REJECTED: Wizard/Sage Class Suggestion

[Qyasogk]

Title: Wizard/Warlock/Sage Class

Summary: We have undead, we have monsters, we have magic items. Where do these things come from? What ancient lore is out there that must be studied and deciphered?

Details: Whatever you want to call him/her, the Sage is the delver of esoteric knowledge, whether this involves the study/creation of magic items, the summoning and dispelling of the dead, the creation or control of monsters. Obviously, such a position would require lots of money for research & study, and even more money to actually craft items or creatures. Maybe the presence of a tower/library and/or a guild increases the odds of success in endeavors.

Benefits: Undead and monsters become something more than random things that pop up out of nowhere. Depending on where you want to fall on the realism vs fun scale, you could have wizards on the field of battle that can attempt to control the weather, sow confusion and fear, or they could just be fancy and expensive librarians doing academic research. It seems a sage's tower would be the perfect place for adventurers to bring that mysterious item to have identified and studied. Poisons, new weapons of war (wildfire anyone?), could be researched via some sort of tech-tree. In short, this could be a way of introducing certain weird/wild elements into the game. Did some fool wizards dark experiments accidentally create dragons? Whoops!

Possible Exploits: Obviously when you're talking about esoteric arts/magic, you have to be careful. The balance on all these additions should be that research takes time and money and the building of a place to do that research in. Someone who spends all their days looking through old tomes is not likely to be very good with a sword or lance. It is also quite likely that you would want to limit the powers of what a wizard could create vs the items that were made aeons ago by ancient wizards who possessed arcane knowledge that is lost to modern wizards. If a tower is sacked, ongoing research would be lost and have to be started over. And there should always be a possibility of something going horribly wrong, the tower explodes, a tentacle reaches through a portal and snatches the wizard, etc...

[Dishman]

I like the idea, to an extent. I've always wanted the adventurer class to have a peasant route they can take (rather than noble through recommendations). Imagine if all these peasants with hordes of gold, honor, prestige could become sages and actually produce a few trinkets (but still rely on advys to gather/fight). Let players custom create items, let the peasantry have a caste system, give players more tools to flesh out the world.

Sorry to throw these comments in someone else's suggestion thread.

[Penchant]

I like the idea, to a very limited extent. I dislike the idea of adding any more magic than there already is but I think it would be cool for players to be more involved with it. Doubling the sage as a scientist too could be cool. I see the idea as kind of good, but terrible to try and do in any balanced, non-gamey way. That and it would be a lot effort to do this while the devs have more than enough already to work on.

[Indirik]

I don't think there are any intentions to expand the adventurer game in any serious way. It is a side-game, if you will. The main focus of the game is nobles and their wars, not commoners.

[Tom]

Over my dead body. I don't even know where to start explaining why, this feels like a request to add Jedis to Lord of the Rings.

[Qyasogk]

Over my dead body. I don't even know where to start explaining why, this feels like a request to add Jedis to Lord of the Rings.

I don't see why dead bodies need to be involved.

You'll please at least note that I wasn't necessarily talking about spell-casting Gandalf or Merlin type wizards. But your reaction tells me that you probably didn't even bother reading past the subject line.  :(

I understand you not wanting hoards of wizards roaming the countryside, and maybe they should be super rare and prohibitively exspensive, so that only the wealthies kingdoms could afford to employ one.

[Anaris]

You may not realize, Qyasogk, but putting magic in player characters' hands—in any form other than the relatively rare scrolls—is one of those things that Tom has repeatedly stated that he will never, ever, ever do. This has been a central tenet of the game's direction for its entire 12+ years of existence.

You are not going to get any traction here. Period.

We certainly welcome suggestions and feature requests/discussions, but you have to understand that just because you want something, or think it could be beneficial to the game, doesn't mean we think it would be beneficial, or would match with our vision of how the game should be.

If you want to improve the game experience, then we are glad to listen—but adding more magic into it, or otherwise making it more like Dungeons and Dragons, are not ways that are going to get much attention.

[Tom]

You'll please at least note that I wasn't necessarily talking about spell-casting Gandalf or Merlin type wizards. But your reaction tells me that you probably didn't even bother reading past the subject line.  :(

I did read the entire post before I replied.

