Myrddyn

Personally I'd go Mystic Knight, though Evoker might redeem itself somewhat when used as a scroll mage. Mystic knight has SP, which is a big boost. Evoker has access to ranged weapons, but then a Mystic Knight has access to broomsticks, and spells and scrolls ignore row anyway. Aim/Enchantment Evoker has Aim/Spell Aim, which is cool. On average you roll 4/Miss/Aim/Enchantment once every 6 rounds, right? Aim means you'll hit for usually about 30-60 extra damage over those 6 rounds, assuming you have a 2x elemental modifier. On the other hand, every Enchantment roll increases your WP by 1, and over 6 rounds you'll do damage = WP an average of about 10 times, so after an average of 6 rounds your damage for all future attacks with that weapon is increased by 20. After an average of 18 rounds of battle, assuming you had enough ether for the average 3 rolls of enchantment, having had the Enchantment roll will now be as useful in future battles as the Aim/Spell Aim roll. And it gets better from there. Enchantment costs loads in ether, though. They have different Shield rolls too, but they're hard to compare. Summon Burst is weaker than Magic Burst, which is a basic class Shield. An active summon boosts your damage a bit, and you can use it to do a little bit of damage while you're reading scrolls. Mystic Knight's shield hits an average of 7 times. Compared with Battle Mage's Shield roll for a control test, and not considering elemental modifiers, Mystic Knight does more damage against 3 or less enemies, and less damage against 4 or more. Battle Mage's Shield roll is definitely one of the harder-hitting shield rolls. If not the strongest. So basically, Mystic Knight does a nice amount of damage. Bear in mind, though, you can always change advanced class between quests, so even if you don't like the class you chose, it's not that big a deal. Also I think possibly Kintobor meant crowd control, not AoE. (Crowd control is basically dealing with crowds/swarms of enemies. Sometimes shortened to CC.)

If it's just about inflicting poison damage, I'd recommend Mystic Knight over Evoker. You can't apply poison to your summons, and they don't inflict effects from your weapon, so you'd only be applying poison to an enemy on rolls of Crit, Hit and Miss. Mystic Knight applies poison on rolls of Shield, Crit, and Hit, but on the shield roll applies it multiple times. Battle Mage applies it on rolls of Shield, Crit, Hit and Miss, and applies it to all enemies on the Shield roll. However, Battle Mage also takes damage on Miss rolls, and against a smaller number of enemies, Mystic Knight can apply poison multiple times to the same enemy on a Shield roll. Plunger (WP:2; 1/2 chance to cause sudden death to an aquatic enemy with each hit; club). Erik has it.

"I'M BEING DIPLOMATIC!" Lind roars intimidatingly. "Aaah! Whatever you say! Very diplomatic! Please don't hurt me!" says the cowering NPC. (OOC:) I think I see what your intentions were actually.

I think it needs a buff. It's like Mystic Knight, but you jinx yourself instead of enchantment, Muffle is cool but Miscast seems pretty detrimental to a mage, the Shield skill seems like it might do a bit less damage than Mystic Knight's, but it's partly defensive so that makes up for it, and it has limited shield power. I think Mystic knight is probably stronger overall, but Shield Mage is an Expert class. I do like the charges every time it takes damage, but it seems a shame they only do anything on shield rolls, and/or maybe Muffle could be changed so the Shield Mage casts a scroll on his shield, and an enemy that attacks him is inflicted with whatever the scrolls effect is? Rather than the effect always being Sealed? I think it should get a bigger HP bonus, too - Mystic Knight gets +7 HP, and Decamon Drafter gets the same +6 ether bonus and +9 HP.

So it ends everything with "I can't control my tongue" but with a small chance to end with "I'm a happy blockhead" instead? And it only does this in the Heroica subforum? The possibilities are endless

Maybe when it gets hit by an enemy it causes burning to them? Then there's the whole pre-nerf counterstriking issue, but since it doesn't have shield proficiency, it's SP is limited to begin with. Maybe you could have a trait that removes SP and adds it to burning damage? You could do the same thing for weapons as well in the same trait - give the class proficiency with some weapons, but the trait removes WP and adds it to burning damage. I suspect with the prevalence of weapons in the Heroica universe, really scared people would often go armed, even if they can shoot fire out of their fingers. That doesn't have a risk of damaging allies, but there could be a risk of causing burning to an ally if they target the pyrokinetic with an item or for a heal? Also, perhaps you could have something so if it has the right gem it can choose the element of its burning damage, and it gets doubled if the target is weak to that element or nullified if the target is strong against that element?

