Seloun wrote:I kind of feel like psionics should have a special psionic category of its own (that no one else gets) but I'm not sure what would be the most appropriate. I'm inclined to suggest offensive (assuming this means mostly direct-damage oriented) since the other classes mostly cover that with weapons, but the psionics categories seem a bit too unclear in terms of design niche.
I want the Psionic to have a lot of variety of abilities. Some of them could be available to Scouts/Guardians as well but in those cases more powerful (since they have only a few). Or they could be simply different. But Psionic will have a wide range of abilities from resurrect, offense, buff, debuffs and so on. They just won't have any "big psionic skill", but a variety and also they can use more because have more PP than any other classes.
Seloun wrote:Grenades seems out of place from the list; it kind of feel like there should be a separate category of 'items', unless you want to think about recategorizing by niche instead (I'm assuming 'grenade' means 'AE damage/maybe effects' as a niche), in which case it might be worth thinking about it differently from the top down. Something like 'how does class X accomplish task Y?':
Yes for now I put grenades because I know that category needs to be added, there could be others. Grenades are the only way to have AOE damage with non-psionic abilities so are very different from all the other weapons.
As for what is the role, Anima and I are exactly trying to define that, but is really not easy

Also because Anima wants to have different statuses in combat.
Quoting his email, where I thought the Guardian as a Paladin (and so I answer also Lonestar question):
Well basically the Guardians job is to make sure that the others are able to do theirs. That's why they are the class that will be in the open most of the time. (I'm planning a few things that would make it really unpleasant to have all members in cover.)
Drawing aggro is a way to handle that mission as well, hence the toughness requirement. Other ways would be to specifically guard someone, to hold down the enemy with cover fire or to interrupt enemies.
In addition Guardians should end up with medikits and the ability to end status effects. So your Paladin comparison was pretty much on the point already.
So yes, CURRENTLY (because I want to stress that we're still designing everything, and the final test to see if everything works will be "on the battlefield") the idea is that the Guardian is the tank and protect the allies. Anima is the one that knows better the new Framework so I'm waiting for him to finish designing the other classes to discuss with him
Seloun wrote:The reason I got off on this tangent is actually due to the question 'what is the purpose of light/medium/heavy armor'? That is, what is their distinguishing characteristic? I'm not sure if those categories are the right names (for design anyway; you can always relabel them for the purposes of the player later if it makes sense). Evasive or Damage Reduction based are two natural categories (but it's not clear light is evasive, or that e.g. psionics should get access to it if that is the case). If it's supposed to be bad/alright/good, then it's not clear why Guardians don't get access to light (i.e. the highest category should imply access to the lower categories, unless for flavor, since mechanically it doesn't really fit in that case).
Like in AD&D some classes cannot wear cloth/leather armor (I think, maybe they have changed it recently, not sure) it's more a flavor thing. But also we'll try to make sense. The heavy armors resist damage more. So, for certain abilities the Guardians must be "in the open", so not in cover. Being in the open means they'll be surely hit often, so evasion doesn't matter that much. In this case, the actual armor resistance has much more importance than evasion bonus. While in "cover stance", evasion might be much more important, and that's why Scout/Psionic would wear light armor since they'll never go in the open (unless they want to suicide

).
In practice what we're trying to accomplish is to give the player the illusion that they're not playing in a 2d game with just one single front line, using various statuses/abilities like Cover, Suppression fire, etc. Easier to do when you have a map like in XCOM of course
Lonestar51 wrote:
Of course, for the soldier the question is: Why should I take a soldier in my party, except for Michelles nice smile?

What is the advantage of having a soldier vs a guardian?
Yeah, that's what we need to differentiate more. Soldiers don't guard/protect allies though, and have no Psionic, so they're different. We need to think about some unique/positive abilities for them now
