you clumsy. I suppose glove weight will too. (No steel gauntlets, but cesti and leather gloves are OK. But this doesn't make gameplay sense.)

[Antoine]

If there is a Paladin, he should not be able to backstab sleeping monsters and get away with it. I feel this very strongly.

I also believe that Hobbits should not be able to wield enormous melee weapons.

A.

[Antoine]

I also think at least one class (the priest?) should be strongly discouraged from using missile weapons. This should be possible using a malus to the launchers skill only.

A.

[Antoine]

Personally, I think the game needs a pure caster class ('Sorceror'?) that does most of its damage through spells. I know not _all_ fantasy mages are like that, but people want it and it should be an option.

The sorcerer could have:
- loads of SP and a good selection of attack spells
- lousy melee and missile skills (so that it simply cannot kill stuff effectively without spells)
- some holes in its selection of utility spells (to be filled with consumables)
- heavy SP penalties if encumbered (tending to favor robe-style armors)
- small or no devices bonus (differentiating it from the mage).

A.

[Whelk]

The priest sharp weapons restriction was mainly for flavor in the first place, right? If we want to maintain some "Priests are not trained combatants" flavor reflected by mechanics, maybe uh ... hrm. Melee as badly as a mage, but a weapon can be blessed (either found that way, or via a priest spell) so that when wielding it, the priest melees with it as well as they do in the current game?

Alternatively (but tricker to implement, probably): the longer a priest wields a weapon, the more "blessed" it becomes until it's at full (current game level) melee capability in the priest's hands?

Then they're not fighters swapping weapons on a whim with ease, but rather they depend on the "blessing" of the weapon to make up for their lack of martial training and prowess. When they pick up a new weapon, at first they -are- a martially-untrained priest fumbling with the weapon, but after some effort (and through the grace of the blessing) they can wield it effectively.

And if anyone is really attached to the blunt weapons for priests thing, BS something about maces and hammers being the preferred weapons of Tulkas or somesuch, so he blesses priests with enhanced affinity with them or something like that. Blunt weapons are more likely to be found pre-blessed, and/or gain blessing levels faster in the hands of a priest.

Yeah, I'm not sure how fun it'd be in practice, or how viable the "blessing levels" would be codewise, but it's fun to think about.

Afterthought: Count slays as "blessings" in their own right. Slay orcs is a weapon blessed to slay orcs. Priests can wield these weapons at full effectiveness immediately. Maybe even gain a small bonus to the slay brand when priests wield them. Does anyone actually use slay brands anyway, outside missiles? Could make them kind of fun as priest-geared weapons.

[mrfy]

Originally Posted by Whelk

Does anyone actually use slay brands anyway, outside missiles? Could make them kind of fun as priest-geared weapons.

I use them until I find something better. My current character, a 12th level Blackguard, is carrying a Tulwar of Slay Orc. It's pretty useful in the early levels.

[wobbly]

Same as above. Orc slay is actually pretty good around the depth the orc uniques start showing up. Sometimes even with with bad melee classes, if you can light beam away their packs

[Pete Mack]

Yeah, or just plain slay evil. That covers a lot of ground. Even the others tend to have higher damage bonus than ordinary magical weapons.

[Sphara]

I do not feel very strongly about the subject but I could see a priest being allowed using pointy weapons without penalties, reduced to 4 max attacks and getting +1 attack from a blessed weapon. This would of course mean that when playing with random artifacts, +attack and blessed brand could not be generated on a same weapon.

This would probably make early Holy Avengers quite strong but I dunno. Just threw this outta hat. Could consider something other than +1 attack for blessed weapons too.