megidolaon
you're a cool cat dude stay fresh
while i wholeheartedly believe Wiz-clone class-changing shenanigans are, preeetty much the best class changing system one will run into all things considered... i fully admit i have been taken in by the current trend of japanese 'crawlers (elminage, stranger of sword city, etc) to sprinkle class-specific abilities from which the player will choose 1 of hopefully at least 2 or 3 meaningful abilities (say, a bard weighing the pros and cons of starting out w/ song of healing versus instead taking a more generic, NON-class-specific skill, such as for example something akin to extra inventory or the ability to deal 5 or 10 percent more "something" in some ridiculously specialized combat scenario, etc); elminage utilizes a large "generic" pool of skills that any class can choose from and while at first it seems there are some that are no brainers and that around half of them are "useless" it is to Starfish's credit that the more i play the elminage games the more i realize not a single one of those skills is useless whatsoever.
for example there is one called Drunken Fist (like i said, any char can take it on char-gen in elminage: gothic) that boosts melee dmg output by an
undisclosed amount when the char is poisoned. obviously i'm betting p. much no one will ever pick it, and neither did i, until i started running into enemies in the post-game dungeons that came with that drunken fist skill bult-in and effectively turned my party's poison-happy Ranger-type character which i had power-gamed to the max by not only making him a Ranger w/ a class-specific ability to take the 1st turn at times, but also picking the 1 race in the game which comes with a bonus to inflicting poison... those drunken fist fuckers completely obliterated my Ranger-type char and and it turns out the dmg boost is level/cumulative, so the higher the character's level the higher the dmg output when he/she is poisoned and the dmg was scary as fuck, easily +50-60% extra. (of course, these enemies were 100+ levels, post-game, etc).
now, starfish could've had a legitimately
awesome skill there w/ drunken fist except they forgot to allow players the choice to poison themselves therefore completely eliminating any use a player might have for drunken fist. OOPS.
but the point stands, i think? anyway the other thing is instead of a pool of skills utilize a combined approach allowing generic skills to be taken on char-gen and also allowing class-specific skills that don't really change the macro of the game, i mean, i am by no means advocating dumb skill trees like some sort of Diablo game or some stupid shit like that: just shit that actually
does impact the gameplay on every playthrough but not in a way that any one single skill is "too essential".
the one part where Wizardry (not just elminage, all wiz-clones) fuck up in my opinion is the goddamn identification being always relegated to Bishops. This means any serious player will have to either have a bishop in the crew or have a bishop benched (something super tedious).
originally the Bishop class as envisioned and designed by greenberg and woodhead was an attempt to present 1980's Wizardry players with "hidden psychological direction". In Wizardry acquiring loot is second only to gaining character levels in determining the effectiveness of the player's characters and as such when a Wiz player acquires loot rushing back to the Town to identify the items is a glorious event and this creates the following logistical gameplay interpretation for the player:
- the player upon getting new, unidentified loot, and he/she got this shit from enemies on a brand new floor he/she hasn't explored before so he/she knows it'll be good; this player will now face the simple choices that Wizardry's type of resource management present when coupled with the simple item identification system: i.e., the player has to decide whether to continue exploring the Maze or to retreat to the Town in order to identify their loot.
- this is what i call an emergent gameplay type of scenario because in reality there is no real reason to continue exploring: the most rational action is to retreat, identify, and come back: the only reason this is even a thing is becasue the Wiz player is completely engaged with his explorations of the Maze and the new floor. The oft misunderstood aspect about the supposedly obtuse or challenging ways classic Wiz will fuck with the player is not because the designers want to frustrate the player, on the contrary what they wanted to achieve was to challenge the player to learn the underlying systems and to engage with the game not in contest but in a journey of exploration: both exploration of the game world and the constant desire to better understand the dozens of elegantly interlocking mechanical systems that comprise a Wiz-clone crawler.
- anyway, the player then has to think about his resources: hit points, spells, items, amount of party members left standing, etc. Example: in early portions of any of the first 5 Wizardry games getting poisoned by an enemy means 100% guaranteed death unless you are close to the floor's stairs to safety. Each step deals 1-5 points of poison damage and Wiz characters, regardless of class, will never usually have more than 20 points (and being generous there) before levels 5 and onwards.
