2 New classes for heroes and rulers: Dancers and Psychics

[near canyon]

Why would Psychics have an anti undead ability

[green coral]

Here are a few fictional settings where psychic powers fill the role of a cleric’s divine magic against the undead:
-------- Mage: The Ascension (the World of Darkness RPG) lets your mages reshape reality with Mind spheres, ripping spirits and vampire thralls apart with thought alone, positioning them as secular exorcists.
EarthBound (Mother series) – Ness and his friends use PSI abilities like PSI Rockin’ and PSI Flash that deal extra damage to ghosts and zombies, treating mental power as a force for banishing spirits.

Shin Megami Tensei / Persona – Heroes summon Personas and unleash psychic attacks (Psi, Psychic Wave) that are especially lethal to Shadows and reanimated corpses, essentially exorcising them with sheer will.

Psi-Ops: The Mindgate Conspiracy – The player character’s telekinesis, pyrokinesis and mind control effortlessly smash skeletons and flesh golems, acting as a one-man exorcist without a church.

Warhammer 40,000 – Imperial Psykers call down Smite, a warp-fueled mental bolt that disintegrates Necron constructs and daemonic zombies, serving as battle-ready counterparts to holy inquisitors.

Shadowrun – Shamans and Adepts channel mana and spirits to harm trolls, ghouls and spirits, their magickal or psionic rituals working like secular exorcisms.

The Dresden Files – Harry Dresden hurls kinetic blasts and psychic wards at revenants and wraiths, using mental force and arcane science to purge the dead.

The Laundry Files – British agents employ thaumaturgical projections that literally tear apart otherworldly creatures and undead horrors, blending spycraft with pragmatic occultism.

Marvel Comics – Characters such as Psylocke and Jean Grey slice through spectral energy and zombified beings with telekinetic blades and psionic fury, acting as psychic purgers rather than clerics.

[near canyon]

... This is written by AI isn't it, half of these are just "the media uses psychic powers in the place of magic in general" and the other are "they can use psychic powers on undead because they can use it on everything"

[next pelican]

Considering this is the guy who also post AI assembled images ,i think you are right

depressing

[near canyon]

I'm very confused why the shadowrun section mentions trolls because they are just people in shadowrun.

[green coral]

the answer to your question is writen by AI under my requeriment of it because your question was vedy narrow minded and I didn't want to elaborate because I didn't like the question. Why can't psychic have exorcism ? the idea came to me because Psychic/Dancers are prototyped as two types of monks without calling them monks. Here is an image to help understand the two classes.

Monks are self disciplined and can do very inspirational things out of the ordinary

I don't think paladins and cleric should come to AoW 4, and have been thinking in more interesting choices

in a game of godirs and giants: clerics and paladins make little sense

[near canyon]

Which would probably manifest as a bonus against ethereal units, units that physically attacking would be difficult.

[green coral]

Dancer or Psychic sound enriching the array of classes and is very fitting

[near canyon]

Explain how.

[green coral]

not really because this psychic is about physical power, he jumps large distances, mastered forcefields, gives resistance to physical damage and of course can banish all kind of undead, you should think this psychic is weak when he doesn't have obstacles to throw or undead to bane

he is more of a battlefield repulsor of physical units, and damages undead

[near canyon]

Why would he just damage undead

[green coral]

he is a defensive monk

because as monk psychic can expulse undead energy from undead beings damaging them

[near canyon]

The non physical energy

[green coral]

damages undead, all

if you want to fight a psychic you should attack him from far away, he is only strong on fighting undead or fighting in battle maps with lots of obstacles to throw on enemies

[near canyon]

So can they affect the non physical or not.

[green coral]

he can move enemies in the battlefield to relocate them closer to obstacles

he is more about situational telekinesis and destroying undead, maybe also because he is capable of manipulating non living obstacles he can destroy physical undead

[near canyon]

Shouldn't that affect constructs instead

[green coral]

good idea

both

constructs and undead

after all is a class very situational

no healings, no big damage without good obstacles

I think because we have a couple of classes with powerful options in undead, it makes sense to have one against

yesterday I was roleplaying with a very good aligned giant that hates undead, and this made me think how lackluster I felt in class choices sometimes

[near canyon]

So you made a telekinetic that also can destroy undead for some reason.

