Adventuring Class

[Myrddin Starfari]

I may have been working too hard lately, or not enough but recent adventures with some games (ok mostly one game) have gotten me thinking (don't bother running, I locked the doors) about multi classing or as I like to call it the solitary adventurer class.

now I know there's purists that think, I'm a fighter I should bash down the door, I'm a magic user lets try a spell, or hey locks were made to be picked (thief).  but I've been wondering is it so practical for a solitary adventurer to only know one profession to the exclusion of all others.

This tactic might be fine if you've got a party of adventurers each with different skills but could leave the solitary adventurer (whom some call hero or even heroine) up the creek without the ability to sneak.

now I'm not saying you should know everything, but isn't knowing as much as you can cram in that tiny little head (well tiny til you get called hero a few dozen times anyway).  or in the case of QFI isn't knowing as much as possible going to make it easier to a fast one on the NPC before they can unleash their vicious war unicorns upon you (or worse).

[Fizzii]

(ok mostly one game)

HQ?

For a pure adventure game, it makes sense that the player should be able to do what's practical for the player character. Of course, with all games, the designer chooses all the possible actions the player character can do, so players are limited to whatever the designer chose to allow.

In a way, this extends to RPG/Adventures, within reason. I know that it is entirely possible to get max skill in strength as a sorceress/rogue, but it doesn't really make sense for those characters to go bashing down doors - my opinion is that it would be out of character for a role-playing game where you are playing a certain type of character.

If the game is designed well, you wouldn't end up being stuck/unable to progress just because you didn't have X skill. That would be poor game design. In real life, some skills might take months before you even begin to become competent at it (e.g. picking locks/throwing accurately/climbing/sneaking/even fast talking). In a way, with HQ, a single point in a skill probably indicates minimum competency, and from there, it becomes more of a matter of how good you really are. So unless the heroine studied several years learning how to harness magic, I wouldn't expect that skill to be learnt in game.

Around other RPGs, that is, Action RPGs, I would really expect my characters to solely specialize in one area. Mostly because of the way these other RPGs have certain armor/equipments which need to be optimized to get the best firepower for your character, and in terms of skills (of the very few RPGs I've played), you don't really get to cross-class in most games anyway.

With QFI, which plays more like an adventure, I *think* you can still use other class solutions for dealing with things (at least, in some cases). But unlike HQ, QFI doesn't have up front hybridizing because of the way 'choose your character' works. Still, I need to play more before I can say anything definitive; Bt could give a better idea

[Myrddin Starfari]

One thought to the benefit of being a specific class rather than jack of all trades is more experience with a particular set of skills.  Though this can be rendered moot by everybody else being far more powerful than you regardless, though isn't by any means a game breaker either way.

[Fizzii]

I suppose it comes down to how it is implemented to ensure that pure classes aren't disadvantaged compared to hybrids and how it should balance out in the end.

In HQ, the disadvantage to hybridizing is that you're weaker at the beginning of the game until you've levelled your stats more.

I guess one way is to introduce an arbitrary cap to the skills for a hybrid character. Or increase the cap limit for a pure class, but it depends on the skills scale, and the opportunities to use those skills (e.g. there's only so many places you need to climb in an adventure game). I guess this issue isn't a problem at all in Action-RPGs because they are open world, and they can just make even more harder monsters/dungeons to do stuff.

Another way to do it is by simply allowing the player a fixed amount of points for each character level, and the player chooses how to distribute them (so the player could hybridize by distributing points into other skills, but then is limited by how strong they become in the rest of their skills). But that would mean defining at what point a character has a new level, and is quite different for what HQ/QFI are going for (Mage's Initiation, on the other hand, appeared to have a 'choose where your stats go' UI.

[Myrddin Starfari]

I suppose I'm thinking more of the character from ye olde apart from for replayability QFG always seemed silly to have specific classes when everybody else of said class was much more powerful than you (understandable early on, though not as much when you call yourself a seasoned adventurer).  then again, they'd probably been doing things for longer. That was handled quite well by the wizard in Heroine's Quest actually saying it.

How do people usually play these things, pure one class or bit of a mix.  Me I'm a mix though that's because I need all the help I can get. (And I'm a bit of a mix in real life too, can do a lot of things not badly but not well. I might climb, or talk my way through things but I'll not be running away.

Not that I've had to fight much in the way of monsters in real life, although sometimes I wonder whether some people I deal with are out to take over the world.

And I'm not forgetting these are different games - all quite fun so far too regardless of the whole class thing.

[Blackthorne]

QFI is definitely interesting, because it's almost as if you are already playing as a thief and hybrid classing from there.  In QFI, there's lots of ways to solve different situations, and often you can perform many of them as the different "classes" in the game - but unlike many traditional RPGs, in QFI here, you can't really fully multi-class like others. 


Bt

[Collector]

HQ?

I take it that you meant Heroine's Quest, but it took me a moment to realize it as HQ has meant Hero's Quest since its release and is *the* game that started the Adventure/RPG genre.

[Fizzii]

Yes, Heroine's Quest. I did mention 'heroine' in there at any rate, and if you read these forums you would know I worked on that game.

Anyway, glad you worked it out.

[Lambonius]

Adventure gamers are good at figuring things out. 

[Myrddin Starfari]

if at first you don't succeed, load a saved game.