NullPointer
05-07-2009, 03:13 PM
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/title.gif
Hey everyone. Lots of great questions, so this post is going to be long.
One of the coolest parts of the Wizardry-style dungeon crawlers is the fact that you can create your own characters from scratch. For this game, there is a load of options you can choose from and various reasons to choose each option.
Enrolling students happens at the Faculty Office. You can enroll up to 100 students in your class, and you’ll need all that space to explore the over 500 different combinations possible.
I’m going to try to make a specific character while I walk you through the process. Let’s make a Celestian Female Cleric named Frank today (hey, Particus is a diverse school. Don’t judge!).
Rolling for Stats
The first thing you need to worry about is your bonus stat roll. A Wizardry-style game would be nothing without the obligatory stat roll. Class of Heroes is no exception. When you first click ‘Enroll’, you will be assigned a certain number of bonus points. Normal rolls are in the 6-9 range, but they can go higher if you are lucky. And much, much higher if you’re really, really lucky. The base stat cap is 25 , but there are ways to go over the stat cap. If you don’t like the amount you got, back out of the enrollment screen and try again. You can make things easy by rolling until you get a beefy roll, or only take the first roll you’re given. It’s your game, so play it as you want! Once you are satisfied, start filling out the rest of the character sheet.
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/1.jpg
Gender
Gender mainly affects the character portrait, but also can affect what equipment the character can use, and will determine if they can become certain majors. I personally choose based on character portrait, and know others who do as well (http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/comic/12.jpg).
Races
The character’s race not only plays an important roll in how your new character develops, but also plays a vital role in the Affinity System, which is something I’m going to go into detail about in a later post. It also determines the characters pre-bonus stats. Some races have innate skills as well. For example, Celestians, Sprites, and Erdgeists always float, and Diablons and Drakes have the very useful Breath skill.
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/2.jpg http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/3.jpg http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/4.jpg
Some races are better suited for certain majors than others, and they will find it easier to enroll in those majors because they won’t need lots of bonus points. I want to use a Celestian because their high base Faith makes them good Clerics.
Alignment
Alignment has a roll in the majors available to the character, but also plays an important roll in the Affinity System. It’s actually possible to change your alignment after the fact, but it’s rather tricky to get it to work out the way you want. For my character, I will choose Good because Clerics must be Good or Evil.
Major
We’ve made it this far, now it it’s time to set the character's major. You major will determine what spells you learn, what skills you have, and what equipment you can use. I’ll go more into specific skills in a later post when we go into party building.
The first thing you need to do is distribute your bonus points. I know that Clerics need at least 13 Wisdom and 13 Faith. The other bonus stats, I can do whatever I want to with. As I mentioned in the last post’s question answers, this is an example of some additional info that wasn’t available in the Japanese version of the game:
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/5.jpg
A Word on Changing Majors
Lots of you have asked about major switching. Once a character is created, you can change majors at any time, provided that the character has the stats it needs to qualify for the new major. But there are some pros and cons to changing majors that need to be considered. For example, Skills that are major specific (non-racial) will not carry over, but magic will, provided the new major has ‘memory slots’ for them. The student will be reset to level 1, and their HP significantly reduced, but they will keep their other stats, like Strength and Faith. These are just a couple points, but there are some other interesting things about the process that you’ll just have to play to find out. :)
Once that is done, name the character… Let’s see… ‘Frank’. There you go!
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/6.jpg
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/8.jpghttp://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/7.jpg
And now for some Q&A:
-Is there any sort of monster scaling done in terms of the player getting stronger and/or revisiting earlier completed dungeons?
Yes, at certain milestones in the game, all the dungeons get knocked up a notch.
-How do shops generate their inventory?
Shops have a finite default inventory. If you sell something to them, it goes into their inventory, but you could also clean a shop out if you were to buy all their stock (though this is would require a huge stack of cash).
-How big a variety can we expect to run into in terms of Status Conditions to be afflicted with? Any nifty/unorthodox ones aside from the usual Sleep, Confusion, Poison?
The main unorthodox one is discussed in one of the comics (http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/comic/10.jpg). You can actually be instantly Ashed by some bosses and traps later in the game. It sucks…
Being put to sleep or stunned sends you to the back of the party line and your defense is reduced while in these states, so they can be kind of dangerous.
-In terms of bosses, are we talking under 10 total or dozens?
Depending on how you define boss, I believe there is around 28 or so, rough ball park estimate.
What's with the character portraits with the blue uniforms opposed to the black?
Good eye. These are students from Rantslate University, one of Particus’ rival Adventurer Academies. After a certain point in the game, you can enroll these students into your party as well, though outside their looks, they are functionally the same as Particus students.
Next time, I’ll be going more into the party itself and talking about Affinity, party makeup, and more details about certain important majors.