- the designers intentionally price the latumofis potion, poison-removal potion, completely out of the reach of the beginning Wiz party. If i remember correctly it costs 500 gold (or more, don't remember exactly) in Wiz 1-5 and 1st floor enemies drop like... 1 gp. Getting poisoned is death... UNLESS THE PLAYER KNOWS EXACTLY WHERE HE OR SHE IS IN THE FLOOR AND KNOWS EXACTLY WHAT TO DO AND KNOWS EXACTLY HOW MANY STEPS TO TAKE TO REACH SAFETY.
- once more the player is rewarded for being able to save their own skins simply because they
are willing to engage the game's challenges.
So, right, the Bishop was introduced specifically to provide Wiz players with the choice to continue exploring and be able to identify items inside the Maze. While on the surface that sounds like a no-brainer decision, to include a Bishop always, the discerning Wizardry/Wiz-clone player will have realized eventually that: BISHOPS ARE COMPLETELY USELESS.
In return for the ability to ID items on the spot the designers literally gave the players a non-character to occupy a valuable spot in the 6-person wiz party. Bishops don't learn their spells until a Wiz player is already playing through the scenario's END GAME; level fucking 26 (!), and Bishops cannot do
anything even remotely useful in the context of dealing melee or ranged dmg either nor can they protect themselves adequately as they are given severely gimped/limited access to armors/weapons basically a gimped-Cleric but without having spells when it counts. (clerics learn all their spells at lvl 13, so they are useful from the start, as opposed to a bishop who will never, ever be useful except when identifying an item).
it's a simple thing really but most players don't even realize that they are actually forfeiting a completely legitimate spot on the team that could be occupied by an actually useful character class. however, the advantage of identifying an item inside the Maze is that there is the possibility that the party will ID an uber weapon or armor which will immediately boost their damage, or immediately boost their protection, or it might be an item with spell resistance, etc, the point is that this allows this party to continue exploring and are now effectively more powerful than they were before.
in closing all of what i have mentioned hinges completely and totally on the way wizardry handles itemization: the acquisition of loot is "random" (nothing is truly random) and the only way to acquire loot is to defeat an enemy force and then engage a second layer of conflict resolution wherein they must weigh once again whether to risk attempting to disarm/open the chest or to leave it alone. This cannot be stressed enough: in classic Wiz (and in elminage) you can literally be steamrolling everything and then open one chest and boom, immediate party wipe.
some will mistakenly assume this is some sort of "bad design" of "bad RNG" or some such bullshit: no, this is a mild skinner box element. In the end there is absolutely no reason you have to open the chest, and in fact, the Maze
should instill in the wizardry player the actual and living fear of attempting to acquire loot as that chest could be a magnet trap and bye bye your Plate Armor!
all of this creates something very familiar: TENSION. The most common experience any wiz player takes away from a good session is that they did
something and they did it
by challenging the game. Easy example: a 1st floor party gets poisoned, everyone, because the chest they tried to disarm had a Gas Bomb, and now they don't know if they're close enough to the stair to Town to return with at least 1 surviving character, but instead of reloading (remember that classic Wiz is iron-man style, so there was no reloading) they decide, fuck it, let's see if i make it: and of course they make it and it is the single most fun part of the session managing to make it back to the Town with every step sucking hit points out of them.
i remember once i reached the stairs with 1 char alive and he had 2 hp. it was glorious. the experience has nothing to do with the game itself but rather is an experience that is born naturally from the game's mechanical systems: i consider that to be legitimate emergent gameplay, unless it means something other than what the word emergent means.
for those paying attention these incredibly simple scenarios/examples i wrote about regarding classic wiz-clone formulas manage to stimulate the players: logistics, ethics (to be greedy and attempt to take the chest or play it safe, etc), the player's independent will to further explore the game's Maze without any actual prodding whatsoever by the game itself (!!!), and of course the player's relationship with the game's rules and systems and their continuing appreciation of them as the game reveals itself to the player, but note, it is the player that has to take notice as the game itself is completely straightfoward as can possibly be.
(i didn't mention cursed items but yeah, another incredibly good addition to the stew of classic Wiz, and of course i know very well that is from d and d).
