Let's build: a New Class!

So there are plenty of great animations created by the community that don’t line up directly with any one class (see special magic users as a great example) and there are plenty of jobs a la Final Fantasy Tactics or traditional tabletop that aren’t represented that could potentially fill a niche or replace/supplement some of the iconic classes. So I thought this would be a good place to throw around ideas and use collective creativity to come up with ideas

As a starting example, consider an Alchemist or Apothecary. IS took a crack at similar idea on the Fates titles, but it only grasped at the idea before changing gears upon promoting into a merchant.

What I was theorycrafting is that there isn’t a true “buffing” class in the roster. dancers have had the rings and the ability to refresh and the potions briefly existed to function like magic water, but there’s not a dedicated class in the mainline series that focuses entirely on something akin to the rally skills as a class function and not just a skill, enter the Alchemist.

They have some weapon proficiency, probably a single magic or weapon, but their kit includes a variety of either potions or staves that could either recover damage to make them an alternative to cleric, or provide stat buffs or positive status effects. I’m not familiar enough with the FEbuilder tools to say for sure what the limitations are, but considering status conditions can be assigned to weapons, it seems entirely possible status buffs, akin to say, giving poison strikes to a weapon for a limited number of turns, or applying a life drain, aren’t outside the realm of possibilities

Ideally, the tools are there so the Alchemist/Apothecary could operate more effieciently, either with the equivalent of power stave so they can buff and add to the attack economy, or have their effects work as an aura so more members of the army can be effected at a time

Feel free to shoot down my idea or suggest your own, and theorycraft other class concepts you think could fit the framework or a fan-made FE game

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Hmm, the issue with that comes from difficulties with status overwrite. Namely the lack of it, any buffs usually only last 1 turn while debuffs last 3-5 (depending on hack). Due largely to the fact that buff states can’t be altered as due to how condition works.

Like if someone gets a Lifedrain buff it will likely have to be an effect state, which to my knowledge can’t be overwritten by, say, getting targeted by a sleep stave or poison, which renders that unit temporarily immune to other status effects for the duration. Certain skills would also certainly interact badly with those type of buffs, liquid ooze being the immediate one, and potential issues with naturally lifedraining weapons, or sol/aether.

As per some of my own class ideas one I’ve mulled around with is “crier” a unit that acts similar to a dancer in terms of actions but instead of a refresh creates either a small zone (3x3) where enemies can’t counterattack, lose all avoid, or get a -5 to defense and res for one turn. The idea being their strength is how easily they demoralize the enemy and hinder their belief in their cause/actions. With some tinkering it could be how you explain recruiting units who normally have no reason to betray their country/kingdom.

Another one is “channel mage” they can turn any tome into a siege tome for one turn at the cost of either the turn prior or after doing it, taking a massive bite of the tomes durability (60% consumed sounds balanced enough or break it outright if it has 20 or less uses), losing their counterattack until the next player phase, or maybe a health penalty. This one depends entirely on if you actually want to explain magic in your story since it only works with channeled casting being the explaination for magic users.

Finally, the last one I have is “spell charged” classes, these ones are more of a concept then an actual class but are basically a normal unit who can “charge” their weapons with magic allowing them to either attack at range or hit res instead of defense. The cost of this will usually be the weapons they use breaking faster as well as having lower strength and magic caps then their purely physical counterparts. Like if a berserks strength cap is 27 a “charged” berserkers strength cap is 22-23 since they can now deliberatly target res instead. This is the one most likely to be difficult or impossible to actually implement due to the amount of conditional coding involved with the class to begin with.

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I’m actually planning on making an Alchemist class for my project that utilizes the AoE hack. I might beg Vesly with money to make it so you can toggle whether battle animations play for certain AoE actions lol
Only have a tiny meh snippet of an animation I need to redo so far tho
alchemist

edit: also given I’m atelier inspired I’d be using the Murdersticks patch as well lol

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Oh, one more just struck me. “Shavers/Breakers” they are units that have really low strength or magic but compensate for it with “permanent” stat debuffs on their targets, the idea being even if they deal 0 damage they slowly weaken dangerous targets for their stronger comrades to take care of. Any debuffs applied to friendlies are cleared at chapter end.

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My wife mentioned she wanted to see a captain or commander type class with Refresh. Her initial thought was a promotion to a pirate where it can wield an axe and “dance” so instead of fighting himself (or herself) they’d rather send others to do the fighting for them

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Hi there. Since you mentioned final fantasy, i have a couple of ideas about classes from there. I am new here and don’t know maybe these classes already exists in some fan project.