[egamma]

Just play spellmaster.

[Qyasogk]

So now I've said TWICE that I WASN'T talking about D&D fireball casting wizards.

You guys have the ability to inspire imaginations and encourage creative interactions with your players, or to put your big boot of power in their face so that it's clear to everyone that you're in charge, and no one else has anything of value to contribute.

Thanks for changing the subject to "REJECTED", that was just that extra little bit of class to let me know exactly who I'm dealing with.

[Anaris]

So now I've said TWICE that I WASN'T talking about D&D fireball casting wizards.

No, just summoning and controlling monsters and undead, and adding an entire bloody tech tree to the game.

That is not within the spirit of the game.

You guys have the ability to inspire imaginations and encourage creative interactions with your players, or to put your big boot of power in their face so that it's clear to everyone that you're in charge, and no one else has anything of value to contribute.

There's a huge difference between "no one else has anything of value to contribute" and "this isn't a terrible idea, it just doesn't fit with BattleMaster at all."

I've had loads of ideas over the years that have been rejected—either by me, by Tom, or by the dev team in consensus—because they didn't fit with the spirit of the game. Heck, one of the ones that took me over an hour to type up was rejected just a week or so ago.

Thanks for changing the subject to "REJECTED", that was just that extra little bit of class to let me know exactly who I'm dealing with.

That's policy. Once a feature request thread has been confirmed accepted or rejected, the thread title is changed so that the dev team has an easier time when combing through the forum.

[Penchant]

So now I've said TWICE that I WASN'T talking about D&D fireball casting wizards.

You guys have the ability to inspire imaginations and encourage creative interactions with your players, or to put your big boot of power in their face so that it's clear to everyone that you're in charge, and no one else has anything of value to contribute.

Thanks for changing the subject to "REJECTED", that was just that extra little bit of class to let me know exactly who I'm dealing with.

Suggestions are great, but that doesn't mean they will be accepted. Whether or not they thought it to an extent further than you meant is irrelevant as they have said magic is a part of the game that is not wanted to be expanded upon. No one said that no one but the Dev Team has anything of value to contribute, simply that this was rejected.

As to your complaints about the topic including Rejected, I can't say I care for caps lock, but its done with many other topics when a clear-cut decision is made for the ease of everyone else being able to simply view while browsing the board if a feature was accepted or rejected. It is not something done to just your topic, so its not the mods picking on you. (It was done by one of the forum mods most likely, not the devs.)

I at first liked the idea myself, but the more I think about the more I agree with this being bad for the game. Try not to take the rejection of your feature request so personal, the request simply isn't seen as good for the game. I myself have made several before and they were mostly rejected, there is nothing wrong with that.

P.S. Anaris's post covers most of what I said (and is said better/more accurate in some places), but I will post anyways.

[egamma]

I changed the title. I'm a forum mod, and not a dev. It's nothing personal; just when Tom says "over my dead body", it saves everyone the trouble of reading the thread. If you will review the previous pages of requests, I think I looked back 4-5 pages, you will see a dozen other threads marked REJECTED, and two or three marked APPROVED.

If you want to explore this feature, and maybe make it into something acceptable, then I can move this thread up a level, to the development board. But I'm not kidding when I say "Play Spellmaster." I suggest you give it a try, and I hope you like it.

[Qyasogk]

Saying that my request was akin to asking for Jedis in the game is way over the top. They are already in the game:

"Listen to rumours - spend an hour listening to rumours of sages and wizards."

If you don't want them to be playable, that is of course your perogative, but it's not outside of the realm of your game, by your own descriptions.

I apologize if I reacted strongly to having "REJECTED" stamped on the subject title. I looked at the list of subjects in the forum and mine was the only one changed that way, and it did seem malicious.

[egamma]

I'm very busy and don't read all the feature requests, so there may be some that should be stamped that aren't.

A lot of the requests never get a clear "approved" or rejected response from the dev team, so they don't get the subject modified. The ongoing "Doctrine" conversion has pretty much put a halt to all but the most needed features anyway.