To begin, the goal of this system is for the player to choose the roles they want to participate in, and from there give them a list of classes that fit that role, either strongly, or weakly. I understand that this is similar to what Rift did, but the concept here is that you are actually encompassing two roles directly, and the variety of possible classes allowed covers the entire spectrum of primary roles.

Secondly, I’m a strong advocate of leveling up multiple classes and allowing the player to mix certain abilities from each. In this sense, I’m thinking more of Final Fantasy Tactics or Final Fantasy 5. The idea is that each class provides certain abilities, and the player can choose to include one of those abilities in their build.

For now, we simply focus on the classes and not their abilities (as such things are more likely to change depending on the kind of game that is made). Roles were generated from the D&D4e Player’s Manual. They are Defender, Controller, Leader and Striker.

While Defender’s are often seen as meat shields, the better ones are almost never hit by on level enemies, meaning that they require little to no healing in normal combat situations. Defender’s role is to punish enemies that don’t attack them. They often lead combat and do better the more mobile they can become.

Controllers function best as damage prevention and improving positioning. They help by forcing enemies to scatter, since their attacks are often AoE. Scattered enemies are less likely to be able to focus on any one particular target, easing the incoming damage that everyone is receiving.

Leaders are a bit like healers, but they also act as a buffer/debuffer. Leaders also focus on team positioning, and can help move players into better situations.

Strikers are the epitome of what it means to be dps. The purpose of a striker is to do as much damage as possible, and finish targets off quickly.

Part of this requires a bit more AI from the enemies. They need to react to damage similarly to how players do. They need to get out of the fire. They need to fear crossing a wall of fire. This also implies a slower game.

From the origin of the roles, we can establish certain parallels and changes to fit a more active game type. One thing to note is that the Defender and Controller play very similar roles. This increases the amount of tank like roles in the game, as Defender/defender, Defender/controller, and Controller/Controller all fit similar functions.

The biggest change to fit an MMO is getting Leaders something that is not moving players around. While its okay to move enemies around, the current situation would allow for too much griefing. One solution is give movement buffs, shields and temporary protection from damage zones.

Combining roles would involve a primary and a secondary choice. Before locking the player in, they would be able to view all possible classes they could become with the choices they made. Unlike the Rift soul system, they would not be switching roles (dps cleric, or a tank rogue), but instead they would always function as, for example, a Defender/Controller, regardless of the class they choose. Though some classes would be a Controller/Defender the result would essentially be the same.

Some of the classes would also be just aspects of a class (like Defender/Leader getting access to the Death Knight tanking tree and the Paladin Tanking Tree, to use WoW as an example). Some combinations would also be more limited, (Striker/Striker or any choice where both roles are the same). This is scenario A.

Another way to take this is to allow for the player to choose a class, and then pick a sub role to perform, which works closer to how WoW works. This is scenario B.

Another way is to allow the player to switch how their roles fit, which in turn opens up a specific smaller set of classes. This is scenario C.

No matter the approach, the important function is that if a player is a Leader/Striker, or a Striker/Leader, they are enough to heal the team. This is another aspect of the game that needs to change from the typical MMO combat situation. It makes no sense for all enemies to focus just the tank. It also makes no sense for every swing to hit.

Essentially the proposal works better the further you get away from the WoW model, and the closer you get to the turn based model. Also, the closer skill shots matter, the better. This means that random hitting would have to be reduced, or accuracy would have to apply to spells and abilities that cause a scattered effect, therefore focusing more of the damage where it counts, versus scattering to points that don’t matter.

As for the actual class results, the changes can be made to fit different genres, but essentially would fit certain class type/styles.

Primary Defenders: Fighter, Paladin, Mage Knight
Primary Leaders: Priest, Shaman, Bard
Primary Controllers: Wizard, Ninja, Psion
Primary Strikers: Ranger, Monk, Rogue

Each primary role, then diversifies depending on what the secondary role is. For example choosing Controller/Leader would result in: Abjurer (Wizard) or Telepath (Psion).  The reverse, Leader/Controller would be: Invoker (Priest) or Minstrel (Bard).

So in the A scenario, the player would choose Leader/Controller or Controller/Leader and they would be able to pick from all four classes. In the B scenario the player would choose the Wizard, and have access to the Controller/Leader role of Abjurer, but also be able to switch to the Controller/Striker version of the Evoker, or the Controller/Controller Acranist. In the C scenario they would choose the Leader/Controller and choose between the Priest or the Bard versions, they would later on be able to choose different role combinations to gain access to different classes.

