Behind the Scenes Interlude II (2/2)

4. Grifters are great at lying and trickery.

SAGE

Sages know stuff! They're all about knowledge, focused or more diffused as the case may be.

1. Alchemists specialize in potions, elixirs, bombs, and things brewed beforehand.

2. Enchanters craft magical items, adjust existing ones, and can add magical buffs to ordinary stuff.

3. Tamers gotta catch 'em all! They deal with befriending monsters and using them to fight.

4. Wizards are generalist mages obsessed with the raw force of magic itself. And blowing things up.

WANDERER

Wanderers go to different places and do stuff. They don't HAVE to wander, but they're at their best potential when moving around.

1. Explorers find new places, make maps, and survive hostile climes.

2. Mercenaries go to interesting places, meet new people, and fight them for money.

3. Merchants trade and make money as they go, and make the best craftsmen.

4. Scouts travel the wilderness unseen, and spy upon others.

WARRIOR

Warriors are about fighting. Full stop.

1. Archers fight from a distance, using bows, crossbows, or other stringed tension weapons. Yes, ballista count as well.

2. Berserkers fight with rage, pushing themselves beyond their limits until the fight's done.

3. Duelists fight with style, specializing with their chosen weapon and using attitude and tricks to defend themselves and taunt their foes.

4. Knights are about bravery, heavy armor, and horses. In that order.

Those are all the Tier One jobs. They're called Tier One jobs, because they're relatively easy to get into, and simple. To unlock them, you only have to perform a simple action... for archers, you have to get to twentieth level bow skill. For Animators, you have to interact with animated objects for a few years. For alchemists, you have to mix chemicals together and observe the results until you manage to work out a stable formula. And so on, and so forth. There are multiple unlocks for each job, too... necromancers can get the job by defiling the dead, having repeated peaceful contact with sentient undead, or sacrificing people to the God of Death. And there may be more ways to unlock classes that haven't been discovered yet!

Tier two jobs are where things start to get more specialized. And tricky.

HOW TIER 2 JOBS WORK

To get a Tier Two job, you have to combine one or more Tier One jobs. Sometimes you have to mix in a crafting job, too. When you do that, you get a specialized job that pulls from the basic themes of its Tier One Jobs.

Golemists, for example, are a Tier 2 job that mixes Animators and Enchanters. They craft specialized magical dolls and statues out of various materials, then bring them to life permanently.

Lycanthropes are Tier Two jobs that draw on the best parts of Shamans and Tamers. They shapechange into their favored beast, and run with packs of those beasts.

Gunslingers are a simple mix of Archer and Duelist, with Tinker on the side so that they can actually make guns.

And so on, and so forth, with so many possible combinations that nobody's sure that there's a fixed amount. In any case, merely having the two classes isn't enough, it also takes either a teacher with the Tier Two class explaining what to do, or some research and experimentation to find the required unlock.

With this system, it's possible to make just about any class out there, from combinations of the base 28 and maybe a craft skill. And even combinations of the same Tier One jobs will unlock different Tier 2 job, depending on the unlock and the intent. Slap a Cultist with an Oracle and go live in the woods and cook children, and you can unlock a witch. Mix Cultist and Oracle another way and go rave on street corners, and you end up with a Doomsayer, who rouses mobs to madness and murder...

It's worth noting that the Tier 2 jobs aren't necessarily more powerful than the Tier 1 jobs, but they are more complex, generally, and more specialized.

Also note that learning a Tier 2 job doesn't negate or replace a Tier 1 job. If you become a Golemist, your Animator skills are still there, still useful for things the Golemist skills don't cover.

This also means that most adventurers don't have a lot of Tier Two jobs. And that the ones who do plan very, very carefully for it. Which is generally a good idea, otherwise you live your life foolishly, wandering around, grabbing random careers from the unlocks you stumble upon naturally.

I mean, who the hell DOES that? The sages all agree, that is the opposite of the path to power, and anyone who squanders their potential on such a reckless life will never amount to anything.