What do we mean by 'balance'?

There are several concepts of 'balance' going around:

1. All classes should have an even shot at spotlight time.
2. All classes should be equally powerful in their preferred fighting situation.
3. All classes should be equally useful to a linear party (i.e. a linear party will not go 'argh no we don't want Foo they're a bar' for reasons other than 'we are all bars')
4. All classes should be equally effective at pursuing generalized goals (like 'save the city from an invasion', 'rescue the noble lady', 'become famous', 'become respected and feared', 'gain control of an appropriate IC organisation', 'kill J Random Other PC')

Obviously all of these are important.

Also there is a big concern that the classes shouldn't end up as one homogenous mass - they should support different sets of tactics and different playstyles.

What playstyles are in evidence, and how can we support them with system?

For the first part of this I am mostly thinking in terms of 'what they do in a fight', because class balance in and out of fights are totally different subjects.

There are as many playing styles as there are players. I was going to list some stereotypes here, but they are all either geared to my assumptions about what the classes ought to support, or they are obviously broken in one or more aspects by players I know.

Please add to this list, which I started with my playing styles, because I want to know how you think you play:

1. I am a noncombatant. I will occasionally contribute to combat, but mostly I will stay out of the way and do things between combats.
2. I am a daggerbunny (or a warrior of any variety). I like hitting things enthusiastically with LARP weapons. I am actually quite pathetic at this, along with being desperately unfit, but I am very confident and this makes up for a lot.
3. I am a tactical support caster. I stand back a little and keep an eye on specific people that I incapacitate with status effects, or keep an overview of the battlefield and give directions as well as precisely placing status effects where they will do most good.

What classes have they got, and what do I envisage them doing?

The very basic outline of classes, as far as I see it in my perfected CUTT system in my head, goes like this: (note, I may have been playing WoW too much)

• Warrior - if one of these is standing next to you, and you are not a warrior, and they are not somehow incapacitated, then you are dead, or at the very least severely inconvenienced. They are not that hard to incapacitate if they are not backed up but with a little backup from the other classes they are also practically unstoppable. They can specialise in Really Absolutely Killing You Now, Being Really Hard, or Being Able To Shrug Off Incapacitiating Effects Themselves.
• Mage - if you let one of these stay at range for too long, and they are not otherwise occupied, then you are dead, or at the very least severely inconvenienced. They can specialise in Crowd Control, Killing You, or Being A Slightly Lame Imitation Of Another Class.
• Priest - if you let one of these stand around chatting with their friends before a fight, then their friends are suddenly an awful lot more powerful. They can specialise in Picking Everyone Up Afterwards, Being A Slightly Lame Mage Too, or Being A Slightly Lame Warrior Too.
• Rogue - if you take your eye off one of these, then you are dead, or at the very least severely inconvenienced. They get abilities to make it easier for them to distract people and to capitalise on the moment before they become obvious to everyone, but are always much squishier than warriors. They can specialise in Outmanoevering You, Making You Regret Their Presence In More Interesting Ways, or Being A Slightly Lame Warrior Too. (I'm not very sure about that third speciality, it might want to be Getting The Hell Away, but I think that's covered under Outmanoevering You, although that's more about getting *there* than getting *back*.)
• Wilderness - fundamentally very similar to a mage (if you let one of these stay at range for too long, and they are not otherwise occupied, yadda yadda) but with a higher chance of surviving being next to a warrior (by having some of their crowd control be usable in melee) and the big disadvantage of having to use ranged weapons rather than auto-hitting. They can specialise in Doing Insane Damage With A Bow, Skirmishing And Getting Away From Warriors, Being A Sniper.
• Alchemist - the jack of all trades. Most easily imitates the Priest (buffs the party, picks them up afterwards) but by the use of talismans and similar self-only buffs can imitate the other classes also.

In the following sections I have totally ignored the out-of-combat cool stuff that the classes get. It goes roughly like this:

• Warrior - Nothing right now. This is really lame and I want to fix this but I don't know how.
• Mage - Ritual magic. Magical experimentation and research. The identification of magical items and effects. Mundane investigation using magical means (power over non-sentient things). Grey magic is mostly good at this.
• Priest - Ultimate Faith. An active, interventionist deity on their side - Rites, written and spontaneous. The identification of spiritual items and effects. Mundane investigation using supernatural means (power over sentient things, living and dead). Knowledge, Mind Control and Cursing trees are good at this.
• Rogue - Disguise. Forgery. The identification (and acquisition) of mundane items. Mundane investigation using mundane means really well. Pickpocketing / planting items.
• Wilderness - Tracking. Herb gathering (resulting in making small piles of money or getting nice alchemical shinies). Knowing the local geography. Being given the benefit of the doubt when exploring areas and with how close they can get to things before needing to run away in downtime.
• Alchemist - Alchemical experimentation and research. The identification of alchemical items and effects. Assisting mundane investigation with alchemical imitations of mage and priest powers, and also forensics(?). Making huge piles of money.