[green coral]

for some reason?

could you be constructive?

[near canyon]

Like you understand the disconnect between having the power to move things with your mind and then also specifically destroying undead.

[green coral]

I made two monk like classes with super cool names that fit godirs and giants

the disconnect is only in your mind, a telekinetic psychic that is not about protecting from fire or rain, its about destroying not living and manipulating everything int he battlefield with telekinesis is not hard to imagine it can harm undead (not living, and constructs) but he can't heal, he can't deal damage without throwing obstacles from the terrain or damaging anything else than undead and constructs directly.

[near canyon]

But would they be able to do it to ghosts

A decently common undead type

[green coral]

1)no direct damage to non undead or constructs 2)needs terrain obstacles near to deal his physical attacks indirectly 3)Has no heals, low elemental protection 4)Forcefield that can protect from physical attacks 5) he is not the spiritual psychic you imagine, is the opposite

[near canyon]

I'm not thinking of a spiritual psychic, I wondering why they can't just also hurt or throw people

[green coral]

yes you were, and that's why you did criticize

Death Knight
Defender
Mage
Ranger
Ritualist
Spellblade
Warrior

Psychic

Dancer

seems very good

The dancer could work as a ninja, assasin, minstrel buffer. The Psychic could work as the typical spoon bender psychic mixed with destructive telekinesis that protects from physical impact or damages non living things. Think of telekinesis reversing the physical unlife that manifest on undead and constructs.

Psychic doesn't need to be strong against ethereal

is not his thing

[near canyon]

That is telekinesis effecting a non physical thing

[green coral]

its more a spoon bender capable of destroying things without true life

this kind of psychic affects physical undead

not necessary the ethereal

in fact psychic is weak against ethereal, fire, rain, ice, spiritual, he may be too sensitive to non physical things, it happens in many movies 😄

the thing is when something is not living he can grab it with his mind and destroy it

a psychic is a kind of monk sieger, but he may not be very capable in terrains without obstacles or without undead/constructs

I think its balanced

[near canyon]

I mean from a balance stand point it would probably be one of the worst classes in the game because of how situational it is.

[green coral]

I agree, but what whould you say if it had more advantages? this should start very limited and devs will flesh it further as they see

I don't want dancers and psychics to have things we already have

and don't want to make obsolete the other classes neither

psychic could have a telekinetic attack that prepares a stone in the ground for the next turn throw it at an enemy, but enemies could move away before. After some turns the terrain could have lots of stones summoned and unused that would be serve the psychic later, just an idea

[near canyon]

I mean my opinion on the telekinetic stuff as a whole is that a lot of work to allow objects to be moved or added for 1 class to work. Dancer has the issue of classes shouldn't physically change a hero and adding new weapons types for them makes them basically locked to vanilla heroes/rulers forever.

[green coral]

I did think on this, maybe it can be done in a more practical way for devs, but I think both classes are very interesting to add

Psychic sounds bold and iconic for a class

Dancer is also something cool

in Fire Emblem dancers buffs movement from allies

[near canyon]

They don't do that, they give them another turn.

[green coral]

well, is similar, I didn't want to make the two classes too op from start

extra movement gives a big advantage to catch casters in close combat

counter-attack is almost extra turn once the buffed fighter catches a caster and he tries to move away

but a dancer here could be much more: the whirlwind assasin type

no class has interrupt-silence yet

blocking support and heals could be interesting

dancer is not a super warrior, we already have warrior

I would like to know what classes you did think by yourself, I am very interested to see your ideas

[dire tulip]

https://tenor.com/view/obiwan-dog-force-the-force-pet-gif-11007530

psychics:

I like this concept a lot

dancers... seem like they could be a pretty cool unit, but them being a hero might be difficult.

[coral violet]

Eh, I really don't like psychics in fantasy.

Excuse me for being blunt, but it always comes off - to me - as a smarmy "my magic isn't magic" system/class more than anything. They literally always do the same things.

Age of Wonders already has a diverse selection of magic you can employ. No need to convolute it with "psychics" as something that stands apart from it.