-Sam
Hey everyone. Lots of great questions, so this post is going to be long.
One of the coolest parts of the Wizardry-style dungeon crawlers is the fact that you can create your own characters from scratch. For this game, there is a load of options you can choose from and various reasons to choose each option.
Enrolling students happens at the Faculty Office. You can enroll up to 100 students in your class, and you’ll need all that space to explore the over 500 different combinations possible.
I’m going to try to make a specific character while I walk you through the process. Let’s make a Celestian Female Cleric named Frank today (hey, Particus is a diverse school. Don’t judge!).
Rolling for Stats
The first thing you need to worry about is your bonus stat roll. A Wizardry-style game would be nothing without the obligatory stat roll. Class of Heroes is no exception. When you first click ‘Enroll’, you will be assigned a certain number of bonus points. Normal rolls are in the 6-9 range, but they can go higher if you are lucky. And much, much higher if you’re really, really lucky. The base stat cap is 25 , but there are ways to go over the stat cap. If you don’t like the amount you got, back out of the enrollment screen and try again. You can make things easy by rolling until you get a beefy roll, or only take the first roll you’re given. It’s your game, so play it as you want! Once you are satisfied, start filling out the rest of the character sheet.
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/1.jpg
Gender
Gender mainly affects the character portrait, but also can affect what equipment the character can use, and will determine if they can become certain majors. I personally choose based on character portrait, and know others who do as well (http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/comic/12.jpg).
Races
The character’s race not only plays an important roll in how your new character develops, but also plays a vital role in the Affinity System, which is something I’m going to go into detail about in a later post. It also determines the characters pre-bonus stats. Some races have innate skills as well. For example, Celestians, Sprites, and Erdgeists always float, and Diablons and Drakes have the very useful Breath skill.
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/2.jpg http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/3.jpg http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/4.jpg
Some races are better suited for certain majors than others, and they will find it easier to enroll in those majors because they won’t need lots of bonus points. I want to use a Celestian because their high base Faith makes them good Clerics.
Alignment
Alignment has a roll in the majors available to the character, but also plays an important roll in the Affinity System. It’s actually possible to change your alignment after the fact, but it’s rather tricky to get it to work out the way you want. For my character, I will choose Good because Clerics must be Good or Evil.
Major
We’ve made it this far, now it it’s time to set the character's major. You major will determine what spells you learn, what skills you have, and what equipment you can use. I’ll go more into specific skills in a later post when we go into party building.
The first thing you need to do is distribute your bonus points. I know that Clerics need at least 13 Wisdom and 13 Faith. The other bonus stats, I can do whatever I want to with. As I mentioned in the last post’s question answers, this is an example of some additional info that wasn’t available in the Japanese version of the game:
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/5.jpg
A Word on Changing Majors
Lots of you have asked about major switching. Once a character is created, you can change majors at any time, provided that the character has the stats it needs to qualify for the new major. But there are some pros and cons to changing majors that need to be considered. For example, Skills that are major specific (non-racial) will not carry over, but magic will, provided the new major has ‘memory slots’ for them. The student will be reset to level 1, and their HP significantly reduced, but they will keep their other stats, like Strength and Faith. These are just a couple points, but there are some other interesting things about the process that you’ll just have to play to find out. :)
Once that is done, name the character… Let’s see… ‘Frank’. There you go!
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/6.jpg
http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/8.jpghttp://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/blog/02/7.jpg
And now for some Q&A:
-Is there any sort of monster scaling done in terms of the player getting stronger and/or revisiting earlier completed dungeons?
Yes, at certain milestones in the game, all the dungeons get knocked up a notch.
-How do shops generate their inventory?
Shops have a finite default inventory. If you sell something to them, it goes into their inventory, but you could also clean a shop out if you were to buy all their stock (though this is would require a huge stack of cash).
-How big a variety can we expect to run into in terms of Status Conditions to be afflicted with? Any nifty/unorthodox ones aside from the usual Sleep, Confusion, Poison?
The main unorthodox one is discussed in one of the comics (http://www.atlus.com/classofheroes/images/comic/10.jpg). You can actually be instantly Ashed by some bosses and traps later in the game. It sucks…
Being put to sleep or stunned sends you to the back of the party line and your defense is reduced while in these states, so they can be kind of dangerous.
-In terms of bosses, are we talking under 10 total or dozens?
Depending on how you define boss, I believe there is around 28 or so, rough ball park estimate.
What's with the character portraits with the blue uniforms opposed to the black?
Good eye. These are students from Rantslate University, one of Particus’ rival Adventurer Academies. After a certain point in the game, you can enroll these students into your party as well, though outside their looks, they are functionally the same as Particus students.
Next time, I’ll be going more into the party itself and talking about Affinity, party makeup, and more details about certain important majors.
-Sam