Am I missing something, or is Critical Hit significantly better than Shield? Oh I guess that's due to them being permanently lucky? And they can only be damaged by free hits? Or is there a chance for them to hit him/herself with Confused Terror? Yeah I agree with what everyone else has said. Perma-lucky is OP, it doesn't protect it's allies at all, despite what the battle style implies, and it should really have damage/special damage rolls that actually involve damage/special damage. Yeah I personally really hate enemy AOE attacks, because it makes strategy less useful. There's no option to go "Well I'll hit from the back row, or target a certain enemy, so if I roll damage I won't be K/O'ed", because then someone else rolls AOE special and you get knocked out anyway. With this class, you have that risk all the time from your own allies. Plus it doesn't even really take into account enemy stats, besides HP, and level on free hits. It starts to get where you might as well just flip a coin once every battle to see who wins.

Yeah Erik changed classes, so he was only Shaman for one quest, but I think he was the most recent shaman. Nerwan was one for a while, too. Healing: In my opinion, Shaman gets nine or maybe even ten out of ten for healing. It doesn't have Druid's removal of negative effects or revival gimmicks, but in terms of raw hitpoints restored, Shaman heals the most out of any advanced class, even more than Druid, due its shield skill restoring full health to the allied party, as well as its extra-critical heals. Gimmick: Shaman's big advantage is its endurance. Natural respite or Restoration heals you after each battle, and in addition to that, due to the Meditate roll and the lack of ether cost for the shield skill, it ties with Paladin for the lowest rate of ether consumption of all the ether-using advanced classes. Tanking: I'd give Shaman a five or six out of ten for tankiness. It can't use a shield, but with +9 base health it ties with Black knight and is only beaten by Berserker and Paladin for most health out of all the advanced classes. Barbarian and Cleric are probably also the two classes after knight with the best access to SP artifacts. Damage: A lot of people say Shaman has good damage output, but I disagree. I'd only give it a four or five out of ten for damage - it beats Assassin, Druid, Paladin, Warden and maybe Witch - four or five out of fifteen advanced classes. Yes, it has Extra-critical hits, but any Ranger class matches that with Aim. If the enemy has SP, Extra-critical hits means you don't factor in the enemy's SP as often, but on the other hand a Ranger is more likely to spread weapon effects. The Shaman's shield skill does damage, but this damage depends on the rest of the party having low health, and again the shield skill doesn't transfer weapon effects, and it isn't affected by elements or (I think) Encouraged. Actually, since you're coming from Cleric, it's probably the second hardest-hitting advanced class available to Vindsval after Sage. Gear: The Shamanic plate doubles the damage of the shield skill, and gives a small Ether and HP bonus, but it takes the bodywear slot, so you can't wear the 5 SP Heavy Armour with it. Personally I'd recommend the Heavy Armour over the Shamanic Plate, but if you're keen on doing decent damage and decide to go Shaman Erik has a Shamanic Plate he'll sell you for 75 gold. Because you only have 1/3 chance of actually hitting your enemy with your weapon, weapon effects and elements are not as useful, but since you use WP for healing, that is still important. You shouldn't need as many tonics as a Cleric, since you won't burn through ether as fast, but depending on how you play it you'll probably still need some. Barbarians don't need bedrolls, but I don't think you have one anyway.

Yeah that's about 300 gold profit for Vindsval

Having overheard Guts' attempt to sell a nice coat while browsing the marketplace, Erik seeks out the Alchemist and offers him 250 gold for the Dog-Fur coat (SP:5, backwear, gives Command against dogs)

Just to throw up an idea I had regarding earlier comments about the rate of xp gain, how about if a players second character - (so if they meet the requirements to run two characters at once, and maybe also if they abandon a character and start over) - could gain maybe double xp until they reach the level of their older character? Spoiler rant warning: Bionicle fanatic's new emoticons are so cool. That said though, if you went to a country that spoke a different language to the one you'd been brought up with, sure you'd still (probably) be allowed to use your native language, but people would have a hard time understanding you, and if you hung around places for public debate all the time giving speeches in your native language that noone could understand, you might get kicked out.

Yeah I don't really like a lot of those complicated ideas either - as it stands, Decamon is a lot of luck, but there is still room for strategy to increase your chances of winning. Some of those cards would make strategy next to impossible. Flipz' First Card rule looks pretty good to me - the other idea I've had would be to add a card that trumps Ethereal but is in turn trumped by every element. I don't think there'd be any point having it in different numbers, since it would either trump or be trumped unless it was played against itself. Maybe something like "Iron Blade," since I believe traditionally iron is sometimes considered the antithesis of magic or evil spirits. Elemental Momentum looks cool, I think it would be a good addition to the game, or at least worth trying out, since currently I think a well-balanced hand of cards is much better than all one or two suit/s.