In the end, there are 12 classes, or 36 depending on how it is handled. Furthermore, the ability of the player to choose their function is diversified depending on the how it is handled. I believe that scenario A would be best, as it helps focus the selection, while still providing variety. The main thing is that the focus would allow for the player to be less likely to mess up on a build. At the same time, scenario C allows for the most diversity, and also allows for the player to invest in the one character instead of having to constantly make new characters.

Other possibilities, choosing a role and having access to any class that has that role. Scenario D would mean that a Defender would have 15 classes to choose from. This may have the best of both worlds between A and C scenarios, while functioning similarly to the B scenario. The issue here is that it would result in the Rift system, and therefore cause issues in which the role has no common ground, and every level results in a different combination that plays completely different. From what I’ve read, this is one of the downfalls of the soul system, where the character does not feel owned by the player.

The strength of the 4 Role system is that it allows for a great deal of diversity and as shown can accommodate both the WoW and the Rift versions of classes. It can also become highly specialized or completely diverse. From it all class combinations and roles can be derived.

Chaos has a unique stat system. Each Element is tied to a super stat, a sort of overview stat that is the summation of all stats underneath it. The super stats are Mind (Air), Body(Earth), Soul (Water) and Style (Fire). Each super stat is broken down into four stats: Mind has Reflex, Mana, Intelligence and Technique; Body has Fortitude, Initiative, Strength and Agility; Soul has Willpower, Chi, Wisdom and Spirit; and Fire has Coolness, Charm, Muscle and Beauty.

Originally, players would roll 1d6 for each stat, and the combined result would go to the super stat, which would translate to what element they were part of. In the original the highest stats would also become the player’s class, or possible classes if they chose to multiclass at level up.

Now each super stat has a defense stat (Coolness, Fortitude, Reflex and Willpower), a resource stat (Charm, Initiative, Mana and Chi), and two descriptive stats (Muscle, Beauty, Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Technique, Wisdom and Spirit).

A quick aside to Coolness as a defense. When facing off against a Vampire trying to charm her, one player successfully defended against it. Was it willpower? No, she was simply too cool to be taken in by him.

Defensive stats are often used creatively, but can be standardized to deal with certain types of attacks. To do this, each attack type would attack against a defense type (vs. Fortitude, vs. Reflex, vs. Willpower). We could make certain abilities less effective by having Coolness reduce the effect. For example, an enemy casts a Fire spell on you, your Fortitude is what would resist catching on fire in the first place, while your Coolness would reduce damage and how long you’re on fire (because Cool people don’t catch on fire).

In the pen and paper, defense was an active thing. An incoming attack would be followed by shouts of, “block it,” and, “dodge to the side!”. To me this means that each defense needs a button or way of activating it (timed button press for fortitude, hold and move for reflex, timed tapping for willpower).

Resources are somewhat complex. They represented how much you could do, with initiative being how often you could attack (well it controlled how often you could attack). Since initiative could be staved off to wait for something to happen, I considered it a resource.  It could also be saved up to double up on actions (any more than that resulted in waste).

This sort of thing works in Turn based games, but imagining a real time game with it might be interesting. Perhaps stacking spell casts, so that spells can be used twice in a row is a possibility. But you would also have to stack active dodges and what not.

Quick aside: Though I still used the term HP, I went with the concept that HP was a combination of actual physical resistance and ego/determination.

Descriptive stats would sometimes affect character appearance. Muscle would increase how muscular the character would appear. Beauty could counter how much the muscle attribute affected the players muscularity. Agility would give the character a more lithe appearance. High Spirit would give the player a glow. This does not necessarily need to translate to a computer game (except to maybe do random characters that made sense).

Muscle and Beauty affected HP (physical and ego portions respectively). Strength and Agility affected damage. Intelligence affected spell power, and Technique affected accuracy and critical hits. Wisdom affected how much the player needed to remember versus what the character needed to keep track of (as in they could keep X number of pages of notes). Spirit was a borderline resource, as it affected how in tune with the supernatural the player was.

Some of these would change depending what kind of game they are being added to, but for the most part should be functional (especially Wisdom would need to see a change).

The stats also presented roleplaying opportunities. Things like charming an enemy with your Coolness, strength, muscles, beauty or intelligence. Sometimes you could get NPCs to join you, depending what they were impressed by. Charm spells in video games are usually temporary and for the location/fight that the player is in. To properly mimic the pen and paper system, the result would function more like Neutral Monster recruitment in Ogre Battle, or catching a Pokemon in the wild.

