Forums » Pantheon Classes

Increase Race/Class combo variety through Progeny

    • 19 posts
    May 25, 2021 5:34 PM PDT

    I'm in the boat of 'I like being able to combine my favorite race with my favorite class, despite what lore may dictate is normal for said race'. But I do totally understand that anyone freely being able to break lore whenever they please can be immersion breaking for many.

    So, a middle ground, a unique benefit to the progeny system, and a lore reason that a given race will be a class outside of their normal selection all bundled into one. Although, it may be better to rename it the 'protege' system, instead, in this particular case.

    When a character reaches max level or whenever they would normally be able to progeny the character may retire and upon creating the new character that character and that character only would have access to their mentor's class, regardless of race. So it doesn't unlock the class for anyone and everyone you create from then on, only that one character and only that one time. If you want to make another character with that same class that normally wouldn't be able to you would have to progeny again.

    Additionally, to add to the socialization aspect of the game, it may be interesting to be able to cross-progeny with other players so that two can get the benefit at once. So, say you have a druid but want to make a warrior, and you have a friend who is a warrior but wants to make a druid. Through a process similar to a GM officiated marriage, you can both send in a ticket to be able to retire one another's characters.

    This gives people a lore reason for an otherwise impossible class/race combination, it limits accessibility to said race/class combination so that it isn't in everyone's face and all over the place, and, in the case of the 'cross-progeny', can further enhance the social and community driven aspects of the game. And because players would need to send in a support ticket identifying themselves and their intentions it would make anyone 'selling' their character's progeny for real world money that much easier to smack down.

    • 888 posts
    June 9, 2021 10:48 AM PDT
    That's some interesting twists on the idea. Personally, I don't really see the lore reason for unlocking by class. If my Human Paladin retires, how would that explain my new Dark Myr Paladin? The most lore-consistent way, in my opinion, is to unlock the race of your retired character. My Dark Myr Cleric could gain faction with and retire in Thronefast, this allowing his child to train as a Paladin and have his starting city be Thronefast.

    The "marriage" idea is interesting, though it should be automated and not require a support ticket. Butfor lore consistency, it would make more sense as a partnership or training pact than a marriage, because there aren't mixed race characters in game. Also, this prevents the issue of making the pairing require opposite sex characters because the progeny aren't supposed to be the offspring of the two characters. And a partnership could allow for more than two characters to join or, allowing for more flexibility and not leaving anyone out if it's a group of friends.
    • 19 posts
    June 9, 2021 3:01 PM PDT

    Counterfleche said: Personally, I don't really see the lore reason for unlocking by class. If my Human Paladin retires, how would that explain my new Dark Myr Paladin?


    Because you aren't 'unlocking' anything. The idea behind it is that when your character retires, they train someone. But they only have the time or patience or what have you to train one person. That's why I suggested that it may make more sense to rename it the 'protege' system through what I'm suggesting, rather than the 'progeny' system.

    Counterfleche said:The most lore-consistent way, in my opinion, is to unlock the race of your retired character. My Dark Myr Cleric could gain faction with and retire in Thronefast, this allowing his child to train as a Paladin and have his starting city be Thronefast.


    That's the other thing. A lot of people's complaints with allowing anyone to be anything is that it's lore breaking. So that's why I suggested that it be a one time thing. It's a difficult thing to work towad and is very limited so that it's an extreme rarity.

    Also, while sure, maybe it could go the path of unlocking as a whole, but if for whatever reason you create/delete the same race/class combo multiple times, maybe because you just don't feel right with a name, is every single one of those characters going to be your retired character's offspring? And the way you phrased it, you're saying that by retiring your Dark Myr Cleric in Thronefast you should have access to any class that would be accessible in Thronefast. Because if you were born and raised there, why wouldn't you have access to it? Your Dark Myr Cleric clearly didn't train their son to be a Paladin, so it would have to have been a Paladin local to Thronefast. And you would obviously have 'unlocked' Thronefast, as well. Is every single Dark Myr you create in Thronefast from then on also your retired character's offspring? Sure, your character may just be prolific. But it makes more sense for them to be a tutor taking the time to train someone than a raging sex addict, thus unlocking class rather than race.

    Not to mention, wouldn't that just make retiring and having kids in the human city the best option since humans can be every single class? Why would anyone go literally anywhere else? That would be game breaking on multiple levels. Everyone in the game trying to raise faction with humans, no one wanting to do content that would lower human factions, the human homeplace being completely overrun with every single race except human, etc.

    Counterfleche said:The "marriage" idea is interesting, though it should be automated and not require a support ticket. Butfor lore consistency, it would make more sense as a partnership or training pact than a marriage, because there aren't mixed race characters in game. Also, this prevents the issue of making the pairing require opposite sex characters because the progeny aren't supposed to be the offspring of the two characters. And a partnership could allow for more than two characters to join or, allowing for more flexibility and not leaving anyone out if it's a group of friends.