How about a gender-locked Basic class for Sister of Danab? Presumably with five possible Advanced classes chosen from existing classes, and since it's a Basic class, the only requirement would be gender, so it wouldn't be incredibly unlikely for a character to use, but it's a class that will probably only be used until level 15 anyway, so people who made a male character years ago won't go "Curses, I should have made a female character way back then!", because they wouldn't still be a Sister of Danab anyway. Myrddyn says proudly, as if unaware that by possibly solving these two problems he has likely created many more. Also the only male-specific class I can think of, considering Monk is already available to both genders, is Eunuch, so maybe it's best we don't have gender-specific classes.

Oh man I love it - especially the Orc Avenger standing next to the Paladin. Plus it can use axes, which is always nice to see as someone with a character with a nice axe. Does the Avenger still have 1/6 chance to avoid damage if not using a shield? I think the offense/defense options are really well balanced. Avenger is a good name, I think, the only name I can think to suggest if you're looking for a different name is Champion.

Objection, WBD! I see you've put Sage in the "Support" category, and Shaman in the "High damage" category. Despite Shaman's extra critical hits, it heals more than Sage, due to extra critical healing and fully healing the party on Shield rolls, and while the shield roll of a Shaman can potentially do more total damage than a Sage, this will only occur in very specific circumstances, most of the time a Sage's shield will deal more damage.

Oh no, real life killed Erdy! :shudders: I guess it catches up with everyone, sooner or later. Ret'urcye mhi. Maybe if the Regret explodes when he finally gets killed (if he does, but it seems reasonably likely) all the bits of Erdy could get scattered throughout Olegaia and pop up in strange places in other quests?

Shaman is a healer. It has an option to heal, and it fully heals the entire party on a shield roll - which is the most healing of any advanced class, if you don't consider the revival and effect removal of Druid. Plus it has extra critical heals, which means it does the most healing on critical heal rolls as well. Offense-wise, it has extra critical hits rather than standard hits, and it does some damage on a shield to a single target - but with the damage being dependent on the health loss of the rest of the party, I'd hesitate to describe it as an offensive class.

There are items with insta-kill chance - Erik's toilet plunger, for instance, and there are healing items, but that doesn't make an assassin's instakill chance or a cleric's healing ability suddenly a positive effect. Sure, see what Sandy says, but I will be very surprised if that's the case.

Aura actually is a roll. The Warden Shield description is: If anything, perhaps there is a case for the doubling of the Warden's maximum health being a positive effect, but even then that would not prevent the Aura drawing all attacks to the Warden.

Some Guy Level 15 Assassin *Murderous* (All successful hits have 1/6 chance to instantly kill target). I wouldn't say it's an effect, but then I wouldn't say Aura is an effect. What Legonator said: Aura is a Warden's shield roll.

I also agree with Flipz; If Aura is a positive effect, then so is Guardian Angel, and an Assasin's 1/6 instakill chance, and steal/gold gain, and special guard, and Berserker's *Furious* should be remediable. Not my quest, though.

Yay Zasies!Speaking of which, anyone have a shield for sale? They all just left on a quest, didn't they? Well done, Myrddyn, well done.

I'd like to be back to sign up for Pie's Marauder quest, which he said he was hoping to get up before the holidays, but I'd be up for a FOG run if you'll have me - Erik isn't nearly as high level as Benji, but he's got some neat effect weapons.

After shaking hands with James the Panda, Erik decides to trade his cards (Scarab (Rock 1), Glow Worm (Luminous 1), Will-o'-the-Wisp (Fiery 1), Polar Bear (Icy 5)) for three Potions and a Health Core.

I think that would be possible, but I imagine it would be quite a precise art to make an artifact that fit those requirements, and even then there's no guarantee it would be added to the store, and if it did it would probably take a while, and possibly someone will say actually I'm wrong. But maybe you can do that. :face: Weasel Tail: Summons deal the effect/s of the evoker's equipped weapon. Suitable for Evokers, Accessory. Probably actually OP considering there are weapons that blind on hit and so that would mean guaranteed blind on one enemy each round. Also, there are good items for evokers - there are even good evoker-specific items - there just aren't any in the store. Monkey Bar - (suitable for anyone, the wearer's minions (summons, spirits, undead, etc.) gain the hastened effect, accessory, Quest 40) Okay that was the closest to an evoker-specific item I could find in the treasury, but I'm sure there are others, plus plenty of mage/ranger items are handy for evokers.