[near canyon]

I think it's mostly limited to telekinesis so I'm fine with it on that front, but the amount of systems that would need to be implemented just for it to function would be a lot of work for it and like 1 or 2 units or enchantments.

[dire tulip]

That's not it, really. It's just a different kind of magic. Kind of like that one guy from TES who suddenly created a brand new school of magic by accident.

[green coral]

All I can say getting 2 new classes that mechanically feel this unique from the others would give a lot of replayability.

[jolly kettle]

You never played aow1 to 4 then? We had tons of priest units and some paladins too.

[dire tulip]

using Paladins
vs paladins

[green coral]

they are units, tell me of a cleric giant or a wizard king paladin. I hope clerics and paladins never become classes for heroes.

Death Knight and defender are enough paladins.

Ritualist is enough cleric.

[jolly kettle]

Both would follow allfather (or urrath if evil).

But you think a giantking dancer is more fitting?

[green coral]

yes its fun

[green coral]

defender and death knight work exactly like paladins would

paladins like you said probably would make defender, death knight and ritualist obsolete. Urrath and archons are just a story realm and don't need a whole class for that. Maybe could be ok adding other classes better balanced without trashing the oned that work, like: Prophets, Clairvoyants, Strategist, Commander...

[coral violet]

One has a precedent in the setting and franchise. One is just a fever dream.

[green coral]

this means nothing, paladin could make obsolete three classes, there are better options

[jolly kettle]

forgot to show you the paladin giants.
https://ageofwonders.fandom.com/wiki/Titan

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ageofwonders/images/8/88/Titan.png/revision/latest?cb=20170531060515

https://aow2.heavengames.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/25/2023/10/units_Archon_Titan.gif

[green coral]

Maybe Paragon class is the closer to paladin, could be more commander/strategist and non a healer paladin

Titans are units not a class

[jolly kettle]

It would probably be a mix of defender and ritualist, just like spellblade is mage/skirmisher

[green coral]

highmen and archons are now separated

high culture is not the only archons culture

[jolly kettle]

... highmen are archons. it just got renamed in aow2. Maybe you should read a bit more of the lore before you suggest new classes.

like your psyionic would just be a materium/astral wizard.

materium fits perfectly for manipulating obstacles and astral could displace enemies

[green coral]

highmen were archons, in the story realm could still use same words, but devs extracted high culture and not all are archons, not now. Maybe you can read better becausr I said correctly.

[coral violet]

High culture is supposed to be the high elvish culture of previous games. It has no relation to the High Men, Archons, or the debate over whether or not they're the same.

[coral violet]

Ah, yes. Because paladins routinely make fighters and priests obsolete in every other game that they're present.

I guess by this logic, the spell blade makes mage and warrior obsolete.

[green coral]

No, the types of units also include reference from archons. Awakener unit is very archon like from high culture.

[green coral]

Not the same, we already have defender that does the same as paladins in most games. Death Knights are the dark paladins in most games like Forgotten Realms.

[coral violet]

Awakening was never a mechanic in the previous games.

The emphasis on a strong T2 archer, powerful mage, and the overall armor and architectural aesthetic are all elven.

Stop.

Defender does not follow the paladin archetype in most games. Especially not in the Forgotten Realms setting. Where are you even getting this?

[green coral]

No, I mean this unit looks exactly like archons https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/HighUnits.html?type=awakener&

and this is like titan you showed https://minionsart.github.io/aow4db/HTML/HighUnits.html?type=dawn_defender&

we only lack roman like culture, is what will come

[coral violet]

Neither of those resemble the units that you say they do. At all.

[green coral]

romans dont have paladins: commander, strategist is more the style

[coral violet]

Well, too bad. The Archons/High Men followed Mediterranean aesthetics and had paladins.

[green coral]

maybe charioteer class, could be impressive, but I think will be a tome unit only, like titans

[coral violet]

That has nothing to do with clerics and paladins, but okay.

[green coral]

things are better now

[coral violet]

What does this even mean? You seem to be arguing that the Romans never had religious theming in history. Two things:

1. This isn't historical rome. This is an established faction in a high fantasy setting.

2. The Eastern Romans would be very confused at the assertion that they weren't a part of the monotheistic collection of religious cultures.

