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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 9862987" data-attributes="member: 907">So far, so good. But the problem is that you see niches as a single thing each class does. This leads to rather stale classes and characters. You want a good healer in your party? Well, then you need a cleric and that means a bunch of religious baggage as well.If you instead approach class design from a different angle, you can get different results that are still satisfactory, and perhaps even more so. As an example, what if you designed classes around these three aspects:<ol>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol">What do you do in combat? This would be things like &quot;I deal lots of targeted damage&quot; or &quot;I deal area damage&quot; or &quot;I hinder our opponents to keep them from dealing damage&quot; or things like that.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol">How do you do the thing you do in combat? This would be things like &quot;I fight with a weapon in melee&quot; or &quot;I fight with a weapon at range&quot; or &quot;I use magic powers&quot; or &quot;I use psychic abilities&quot;.</li>
<li data-xf-list-type="ol">What do you do out of combat? This would be things like &quot;I know my way around the wilderness&quot; or &quot;I do sneaky stuff&quot; or &quot;I care for my fellow man&quot; or &quot;I study ancient lore&quot; or &quot;I talk to people&quot;.</li>
</ol>I think that for individual characters, you want to reduce overlap for questions 1 and 3 in a particular party. But based on these questions, you could create a lot of different classes that feel different and let you create parties with a lot of different makeups without having people intrude on each others niches. You could even separate out question 3 partially or entirely from class design – for example, I could see any class that answers #2 with &quot;I channel the power of nature and primal spirits&quot; have &quot;I know my way around in the wilderness&quot; as one of their answers to #3, but they can have different additional answers (e.g. &quot;I lead my people&quot;, &quot;I sneak around&quot;, or &quot;I care for my fellow man&quot;)These are answers to #2 or #3. &quot;Mind-messing&quot; or &quot;music/sound&quot; aren't niches, they are methods. Do you use them to confuse your opponents? Do you use them to deal damage? Do you use them to bolster your allies?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 9862987, member: 907"] So far, so good. But the problem is that you see niches as a single thing each class does. This leads to rather stale classes and characters. You want a good healer in your party? Well, then you need a cleric and that means a bunch of religious baggage as well. If you instead approach class design from a different angle, you can get different results that are still satisfactory, and perhaps even more so. As an example, what if you designed classes around these three aspects: [LIST=1] [*][B]What[/B] do you do in combat? This would be things like "I deal lots of targeted damage" or "I deal area damage" or "I hinder our opponents to keep them from dealing damage" or things like that. [*][B]How[/B] do you do the thing you do in combat? This would be things like "I fight with a weapon in melee" or "I fight with a weapon at range" or "I use magic powers" or "I use psychic abilities". [*]What do you do [B]out of combat[/B]? This would be things like "I know my way around the wilderness" or "I do sneaky stuff" or "I care for my fellow man" or "I study ancient lore" or "I talk to people". [/LIST] I think that for individual characters, you want to reduce overlap for questions 1 and 3 in a particular party. But based on these questions, you could create a lot of different classes that feel different and let you create parties with a lot of different makeups without having people intrude on each others niches. You could even separate out question 3 partially or entirely from class design – for example, I could see any class that answers #2 with "I channel the power of nature and primal spirits" have "I know my way around in the wilderness" as one of their answers to #3, but they can have different additional answers (e.g. "I lead my people", "I sneak around", or "I care for my fellow man") These are answers to #2 or #3. "Mind-messing" or "music/sound" aren't niches, they are methods. Do you use them to confuse your opponents? Do you use them to deal damage? Do you use them to bolster your allies? [/QUOTE]

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