  1. Paladin - Sword/Light magic. Like a paladin from the final fantasy he able to use holy swords (Excalibur , lightbringer…)

  2. Dark Knight - Sword/Dark magic. Opposite of the paladin.

  3. Time mage - well, i think something similar i have seen in the Sacred War. There were “Oracle” class, who can use special staves for buff allies. What if these are not staves, but magic with similar effects assigned to this class? Not exactly similar, i suggest to go further and give this class the ability to dance (but renamed to turbo (or quick)) + meteor

The following classes already exist with different names and meanings, i quess, but I’ll mention them anyway just in case:

  • Red mage (dark/light magic)
  • Hawkman (lances, flier) - this one from the tactics ogre
  • Mermaid (lances, staves) - this one too

I hope this is not a waste of time and you will find something useful among these ideas

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2 words… pirate captain!!
we’re missing the 1 branch of promo for pirates, fighters and brigands have natural promos already, idea would be a lance/axe wielding pirate captain that might have the possibility to turn into a ship, via dismounting patch. kinda like the pirate in storge, probably have em be able to use ballistas in ship form, other wise lances (spear guns and stuff) and axes, we could also go for axes and swords though guess you’ll be competing with heroes then

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wouldn’t a pirate captain use cutlasses and axes? given the form of cutlasses vs swords you could argue a crit or debuff specialty on cutlasses with lower hit rate vs the hero’s longsword being focused on consistency and flexibility

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true so the more natural weapon would be sword/axes, but i like the idea of a harpoon equivalent for pirates, since i’d be 1 more promo class that uses lances, and harpoons are also sea related and such, makes it more distinct from hero

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A harpoon would effectively be a stupendously heavy Saunion, which is already heavy loool. Maybe to communicate it’s a harpoon without 10000 weapon locks they could get Heavy Strikes and/or Lancefaire

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Your “Paladin” and “Dark Knight” already exist in official games, to some extent. The female version of the Paladin class (which has different weapons based on gender for some reason in FE5/Thracia 776 and the Holy Knight in FE16/Three Houses both combine a physical weapon with divine magic, and FE13/Awakening, FE14/Fates, and FE16/Three Houses all have a “Dark Knight” that uses swords and dark magic pretty much exactly how you’ve described it.

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On the subject of pirates, what about an unpromoted swashbuckler class that uses swords?

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I’m seeing some good ideas being thrown around. Seems like there aren’t enough classes that mix magic and weapons in interesting ways, so having magic siege units as a counterpart to ballisticians seems like it makes sense, likewise a class that wields weapons infused with magic, akin to an Arcane Archer type, makes a lot of sense

There does seem to be a lack of lieutenant esque classes, something that functions as a promoted or senior unit that has abilities that improve their direct sub-ordinates. The fact that the default AI can’t handle barrier staves or dancers may be a factor, but I know there’s a patch for that, so having a more offensive Marshal or Captain class sounds fairly feasible

It does seem odd that IS hasn’t done more with Brigands and Pirates considering how iconic they are to the early game of every mainline title. If there were more promoted options or weapon triangle alternatives to pirates and brigands, you could make the early game more varied, or give them staying power so a bandit boss could be a threat or an interesting obstacle past the mid game

Thank you everyone for the feedback and ideas! Always good to see if there’s ways to break the mold and change things up considering how deep the hacking tools that exist are

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I may be reading into this, but if this is closer the a Final Fantasy Paladin or Dark Knight, it would be more like an armored infantry frontline unit that combines swords with dark and light, so something closer to the Barons from Thracia/Geneology, but with potential for holy dark gimmicks, like healing or debuffing (paladin and dark knight, respectively)

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I think the big one that falls into a niche of having not really be done yet with easy/traditional implementation would be something like a flying thief/brigand combo? Destroys/Pillages villages, can steal from enemies (the mount’s talons swipe weapons from the enemy, rider flies in upside down and swipes smaller items, etc.), uses Axes and has a Berserker-ish stat spread (low defenses, high speed and strength)? (Personally, I like this as a promotion for Pirate or something like an Axe-using Pegasus Knight/Sky Knight…)

(Alternatively, I always wished that Ravens in Tellius could act like Thieves and steal…)


Thinking a little more involved mechanically, you could do something like a “Geomancer”, where you can manipulate the terrain of the map, closing off some paths, creating new ones (collapsing cliffs or walls, etc.), burning down forests, expanding water to flood the fields, and so on, interacting with “Dragon Veins” from a Mag/2 distance on the map (which would trigger the tile changes above). Could even take a page from the “finding Runes” set up that the character Parvati in Lonely Mirror had where you could find natural magic by interacting with other “Dragon Vein” points on the map that didn’t trigger tile changes (a la Draw points in FF8).