[jolly kettle]

these arent even close. High is good fantasy culture. Archons were roman inspired holy men race.

[green coral]

No need of paladins, classes rework already happened, if we get more classes I hope they are exotic and more situational, like strategist, commander dancer, psychic, clairvoyant, prophet, warlock, witch, witch hunter, charioteer... all these are good and unique

[coral violet]

You're just allergic to anything that has an existing precedent in the franchise, aren't you?

Oh no. The dreaded thumbs-down.

I have been smitten.

[green coral]

no, you are just allergic to excellence and innovation

[jolly kettle]

commander/strategist is the champion/hero skill choices. Maybe parts in defender.

Clairvoyant/prophet sounds like some ritualist with more focus on buffs. witch hunter is ranger skirmisher path.
psychic is not a thing in aow.
no idea what the difference between warlock and spellblade or mage should be. same for witch and mage/ritualist.

Your dancer example is all over the place. Its some mix of warrior with ritualist and mage. You want strong melee attacks, but also buffs and summons and teleport and debuffs.

[green coral]

commander/strategist can be different, more on the side of giving orders and special stances to your allies, not heals

[jolly kettle]

and its somehow a high single target class and aoe melee

[coral violet]

ChatGPT, write me a prompt for a fantasy class.

[jolly kettle]

yes, thats what champion/hero does. give them stuff like orders.

[jolly kettle]

<insert random class form dnd> <search for things with similar names, add random stuff to it, also make stuff up>

[green coral]

Clairvoyants/prophets could be tricksters that channel twist fatal fates without resurrect or heal

[jolly kettle]

what is fatal fates?

[green coral]

reverse death blows to killer, being dominated in next turn, etc could turn tides but paying a price, example self hurting to use that power

in newer ways

[coral violet]

Units killing each other and mind control, you say? Very impressive. Very new.

[green coral]

we dont have a class that reflects it from skills

send a chaff unit blessed by Reversed Fate or Twisted Fate skill from Prophet/Clairvoyant and kills the killer of your chaff unit instead. Just two or three times per battle seems good signature for this class.

[coral violet]

We have it in the form of items and, frankly, that's enough. If a hero could stack damage reflection off of items and scaling innate skills, that would be nothing short of game-breaking.

[green coral]

Also curses like final fantasy: a count on a unit that will die after certain turns, could be 7

There are many non used mechanics that could create new clases not overlapping the reworked classes

[jolly kettle]

i am beginning to wonder if we even talk about the same game. You do mean classes for the game age of wonders 4 correct?

[green coral]

do you eat the same since your very baby childhood? be serious, game can become more diverse and complex than in the past entries, why not?

I prefer more classes and not overlapping with the ones we already have

[jolly kettle]

Oh, so we dont talk about aow4, at least that is what that X emote from you probably ment. Go on then.

[green coral]

I strongly disagree with your assunption that a death counter from a prophet curse would not fit aow 4. It could.

[jolly kettle]

oh, thats not the issue. the issue is you think battles typically last for 8+ turns to make a 7 turn deathcounter ever matter

[green coral]

Of course not, do you see it weak? is fine to not design op classes and refine later.

most important is not overlap the already classes reworked

[jolly kettle]

so you want to start with an ability that will in 99% of all cases never matter?

[green coral]

it gives strategy tools that are newer game styles and could matter

[jolly kettle]

something reasonable would be along 3 turns, but even that feels very long in a battle.

[green coral]

death counter in a unit when well chosen could be vital

no, 3 turns is too op

[coral violet]

I'd rather have a tested and true paladin that serves as an antithesis to the death knight, has a precedent in the setting, and isn't chock full of frustrating and untested mechanics.

[jolly kettle]

Ok, let me get this straight. You think a 7 turn deathcounter debuff that will kill the unit when it runs out is a fair timer, when most battles are finished at around turn 5 and usually only need some clean up at best.

But you want a phasing anti mage assassin that prevents all units within 4 hexes from using any magic based skills which essentially can disable half an army if well placed.

You do see that your ideas swing wildly in power. One of the two is a waste of an action, the other is a must have and so disruptive people would be stupid not to take it.

