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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mephista" data-source="post: 7280599" data-attributes="member: 6786252">WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POSTS CONTAINS REFERENCES TO MMORPGS AND OTHER VIDEO GAME CONTENT, AS WELL AS DISREGARD FOR THE FIGHTER CLASS. MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL GAMERS. READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.If you want to skip all the text and just get right to the question, jump down to the TL;DR near the bottom. Okay, now that's out of the way...So, the other day, a friend of mine was talking about playing Final Fantasy XIV again. The online version, and this friend was encouraging myself and a few other online friends to try signing up and playing. So, I did. Tried running around a bit, tried out the character generator - it had humans, elves, beast folk, orcs/goliath mix, halflings and dragon (but look like tieflings) types for races, then a few options for classes (more in a bit).  Game starts off, and you end up in a stereotypical opening for a japanese take on tolkein-y fantasy stories. Adventure guilds, picking fights, etc.  Eventually got bored of the game, but there were a few notable features I think that were interesting.There are several classes you can join and learn from, divided into roles and crafting/gathering things. But here's the kicker - you can switch to any jobs you've learned just by swapping your weapon.  Want to be a rogue? Equip a dagger. Monk? Fist claws.  Cleric?  A staff/hammer.  And so on.   This kind of tickled my fancy, even if I wasn't a fan of FFXIV's execution of it.  But it seemed pretty clear that there was a kind of symmetry between this game and D&D's classes.  A rogue is the best at using daggers, no doubt about it, and they're iconic for the class.  Barbarians do tend to use great axes (its even a design intention), and arguably the best damage dealers in the game. Monks are known for their unarmed attacks. Paladins are the iconic sword and board users, just as Rangers are known for their archery (and, in 5e, get some bow-smites).  The stereotypical life cleric uses a mace (basically a one handed hammer). And so on. Fighter's an outsider, but that shouldn't be a surprise - the Fighter is defined as being master of any weapon that they pick up.  But then, I realized something.  There's no equivalent of the lance-using Dragoon in D&D; there's not even a Fighting Style for fighters to take that really work with . Okay, then. Maybe its just a D&D thing. Lets check out other games.  In games with an origin in Europe or America?  I started noticing a trend - while spears generally are included as possible options... rarely are they given more than an after thought. I found some in World of Darkness, but that's an urban horror game, not fantasy. So, curious, I looked at some Asian games instead - Ryuutama, a Japanese TT game, includes spears as a list of one of six default weapons to use.  The Disgaea franchise includes spear as one of their eight or so weapons. I found a few games with a Valkyrie class that used spears, often harking to Odin's Gungnir. Curiouser and curioser, I delved into a couple of other games as well.  Spear type weapons tended to focus on higher defense than anything but sword/shield combos. They get more reach than other weapons, and curiously, lots of movement abilities - maybe the FF dragoon has some roots in a real world style I'm not familiar with, and it spread to other games as well?TL;DR - So, curious minds inquiring. Ignore the Fighter and taking feats for now.  What would you like to see in a Lancer themed class? What kind of archetype would you like to use?  What kind of abilities? None of these have to be restricted to a spear, of course, but just some abilities that you think is iconic to a spear warrior in a fantasy setting.</blockquote>

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