Hypothetical new class.
 

Let’s imagine classic Everquest circa November 2000.
Kunark is out and Velious is already completed and ready to be released.

You are a designer working on the next expansion. You have been tasked with creating a new class to add to the game. (Beastlords and Berserkers have not been invented or even mentioned) What is you idea for the 15th class?

Things to include:

What races can choose said class?
What deities can this class worship?
Is this class forced to follow a deity?
What armor can this class wear? (cloth, leather, chain, plate)
What weapons can this class wield? (1hb, 1hs, pierce, 2hb, 2hs, 2 handed pierce, shields)
Does this class use mana or stamina in order to use its abilities?
What are the staple abilities of this class?

Ideally you would try to balance the existing class structures.
In other words you don’t want too many classes using the same type of armor, or having the same abilities. (In this scenario chain and leather are the most underrepresented.)

(Feel free to include any beastlord and/or berserker ideas in your class build)

Bonus points if you include a currently non-playable race that is somehow represented in the original trilogy!!!

GO!

I really liked the concept of the beastlord although the playable race should have been kerra.

Things I enjoyed about the Beastlord:

leather armor (to share with druids and monks)

Weapon choices that closely match monk: This was actually good for monks because it meant more of these types of weapons would be added to the game and made them a little less exclusive.

A source of group mana regen at higher levels.
As an enchanter I thought it was a good way to mix things up. You no longer needed a bard or enchanter for mana regen but using a beastlord instead meant that you were loosing the ability to mez. However if you had both in your group the mana regen became insane!

It was a good mix of shaman and monk. Were they OP? Hell yes. But the concept was interesting.

I think the Vah Shir were pretty silly as far as playable races go.
Guktans made way more sense when it came to EQ lore.

I always wondered why there was no wizard/warrior hybrid.

I mean, you have a cleric/warrior (paladin), a necro/warrior (shadow knight), and a druid/warrior (ranger).

In old school DnD you could somewhat argue that a bard would be a wizard/warrior hybrid as it could use a variaty of weapons, wear armor, and cast mage spells. But the bards here are pretty unique in the sense that all of their spells are songs.

So I guess my idea would be some sort of arcane caster/melee class hybrid to balance the hybrids between 2 tanks and 2 dps (if you could call ranger dps). Call it Battle Mage or some such. Essentially it would be a ranger with bootleg wizard spells.

Discuss the details amoungst youselves, but I think that would be a really fun class to play.

Class: Martyr
Races: Human, Half Elf, Iksar, Erudite
Deities: All
Armor: Leather/Chain (ranger type gear)
Weapons: 2hb, Piercing, 1hb
Mana or Stamina: Both
Stat Focus: Int and Sta
Staple Abilities:
- Feign Death (spell)
- Dual Wield
- Double Attack
- Skull Crack line (costs mana) – Frontal “flying kick” type ability, meaning immense damage useable a few times during a fight.
() Uses mana to infuse weapon with: Hardening (physical damage) or Power (direct magic damage check), doing damage (of course factoring mob stat checks) comparable to similarly leveled Monk's flying kick.
- Short duration group buffs, similar to bard songs (uses Stamina)
() Speed
() Ac
() Resists
- Direct mana/health replenishment ability (uses Pilgrim’s Health). Martyr will drain 99% of their health and automatically Feign Death (losing all agro) and infuses the Martyr with a Divine Aura type spell. Other group members are responsible for healing the Martyr.
() +health to all group members (direct numbers, possibly a split % of the Martyrs total health multipled by X to make it a viable #)
() +mana to all group members (direct numbers, possibly a split % of the Martyrs total health multipled by X to make it a viable #)
- Cover(uses Mana). The Martyr has the ability to split (to all group members) damage inflicted on the MOB's Target without any agro change incrementally draining the Martyr's mana per every second Cover lasts.
- Martyrdom Short range unresistable AE stun procs when the Martyr dies.
- Righteousness Identical to Warrior's Berserker Frenzy however begins when the Martyr reaches 50% health.

Swordmaster
Similar in idea to what Fury Warriors from WoW are like, but since this is November 2000 no one knows what a fury warrior is.

Races: Any warrior race except gnome and halfling.
Deities: Race specific or Veeshan. No forced diety.
Armor: Up to chain. I figure its important for any melee class to wear at least chain unless they have massive avoidance or other bonuses like monks.
Weapons: 1hand swords only. Restrictions added similar to druids only being able to use scimitars in 1hand slashing.
Resource pool: Stamina
Class Staples: Dual Wield at level 1, Flurry at level 10, Can strike critical blows like a warrior but no crippling. I forget when rogues got duelist and such, but if it was Luclin (i.e. the expansion this is for) then add normal melee disciplines (fearless, resistance, ect.) and level 60 discipline Blood Frenzy, reduce the cooldown of flurry to 2 seconds for however long duelist last.

This idea has come up a lot in my conversations with people in the past as well.

It definitely makes sense but it's also a difficult one to nail down and get right.

The thing about rangers is that while they were supposed to be a druid/warrior hybrid, unlike palies and sks they didn't get to wear plate and were terrible at tanking post classic. So you kind of have to use the term "warrior hybrid" loosely.

Armor is a good place to start:

warrior plate + cleric plate = paladin plate
warrior plate + necro cloth = shadow knight plate
warrior plate + druid leather = ranger chain

It's a little messed up... Should a battle mage be able to wear leather or chain? Or should it be something crazy like cloth but extremely high dodge abilities (sort of like a monk)?

Nukes are obvious but what else should they be able to do? Root? Snare? Stun? AoE?

I'm sure others have considered this class and I know they exist in other games. Please share!

I like the idea of a wiz/war hybrid. Call it the bladedancer or something.

Uses 1 handed weapons, light armor(chain at max) and no shield. Can use caster offhands. INT and STR are primary stats.

Mixes melee with spell casting. Something along the lines of adding effects to the weapon (outside normal procs). Quick cast spells so you can use them in combat directed towards either straight up damage or some kind of evasion (IE, a fireball or something and a dodge increase for soloing). Short range teleports like shadowstep but controllable.

Make their overall sustained dps slightly lower than a rogue with a perma back to stab or a wiz with full mana but more group utility (group based evasion, proc buffs, spell or v3 haste, or some kind of mana regen maybe?).

Personally, I would change the name to martyr (yeah maybe too obvious) but I really like some of those ability ideas!

I'm guessing this is like a straight up DPS warrior build with low tanking ability?