/SimpleWoWAnalogy

Warrior

If a warrior is standing beside something of equal XP, and the thing is not either a warrior or a Lame Imitation Of A Warrior, then the thing should lose the resulting fight hard, even if it tries to run away (possibly unless it has specialised countermeasures like those available to Wilderness). However, warriors are by default vulnerable to status effects and are hence really easy to kill from afar unless they have someone to tap them out of a Halt or blessing-style immunities.

Weaknesses: do not personally do status effects or ranged effects, weak to status effects, least amount of flexibility to become Lame Imitations of other classes.

Warriors can then specialise in the following areas:

Really Absolutely Killing You Now

This makes it easier for the warrior to very definitely win against Lame Imitation Warriors and get the advantage back from Really Hard warriors. The extra damage degree from a polearm, and ambidex, are both examples of Really Absolutely Killing You Now style skills.

Being Really Hard

This makes it harder for anything to immediate eviscerate you, but is still not much good when you get status effected to death (OTOH it can make you take so long to kill that a five-second freeze won't cut it). It gives you the edge over Lame Imitation Warriors because you can outlast them. Armour, Extra Hits and Shield Use are all examples of Being Really Hard skills.

Status Effect Resistance

This makes it harder for crowd-control types to incapacitate you and hence easily take you out. Note that if warriors are made hard enough this shouldn't be *too* good because status effects are basically the most important counter to warriors that other classes have. Blindfighting is the current example Status Effect Resistance skill - you can also acquire others as a Warrior by being nice to a Priest (or their organisation, or a mage being a Lame Imitation Priest).

Lame Imitation Wilderness

Basic competency with a bow or crossbow to give a very small amount of access to ranged damage to this class. The idea of by-weapon status effects has been mooted, but generally meets with quite a lot of opposition, so it's unlikely this class will gain access to any status effects ever.

Mage

If a mage is standing off, they should be able to kill things by a variety of methods. Mages are also the most flexible class (at least currently) - they can do a Lame Imitation of any other class (although their healing performance is particularly lame).

Weaknesses: Actually, the mage doesn't currently have any weaknesses, assuming they are prepared for the situation, because they can turn themselves into a Lame Imitation Anything. This used to be fixed by 'but they will run out of mana if they try to keep that up', but isn't really any more, and in any case I didn't like that mechanic. I think a mage should be weak to physical damage (and indeed basically any kind of aggressive action), but that would necessitate serious nerfing of the current Lame Imitation Warrior and some of the Lame Imitation Priest section of the mage's abilities.

Specialisations:

Really Absolutely Killing You Now

Red ought to be the colour of choice for this, which is basically 'you over there, I want you to be dead right now'. Blue is quite good at it too, alas (I say 'alas' because blue is also a damn fine Crowd Control colour - you'll note that when munchkins go for overpowered mages then blue is their colour of choice). Green and Brown are pathetic at this; White and Black are kind of middling.

Crowd Control

Green and Blue are the colours of Crowd Control, with Red and Brown putting in some creditable attempts and Black (except for Blind which warriors are resistant to anyway) and White lacking in this area. This covers Halt, Freeze, Repel, Blind, Disarm, Silence - the status effects. You can't win a battle just with status effects (even if you're really good you need your native ability to do halves as well) but they are possibly the most fantastically useful thing in the system, especially as they are the counter to Warriors, the Mage's natural enemy.

Being A Lame Imitation Of Any Other Class

White and Brown are the colours which are best at this, with the other colours all having their specialities within this as well. This takes several subforms:

Doing Damage In Melee

Red, Brown and Black are the masters of weapon buffs with White coming a close second (and Blue supposedly not being awful). These all suddenly become a lot more useful when you have Empower Magical Weapon.

Being A Lame Priest

Weapon buffs, defensive spells on other people (although those are specifically nerfed by being harder to cast on others than yourself), White's co-operative magic, all of these can be used to make you into the Party Buffing Machine.

Being A Lame Warrior

This is where Brown really shines - White, Green and Blue have a bit of defensive mojo, but Brown is the definitive 'turn yourself into a Lame Imitation Warrior' colour. Which is actually very powerful because Brown isn't totally useless at crowd control and turning yourself into a Lame Imitation Warrior while still being a Mage negates the major downside of being a Mage (you're squishy).

Being Actually A Quite Fantastic Rogue/Wilderness?, Oops

Invisibility. It's a really cool idea. I'd love to make it work. But it is also abusable as all get out and I'm really not sure what to do about it. Combined with White's not-that-bad Imitation Warrior setup and not-that-bad weapon buffing, you can easily build a fantastic Imitation Rogue, and combined with White's not-that-bad direct damage, you can make a fantastic Imitation Wilderness. Doh.