But, the thing that I think will always kinda be limiting on the creative side, aside from potentially needing to code new assembly for skills and mechanics (depending on how deep you go with it and what you can repurpose that’s already been done), will be what the animations themselves have available. My biggest challenge with trying to come up with non-standard classes is that there aren’t a lot of options sometimes for wanting to have a class have multiple proficiencies at their disposal. Want that flying Raider to have Axes and Bows/Lances? Well, you’re now limited to either a Falco or Wyvern, which might not be fun if you wanted it to be, say, a Gryphon, since there is no Axe+Bow/Lance combo between the two main Gryphon options.

There are plenty of other cases like this for me, so it can be kind of limiting, but I also respect just how much time and effort can go into making even single frames for an animation, let alone the whole thing, so I don’t want this to sound like I’m complaining. I just hope for a day in the future where there are more animations like the Ephraim Repack where there are a whole suite of options for weapons that the animation can use, opening up far more diversity in what creators can manifest with the assets at hand.

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Wasn’t there a Promoted Pirate Class called “Raider” from the FE7X Immortal Sword in Tactile? The one that BwdYeti is in charge of? Like the Raider gets Swords via promotion to have Axes and Swords at the same time?

Like this one

image

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Well In my project i literally change all the vanilla classes for new custom classes associated with YGO
I can give you some ideas of custom classes:
Some of you mentioned FFT about paladins , dark knights , Red Mages.
You can also make these
Blue Mage : Swords / Staff
Green Mage : Anima / Staff

I would like a summoner class related to Beast Tamers
A class with their own characteristics but also summon their beasts and you could control the beast and share their experience with the tamer/summoner

I can also think about the patch that mount and dismount a mounted unit and fuse it with the Tamer class i just mentioned

The tamer mounting his beast
When it is dismounted then also summon the beast
It’s like having a single class that can be separated in two in the middle of the battle

Cool right ?

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Duelist, swordmasters with anima but without crit or idk

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One is artillery.
Now that Vesly has created the AoE, the conditions are right to implement artillery.
It is a class that attacks a wide area but also damages its allies.
Unlike Thunderstorm, Purge, etc., it can attack a wide area.

However, the enemy AI cannot use AoE, making it a very cowardly class that only the player can use.
If the enemy would use the AI it would be a good way to counter the Phalanx, but unfortunately that is not yet possible.

Another thing that would be interesting as a battle animation is a flamethrower.
Or it would be interesting to be able to attack two squares using AoE.
Ted Broiler from Metal Max 2 and the Mohawk Man shouting “Disinfect the filth!” from Fist of the North Star are well-known.

Some of the things I have already implemented in Kaitou include

Scout:
A dragon knight with 15 mobility but all other stats are 0 except for technique.
He has a wide range of vision just like a bandit.
However, he is too weak and dies in an instant when attacked, just like dancer.

Canto Dancer:
A Dancer with Cant of Cavalry.
It is quite useful.

A class with a double bonus to terrain effects.
A class that receives double the terrain bonus.
Can be created in vanilla.

Classes that are not affected by bad weather
This one can also be made in vanilla.
Since it does not receive reduced mobility due to bad weather, it is more useful the more rainy or snowy the map is.
However, this is too strong, so we set it to be poor at fighting on land.

What could be implemented in other games with SKILL SCROLL

Flying Strategist:
Leadershipstar +4.
In addition, it gives a buff effect to 3 squares around it.
However, he is too weak and dies instantly when attacked, just like dancer.

It would be interesting to consider a unit that supports combat rather than a combat unit that fights directly against the enemy.
This is because there is a cap on the number of deploy.

Players must balance the number of troops directly fighting the enemy with the number of troops assisting in the operation.
Since kaitou has a +50 triangle correction, no single unit can defeat them all without a single warrior.
Therefore, it is necessary to have specialists for each weapon.
On top of that, you need to consider the number of auxiliary units.

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I’ve been tossing around the idea of a “Tamer” class.

They’d use Bow and Lance, with middle of the road stats but they’d have the ability to “Summon” an animal to the field, with the animal summoned being up to chance that scales with your level. They’d also have enhance vision in Fog of War (falconry giving them a “bird’s eye view” of the battlefield).

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