Who Is Good at What?

Who Is Good at What?
by Chuck Kallenbach, Game Designer

When we came up with the plan to provide four archetypes for Legends of Norrath, the next step was to divide up the various actions and effects between them. What does each archetype do well? What does each archetype do poorly? Who is second-best at each?

There are lots of 'fours' in the game. Four archetypes, and four icons on the left side of your avatar card. Perhaps the simplest division was to assign each of those icons to an archetype.

Fighters provide defense. Mages have lots of attack. Priests specialize in health. Scouts like damage bonuses. Of course, these assignments fit well with the MMO concepts of Fighters as tanks, Mages as casters, Priests as healers, and Scouts as melee support.

Another set of four was found in card types. Excluding your avatar and your quests, there are four card types that you use to make your deck. You'll find a correlation between Fighters and items, Mages and units (pets), Priests and abilities, and Scouts and tactics. Each archetype has more cards available in the card type it's associated with.

Some concepts are too universal to be limited to one archetype. We decided that Scouts and Fighters would be best at beginning combat with the opponent's avatar, but later we found this to be too important to limit to those two archetypes. You'll find cards that allow avatar attacks in every archetype, although those two are still the best at it.

What about the more undefined concepts like drawing cards and gaining power? We decided that drawing cards represented intellect, so Priests and Mages were best at that. We also gave those classes the most power-gaining effects, to illustrate Priestly prayer and the Mage's mastery of elemental forces.

If you look carefully, you'll see cards that represent haste, pickpocketing, levitation, disarming, mind control, and raising the dead. All of these effects are designed to represent the vast array of spells and skills from the MMOs.

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