Posted January 16, 2024 by Binary Star Games
Hi there!
Valiant Horizon v1.0 is coming out on January 23rd! So I’d better get moving on these devlogs.
As noted in #1, all role/sub-role talk is referring to Total//Effect’s role and sub-role concepts.
All of my mages (the -magus classes specifically) are just a little off from what people expect. “Earth” is probably the most skipped element in video games on top of that - you see fire/ice/lightning a lot, and earth sometimes comes in as like “acid” or some similar cop-out like that. This makes sense if you’re only making up elemental attacks and not trying to hit something more core to the concept/trying to make something that feels like it belongs to the world. But I don’t want any of the magic in this world to be solely for combat - they all had to feel like they were like, part of the world in some way. So Earthmagus’s Tales are about understanding, addressing and nurturing the land, and their iconic portrait is a farmer or tender of some sort.
The Earthmagus’s roles are Defender (Lockdown, Disable) and Supporter (Ward). It excels at creating a sense of stability across the party: encouraging or forcing enemies not to move, debuffing enemy attacks, and buffing allied defenses. (A lot of the “damage enemies if they move” abilities also become a form of offense when combined with allies who can move enemies around - or borrowed powers that let you do that!)
Frostmagus is a weird case. At one point it used to be Watermagus, but I decided to get more specific with it because it felt a little better in that regard. As with Earthmagus, I tried to keep its Tales a little more grounded in nature - a focus on discovery, travel, and healing rather than offensive action. Ice has a real “combat magic” vibe to it, same with Fire, and pushing against that was important here, and doubly so given its role as a more supportive class.
The Frostmagus’s roles are Supporter (Ward, Heal) and Attacker (Spread). This one is definitely playing against type in some ways - healing isn’t usually something associated with frost/ice, right? This is partially a holdover from when it was more “water” but it’s also not that big a stretch if you think about it - ice is what you put on wounds, after all, and at the end of the day it does still provide water. Aside from that, it’s very good at preventing and reducing Weapon Harm in particular, which is extremely common among “minion” enemies - and given that their trait affects allies affected by a Power, they want to be looking for Powers that affect multiple allies.
As noted before, only a handful of classes can deal both Magical and Weapon Harm from their ability set. Both Earthmagus and Frostmagus do this! For me this is part of their abilities feeling much more “physical” in that sense than something like fire - it’s still magic but it kind of acts like a weapon. I think it’s also good for that level of grounding both of them want.
Next time, the two final martial classes - Knight and Ranger!