[green coral]

this may sound reasonable, I am not fully against paladin if is more geared to anti death knight

paladin in any case could only heal itself never be an army healer, remover of debuffs is okay

[green coral]

I like your observations, anything would need testing to further refine. I think is fine and balanced the way I said. Don't you think a prophet could have class weapons that lessens the death counter? everything could come at later stages, earning it.

[jolly kettle]

why take a unit that needs to debuff and than hit an enemy 3 times to kill it, if i can take a warrior, that kills it in 2 turns and then gets an extra action to hit another enemy?

[near canyon]

I'm a bit confused why you think paladins healing other units would be broken over healing themselves.

[jolly kettle]

while the debuff is running out, you also essentially let that enemy unit act freely. if you want to kill them with the deathcounter doing them any kind of damage is wasted. giving the unit plenty of time to kill your archers/mages/heroes

[green coral]

No class works alone against a full army, you are theorizing on the wost

[green coral]

is the feature I don't want

spellblade are well balanced, paladin would be too much

we have ritualist and defender for that

[jolly kettle]

thats the problem with your deathcounter. for it to be worthwhile you need to debuff the enemy and reduce the timer each turn. how long is that supposed to take? 3 turns? that would be 3 turns the enemy unit can still fully act while your hero is busy reducing the timer. That unit probably kills 2 of yours in that time.

[near canyon]

Defenders don't have healing in their tree, they have debuff removal.

And ritualists are a class that a lot of people say is spread kind of thin for being the only support class.

[green coral]

ritualist are weak as they should be to pay for healing support

defenders can heal slowly, like paladins usually do

[near canyon]

I don't know a single game where paladins heal slowly.

[green coral]

nothing comes easy, is just another way to play your heros. New mechanics would need testing.

DOTS in games tend to be slower way of killing, this prophet curse is a counter to zero just doing the full danage at the end. Theres still more things that could have, lowering moral each turn because the cursed knows is sentenced.

Anyways the main two classes suggested here are Dancer and Psychic. I came with more ideas because negativity of some replies. Strategist and Prophet sounds cool too.

[jolly bolt]

It's not fine to define useless things and hope to refine them later. This logic kills many projects, games included.

The sheer quantity of items over quality never saved anyone, it only raises questions.

In your specific case, the first class is all over the place without a clear definition while the other seems to be too situational to be useful.

Also your style of explaining what should be mechanics by vaguely spitting out uncorrelated words does not help to understand what it's supposed to do exactly.

E.G. "Dancer could be oriented to kill mages and ritualist". How exactly? What mechanics allow them to do that? Stunning summons? How exactly it helps to kill the mages?

E.G. SKILLS: Forcefield Mastery, Dreamstorm Ultimate.
Why you are just combining words? Who is supposed to understand what's that supposed to be? What it does? What are mechanical implications? Why would anybody want this?

P.S. Also, putting a supportive emoji on your own suggestion is kinda bad habit and looks miserable.

[green coral]

Useless is only your derrogatory observations. I have made very specific old suggestions that were too spercific, now I just draw the main lines of everything. You don't seem to remember what has been explained above that psychic skill lists, is just a paragraph above . I think most of the bad replies are very unfair and crazy.. Why 7 turns or 3 on a skill idea should decide if. the class is useless? absolutely troll field, all my ideas are very elaborated example thr psychic class was rescued from mu Sphynx Pharaoh or Lamassus suggestions. I remembet someone said psychic could be a cool class, and lamassus could be more open to all classes. Forcefielf Mastery: could mean push back enemies and giving +resistance to physical attacks, forcefield is a form of telekinesis. Dreamstorm Ultimate was the summon a big stone once per battle from the plain terrain eithout obstacles and blow a heavy attack. It wad explained above the skill list. What other ultimate like skill description is there? "The best dkill for psychic vould be dummon a single strongest obstacle from its own dreams and throw it, just once per battle"

[near canyon]

I mean dreamstone goes against the rest of the class just being telekinetic.

[jolly bolt]

I'm not following your multiverse, I am just reading your suggestion and understanding nothing

[green coral]

ok

[jagged ridge]

Did you just ChatGPT yourself a suggestion??

[jolly bolt]

100% not. ChatGPT has style.

This is clearly a human writing