Though this might prove to be unpopular with some of the people who currently play light mages, I'm really tempted to say just good rid of it. We don't need invisibility. It's highly abusable, very munchy and we just don't need it. White already has the co-operative magic style spells to distinguish it from the other colours - it doesn't need it's own munched type of spell. Whilst a nice idea in theory, in practice I think it suffers from some of the flaws that acute hearing does when used for espionage purposes - and much more serious problems of balance when used for things like assassinations. If we do keep it, I might be tempted to make the 10/30 second spells (possibly with longer durations) higher level, and add in a 15/35 second blind effect targetted on self. This keeps invisibility as an absolutely awesome escape from combat spell, but with less stupid, munchy possibilities. Better still, scrap it all together. I *do* like Farsight though - this is a great spell, with amazing scouting potential - but without stupid munching of hearing conversations while invisible, or performing sudden unexpected stabs in the back. - Flying_O

Suggestion: Being invisible requires you to keep both your hands empty. This would give people a moment to play whac-a-mage before he can draw his Weapon of Ludicrous Buffs or finish his Spell of Blowing You To Bits. Alternatively, invisibility doesn't cooperate well with other magic - if you have any other magical effects on you or items you're carrying, you can't be made invisible. While feeling slightly less contrived, this alternative doesn't stop people casting Cloak Other on the daggerbunny. --Valtiel

Note that this won't stop such things as Knockout via Brawling whilst invisible, although presumably this is something that's going to be fixed seperately anyway... --Felicity

Priest

I know we've been trying to drag priests out of the support role, but frankly I believe they belong there. They can be a Lame Imitation Mage if they like, but they should accept that they'll be a Lame Imitation Mage instead of a real one. On the other hand, their party-buffing miracles should be much better than the mage's options, they should be somewhat less vulnerable than mages, and the party should need to rely heavily on them for that coveted and rare Status Effect Immunity stuff. (I am not really sure about Blessing being a tree that many priests don't get - I am becoming more and more convinced that it should be something all priests can do, because every deity has reasons to make people who do what they like invulnerable in important ways.)

Weaknesses: Priests are really not very good at doing damage. They need someone else to do it for them. Also, they should generally not be very effective in isolation - Awakened Priests need trusted followers of other classes in order to unleash their full power.

I disagree with your assessment of what priests should be doing (in some kind of shock announcement). Priests come into play compelled to take a stance, take a viewpoint, they are compelled to act and we have strictures that re-enforce this. It sucks to be compelled to act, but utterly unempowered to do something unless you can convince someone else to do it for you. Priests are innately political, and anything political requires building networks of allies. I like that blessings, valour etc exist in the system. But there are too many factions in TT, too many gods, it's not like you even have the choice of buffing up devotees of your own god in the majority of situations. Priests need to have power in their own right if you are also forcing them to hold strong opinions and roleplay this (and I wouldn't see it any other way) - or there need to be far fewer factions. If priests exist as hit point and buff vendors then if you want to hold a minority opinion or follow a minority god it is strictly better to be a lay follower who is a mage/warrior. This seems a fairly fundamental flaw. - Bryony.

I have to say, I currently dislike blessings. It encourages priests to buff people going on linears, but not go on them themselves. It gives possibly the biggest effect that spirit is capable of, but it does nothing to make the priest himself any better - just his comrades. Even the casting of the blessings is done in non-threatening downtime - you get none of the tension of combat casting, nor the spotlight time of being awesome that priests deserve. Rather than blessing others, I'd much prefer the priests themselves to be manifesting the Gods power themselves in some form of Spiritual strength style thing, whilst letting goody goody priests remove status effects from their friends in combat rather than through pre-combat buffs. This could partly be my inate hatred of buffs, but I think that changes like these would make priests more useful as well as more fun to play on a linear. - Flying_O

Right. I understand these points of view totally from a setting point of view. However, that leaves very little to distinguish priests and mages in combat from a system point of view. It is possible we just want to merge them both into 'Caster' and have the differences be flavour rather than actual combat role and combat style (in which case they should have roughly equivalent mana-pool progressions, or one or the other is always going to be percieved as more powerful). In which case Alchemist would take over the 'buff the party' role. Actually, I very much like that idea, come to think of it - think of priests not as hit point vendors / buff machines but as Combat Casters with a different set of spell lists, and then Alchemists have a niche to fill in the Buff Your Party role. --ChessyPig

I think a Priest's role on a linear depends on which miracle trees they have access too even more than a Mage's role depends on their colour. While I think Priests should, at heart, be Combat Casters; someone with Blessing, Healing and Valour is probably going to be most effective when they have allies around. That said, you can do a lot with a long stick of Spirit Singles, three points of floating armour and the ability to heal yourself very quickly. --Valtiel