    I only said 'through a process similar to marriage' in that you would be contacting a GM or putting in a support ticket to ask to have it done. I in no way, shape, or form said that the characters needed to marry or have kids for this to happen. But yes, that was also the intention. Two characters retire together and they allow the other person access to their class. And the idea behind this one is a sort of 'friendly rivalry', the two of you training someone together to see who has the better student, or who makes the better teacher.

    It literally cannot be automated because it involves another person's account. When you delete your character or create a new character, you are doing it on your account of your own accord. But in this scenario you are deleting your character to give someone else a one time benefit that would change depending on the character you have, and the same for the person you're doing this with. It has to have a person manually handling things or it could be abused or in some way broken. Particularly by people who would do real money transfers selling off their character's progeny/protege to others. Especially gathering multiple people to do it simultaneously as a group. The GM can absolutely have a streamlined way to handle it, but it genuinely cannot be automated without a party in some way associated with the game.

    • 337 posts
    June 10, 2021 6:50 AM PDT

    This is a great idea that I had not thought of before.  My initial thought on progeny was to allow one or two abilities, maybe gated to either utilities or combat, that can be passed down to the offspring.  So I can have a wizard that learned to rope climb from his father, or a monk who has the ability to use one distinct fireball spell he learned from his mom.

    The only issue with this is that class generally is the driver when creating alts, not race.  Not sure if I've met anyone who maxed out an Erudite cleric then thought they'd like to see what it would be like to be a high elf cleric.  But, on the other hand, that would be a great way to make the progeny system neutral enough to not be meta.  But then, as Joppa put it, would it be worth it to have in game as a feature to players?  Not that I wouldn't love to see a Skar druid skipping with some bunnies through Faerthale...

    • 19 posts
    June 10, 2021 7:41 AM PDT

    Benonai said:

    This is a great idea that I had not thought of before.  My initial thought on progeny was to allow one or two abilities, maybe gated to either utilities or combat, that can be passed down to the offspring.  So I can have a wizard that learned to rope climb from his father, or a monk who has the ability to use one distinct fireball spell he learned from his mom.

    The only issue with this is that class generally is the driver when creating alts, not race.  Not sure if I've met anyone who maxed out an Erudite cleric then thought they'd like to see what it would be like to be a high elf cleric.  But, on the other hand, that would be a great way to make the progeny system neutral enough to not be meta.  But then, as Joppa put it, would it be worth it to have in game as a feature to players?  Not that I wouldn't love to see a Skar druid skipping with some bunnies through Faerthale...



    I'm glad you like it! While I personally wouldn't mind in the slightest if there were some tangible benefits to be gained along with the progeny/protege (you have a powerful mentor, after all), I would be more than fine if it was just kept to a basic 'new race/class combo'. It makes it more of a prestige thing rather than a power gaming thing. There won't be a reason for an elite guild to bar you from entry for not being perfect. And in fact there may be some unique combinations you can figure out through the protege. A group of Skar Bards with their racial pack speed buff playing speed boosting songs to easily surpass even the quickest mount. And especially if 'cross-progeny' is allowed it wouldn't be too difficult to find someone willing to trade their character's class for your own, bypass that "Why would I delete my Cleric to make antoher Cleric?" issue, and it would give a benefit to players who have a bunch of max level characters they don't really use but are afraid to just delete to make room for new characters without good reason.

    • 337 posts
    June 10, 2021 11:37 AM PDT

    I'm sold, bud.

    • 2752 posts
    June 10, 2021 12:14 PM PDT

    Sounds like a system I'd not particularly like as presented.

    If I could do some epic questing on my first character that involves but is not limited to maxing reputation with different player races to allow future characters to have expanded race/class options, but not have that at all tied to whatever race/class my character currently is? I am all about it.

    • 9 posts
    June 14, 2021 3:42 PM PDT

    I wouldn't mind seeing VR's take on the old EQ2 "Betrayal" system. For those unfamiliar, certain classes were 'locked' to the two main cities - "good" classes/races (e.g. high elf paladin) belonged to Qeynos and "evil" races/classes to Freeport (e.g. dark elf shadow knight). Because the original class system was broken into 2 tiers where you started as a base class (warrior) then got to choose your specific class at lvl 10 or 15 (warrior-> paladin), you had the option to create whatever race you wanted and then do a quest to "betray" your home city and switch sides. Since they aren't using a tiered class system it would have to be something different, like allowing you to do a quest at a lower level in one of the cities that house the class you want, to effectively "re-roll" that character back to lvl 1 with the desired class but I doubt that's something we would be able to see at launch.

    The only bad thing (from my point of view) to those types of systems isn't so much the lore breaking, as much that it just personally drove me nuts in EQ2 to see the 8 million variations of Drizzt Do'Urden dark elf rangers running around Qeynos.


    This post was edited by Nuein at June 14, 2021 3:44 PM PDT