Posted by WaterAssassin on October 21, 1999 at 01:27:11:
In Reply to: Exp penalties, a layman's take posted by The Arcane on October 20, 1999 at 22:51:49:
> I always thought of class-based exp. penalties on CF as a parallel to some other systems' "multi-classing." If you consider the basic character types that you find in stock ROM (and AD&D), you see the archetype for this model: fighter, thief, cleric, mage. Each of these four has no experience penalty (warriors, thieves, shamans/healers/druids, conjurers/necromancers/invokers/transmuters). The classes that do have experience penalties have them for being "multi-classes." Anti-paladins are warrior-mages, as they have fighting skills, plus offensive magics. Paladins are warrior-clerics, with fighting skills and healing/holy supplications. Bards aren't explicitly multi-class, but if you look at them, they can fight fairly well, they can heal themselves and others with songs, do damage and maledictions with songs, and so forth, making them a sort of general warrior/mage/cleric. > If you remember, prior to some of the recent revamps, the descriptions listed in "help classes" reflected this division. Assassins, if I remember right, were described as thief/clerics, back when they could cure crit and hellfire. > That's the logic behind it, as far as I understand it. No one is saying that a paladin is more powerful than a necromancer and thus you get a penalty for it. It's that paladins are (theoretically) more varied than a necromancer in the abilities they can call upon. Never mind the fact that a necromancer can, in this day and age, heal himself better than a paladin can, get more damage resistance than a paladin can without turning to other players, and indirectly deal out more physical damage.... But that's an issue for another post.