I think that the highest common factor of both mages and priests ought to be relatively low. I think that in terms of system there should be some things - healing, effects dealing with the mind, effects on inanimate objects etc that one or the other of magic and spirit is always less good at than the other or just doesn't do, but that as many roles as possible should be viable and competitive as both mages and priests. There's lots of differentiation due to roleplay, I think. I think there would be a lot to be said for making one mana explicitly equal to one spirit, and the base skills for the two classes equivalent. --Jacob

Specialisations:

(Note that Buffing Everyone Until They Glow is, IMO, something *all priests should have* and not a specialisation, and I'm not really sure about a specialisation that is about Buffing Everyone Until They Glow Even More. Current trees for this are Blessing, Valour and low-level Smite Body.)

Currently, all faiths apart from Justice, Sordan and Vivamort have either Blessing or Valour. Since pure-priest Sordanites and Vivamortians tend not to be the linearing type anyway due to getting killed by their allies if they show off their full power, this leaves only the Justicars who really suck at buffing people on a linear. I'd like it if Smite Body gained some miracles that could be used on other peoples weapons, though - not because it needs to be more powerful but because it needs more variation. This would let almost all priests buff their allies really quite well. --Valtiel

Picking Everyone Up Afterwards

Your traditional hit point vending machine. Healing and Uncursing.

Being A Slightly Lame Mage Too

Direct damage, crowd-control-style status effects. Smite Soul, high level Smite Body, first-level Mind Control.

Being A Slightly Lame Warrior Too

Okay, being a really lame warrior. But all of those party buffs can be used on you too, and you've probably got some nice status-effect resistance which plugs the gap in warrior. But most priests going this way do splash Warrior to do this.

Rogue

What I would like the rogue to do is this - if you are not constantly watching them, they may just outflank you and then you are dead. This is why I like powerful backstab, available all the way down and up the level tree, which you can perform at any time you can hit the back of someone - even if you are doing it from the front that still means you have outmanoevered your target or someone else has distracted them. That would be the primary combat ability of my favourite Rogue idea (possibly combined with stealing Ambush back from Androidkiller's Wilderness proposal).

Weaknesses: The Rogue has to come in close to do damage, *and* they are squishy. On the other hand you will really, really regret having them come in range.

Specialisations:

Outmanoevering You

Skills which allow the rogue to get into position more easily. This would cover any variety of fingerscouting, and also DAC (allows you a second chance at outmanoevering if you get tagged / lets you 'dodge' a hit or two on the way in). I really want to give rogues some quasi-magical invisibility because I think it is not good from a gamist point of view that white mages are better at outmanoevering people than rogues.

Making You Regret Their Presence In More Interesting Ways

Skills which let the rogue do things other than Massive Damage to people they have outmanoevered. Like the infamous Knockout (or like Sap, for a WoW analogy). Also like delivering all of the wonderful new venoms from the alchemy system.

Being A Lame Warrior Too

Skills for making the rogue less squishy. Light armour use. DAC, to some extent. They also get the Fake Wilderness skill of basic ranged weapon competency (utterly fantastic when combined with venoms).

Wilderness

Wilderness has a variety of available styles. They can go for massive ranged damage / ranged status effects and be a Lame Imitation Mage with reduced squishiness to make up for the lameness of not automatically hitting. They can go for skirmishing and be a Lame Imitation Warrior with status effects by blow in order to get away from the real warrior when they are caught up with. They can go for sniping and get increasingly useful 'hit and run and become invisible again' skills. All of these synergise quite well (snipe for massive ranged damage from cover and if you get caught up with, use status effects to get away).

Weaknesses: Still a bit of a 'jack of all trades, master of none'.

Specialisations:

Doing Insane Damage With A Bow (And Status Effects)

This is the Marksmanship tree (which I still think should be separated into damage and status effect versions, so you can specialise in one or the other).

Skirmishing And Getting Away From Warriors

This is the Weapon Competency and Swordsmanship trees (with Weapon Comp giving weapon combinations and singles, Swordsmanship giving 'strikedown and run away' trip attacks in order to facilitate getting away), with a side order of Light Armour, DAC and possibly a hit skill to reduce the squishiness.

Sniping

This is the Stealth and Ambush trees - letting you stealth faster and faster, and gradually letting you do more stuff from stealth without breaking stealth.

Alchemy

As noted in the 'priest' discussion above, I am very tempted to bring my understanding of the role of the 'priest' in combat more in line with what I think about mages, and make Alchemy into the Buff Your Party Until They Glow, Then Pick Them All Up Off The Floor And Do It Again class...

I approve of this way of seeing alchemy. Also, it's a jack-of-all-trades thing in that it can make anyone into a Temporary Somewhat Lame Imitation Of Anything. --Pufferfish