WARNING - This thread isn’t made for new players or those that seek guidance on how to use said class, please look for proper threads regarding it such as class overviews and build guides. Design Breakdown is a design discussion thread only and has no purpose to help players on practical aspects of the game.
Starting another Design Breakdown with one of the most used classes, those that help lonely players to survive, Pardoners. Being a mid rank class it can use build over other classes to draw power, and as such enable players to access their services as if they had an ally along the way, however this comes with a cost and it isn’t silver. In case this is your first time on a Design Breakdown topic go to this link for some basic information.
PARDONER - RANK 5 - Crafting
“Pardoners are clerics who don’t shy from increasing their wealth through the goddess’ blessing.”
Spot on, Pardoner is a business class and takes their skills as goods to be exchanged, it’s a really interesting identity that can work quite well due the game class system. However, there are quite some restrictions regarding what the class can provide and so available builds.
Pardoners were clerics from christian church that provide religious services if the follower paid enough, as such anyone that could take the bills could reserve its spot in heaven, this was a tactic employed by the church to keep the power as merchants rose in society.
Simony (C) - Lead
As the major themes in pardony are money and divinity it does make sense to have a skill that enables others to access its holy powers, in fact Pardoners would even make receipts for their clients, that’s enough to justify Simony.
This feature is really powerful as it allows any class to access their skills and gives additional cast for those that have them, skill scrolls don’t carry attributes but can access them if the user has the compatible class, it’s a simple yet amazing feature.
Unfortunately this skill has some flaws related to craftability that can’t be ignored, the first one being the terrible cost formula that makes no sense at all. To make a skill scroll it is required 1 parchment and 200 silver, in a total of 700 silver, multiplied by the skill level at a total of 10.500 silver for a 15 lvl skill - that’s a lot for a one use thing. This kind of formula prevents scrolls to be viable as an income source as the market fees requires them to be sold at the minimum non profitable price of 15.000 for non token users and 11.667 for token ones, in order to make any money out of scrolls the market price has to go higher and yet they’ll be taxed.
It’s understandable that such restriction prevents classes from having skills trivialized by scrolls, however as the class system is designed lower rank classes already have more coverage due their placement, if this the main reason it completely backfires as late rank skills have the same production cost. A way to work around it is by adding a rank factor to the formula as each skill cost is taken based on their minimum learnable rank, at that scenario Barrier would have a rank 6 factor.
Along with that the fee can be simplified by having a single parchment as requirement and keep a similar formula for silver (with or without a rank factor), as the current model it doesn’t make much sense to have both an ingredient and a fee as both multiply equally.
One interesting thing that can be done with Simony to increase Pardoner combat efficiency without any major balance disruption - a new type of skill scroll. It’s possible to add a cheaper non-transferable scroll for personal use only, that provides Pardoner additional power by using money and doesn’t threat other classes.
Lastly, Simony lacks an ingame a kind signal to mark scrollable skills, players shouldn’t rely on trial and error to find them nor be forced to research, also as those have to be updated by other players any further change to the skill pool may not have the updated information.
Indulgentia (B) - Relief
The whole deal with Pardoners was selling indulgentia, in the real life it was suppose to reduce the purgatory passage. Here the skill deals damage to enemies and remove debuffs from allies, with some abstraction it’s possible to connect aimment lifting to suffering lifting. Even the offensive component can make the cut as purgatory split those that will go to heaven and those that will be sent to hell, it’s a bit of a stretch but it ain’t an easy theme to work with.
Unlike Cure this skill targets all units around caster, however it only deals one hit to enemies and that doesn’t really make any difference in battle. It also has one of the weirdest scales as the supportive is at full power at level 1 and adds non-party players per level, offensively it over scales as target limit increases. Indulgentia works as a relief but lacks a hook to promote itself, giving it such thing would make it as round as it can be.
Discerning Evil (B) - Gimmick
Fear used to be a major element on medieval christianity, along with the concept of retribution on afterlife it doesn’t feel off to have a skill that amplifies the suffering of one.