The stats combined with the elements can affect how people create skills (Fire is tied to Coolness, so setting yourself on fire could reduce how long negative effects stay on you). Not only that, but Ice is Water and Air, so Ice Elements could have high Spirit and Intelligence, letting them wield summon Ice Spirits of amazing power. Blaze Elements could have high Muscle and Intelligence, making them effective mage tanks. The possibilities and effects of the Elements and Stats are exponential. Adding to the variety are the possible classes/role combos that would be included in the game, meaning that a player could meet 35 other Fire Elements and not have a repeat of any class (this would be a low chance, but you get the idea).

Before exploring this further, I think I’ll talk about the 4 Role System. I’ll tackle that on another post.

Quick Guide:

Fire = Style = Defense: Coolness = Resource: Charm = Muscle = Beauty

Earth = Body = Defense: Fortitude = Resource: Initiative = Strength = Agility

Air = Mind = Defense: Reflex = Resource: Mana = Intelligence = Technique

Water = Soul = Defense: Willpower = Resource: Chi = Wisdom = Spirit

Magicka did something that few games have done before: it brought elements to the forefront of gameplay. We’ve seen games play RPS with elements, and we’ve seen counter elements, but rarely have we seen games properly combine elements. Usually very little thought is put into what elements to include in a game. By default people flock to Fire, Earth, Air, and Water. Sometimes they have Wood or Metal. Furthermore they will grab Holy and Unholy as elements, regardless of the fact that they are not part of the natural order (since gods are usually part of the super natural order).

I’ve been working on creating an element system for my own games for awhile. It started as a pen and paper endeavor to help better define characters in a game that I had entitled Chaos. The point of Chaos was that the player would randomly roll up their character to roll play, pick some other initial stats, and go on from there. They could learn any ability at level up as long as it made sense with the class, race, or element they chose.

This allowed some players to be Blast Predator Rangers and Gem Zombie Warriors. They would then play through a combat scenario and attempt to survive it with the characters they created. It was very much a Rogue a like scenario, but in pen and paper.

The elements therefore were created to fit the stat system of the game, which can be included or ignored with how the elements function with each other. Personally I think that the combination has more potential for interesting choices and interactions. For now though, I’d like to focus on what elements are in the element system, how they combine and interact, and how this could possibly be ported into a game.

Like other people, I did start with the four basic elements, if anything, it is good to start people with what they are familiar with: Air, Earth, Water and Fire. The concept is that each person is born with these elements. If one dominates over all others, than their element is that base element. If two elements are in balance with-in the person, than they are of a combined element: Ice, Lighting, Smoke and Magma.

Ice is the combination of Air and Water. Lightning is a combination of Air and Earth (yes I know it is usually attuned with Fire). Magma is a combination of Earth and Fire. Smoke is a combination of Fire and Water. At this level is also where two weaker elements are made, Blaze (Fire + Air) and Mud (Earth + Water). These weaker elements work out well in a game of survival, as it is a challenge to overcome.

The next tier up are elements generated by the combination of three elements. These are Light, Blast, Gem and Shadow. Light is a combination of Fire, Earth, and Air (or more simply, Lightning and Magma). Blast is Air, Water, and Earth (Lightning and Ice). Gem is Air, Water and Fire (Ice and Smoke). Shadow is Fire, Water and Earth (Smoke and Magma). It makes more sense to think of it as a combination of two tier 2 elements rather than 3 base elements.

Finally, there are those that have equal ability in all elements. Those have the power of Wood, which I call Creation. The idea is that they can create anything.

Unlike in pen and paper games, there need to be ways of deciding how to use these elements. This is where Magicka was absolutely brilliant. They had Normal Use, Area of Effect, Self Cast and Imbue. These modifiers allow the creation of spells to grow exponentially and saves on what the player would need to combine to create an effect. We can take cues from what Magicka did when implementing the elements from the Chaos game into a video game environment.

Magicka also had certain effect combinations by how the elements were combined: Fissures, Walls, Storms, Sprays, Bombs, Beams, Projectiles etc.). Though these could also be done with the Chaos game, it is better to create other concepts and ideas based instead of the casting options (which are of more universal use anyways), instead of stealing specific recipes from a game that did so much so well.

I’m not going to specifically break down every spell possibility right now, but the seed of the idea exists. Perhaps as I approach the concept of the stats for Chaos. Perhaps a more robust element system could change the game of elements the same way that Lizard and Spock changed Rock, Paper, Scissors.