As basic as it sounds it’s a powerful skill when used properly as it can extend poison damage and control duration, the issue tho is that the skill increases duration based on the % of time remaining, any short duration debuff is barely affected on early and mid levels making it not as viable as it could.
One way to bypass that is by making it double the duration of debuffs based on their starting time, this can be affected by a cap time based on skill level. As safety measurement is also possible to add Discerning Evil as a stackable debuff that reduces efficiency in half by each additional stack.
Increase Magic Defense (C) - Midground
That’s where we see devs either got cornered or didn’t bothered to link a theme to it, it’s just a flat dumb name, even the gameplay aspect of it doesn’t link to Pardoners.
As a standalone skill it fails as its overscale also diminishes the skill as it can be sold, ironically by its own class. This skill serves as a counterpart of Aspersion as it does the same but for magic, however it deserves a better fitting name as the current one doesn’t connect to the theme.
Completely lackluster, aside for Indulgentia and some punctual uses for Simony, all skills require at least circle 2 to be effective and only bloom at the last circle. There’s no room for skill distribution as Increase Magic Defense can be sold by other Pardoners making it pointless to take, the only attractive skill is Discerning Evil yet the low % doesn’t do much.
Oblation (F) - High Lead
As churches don’t have any income source their survival relies on donations, it was common to have a donation box near entrance so every adept could drop a penny or two every time they go there. Those could be moved around and even be taken to public events, that’s how oblation came to be as an offering to god to keep their temples.
There are so many issues with this skill that it’s hard to start, it’s boring, useless, non-profitable, highly restricted and depends on thirds to work, the perfect recipe for disaster.
Unlike other shop type skills Oblation can only be set near statues, this alone restricts the use to few maps as towns can’t be taken, and as reward for submitting an item to the shop the customer is awarded with silver and the same goes to the shopkeeper.
As weird as it sounds both sides get silver and the item is destroyed with no mechanism to recover it, this itself makes the skill questionable as the donation isn’t that important and doesn’t worth applying for, overall mats are better used for recipes and can be sold at NPCs rending the skill useless aside for a small bonus on few offensive skills.
What Oblation needs is a good reward for interacting, perhaps a small buff such as increased HP/SP regen near statue, looting chance or EXP bonus for the current map only. Another quality of life that can be done is changing it to take silver in different tiers as a simplified version, as such it should have a debuff preventing it to be used while active and so impossible to be exploited as silver transfer. This skill has potential to be worth a C3 if done right.
Spell Shop (F) - High Lead
Again the whole thing about selling blessings and holy services, it can’t be more straightforward than that.
This is known as Pardoner’s signature skill and it’s an amazing skill concept for any MMO as a way to help solo players to survive on their own, unfortunately its design doesn’t match the potential it has, leading to issues on both local and global spheres. It’s unfriendly, trivializes content and restrain build diversity.
Spell Shop also ignores all known rules being the only shop that can all services available at once, uses previous class as part of it, can be improved by character stats, ignores customer specs and offers a counterproductive improvement when leveled.
As it can offer all services and the game allows them to be accessed easily Spell Shop requires a specific build to work, one that takes 40 out of 45 points on Priest and 20 out of 45 on Pardoner. Any shop that doesn’t have Aspersion, Blessing, Sacrament and Increase Magic Defense maxed is out of the business as are completely viable from a rank point of view, Cleric 2 can be added for one extra level on all skills along with the shop itself as a minor yet mandatory component into an already strict the build. This lack of restriction isn’t good for the game as the whole business is solely based on equipment, the highest level Pardoner with the best equipment will be the shop that takes it all.
To fix that aspect it’s required to either split skills among more classes, as it difficultes shops to offer everything and frees some stress on individual classes, add more skills to the pool or enable only one buff to be sold per shop. A last resource is the complete removal of scale on buffs, this tho would kill the best feature it has and the only exciting element the skill has.
Now one thing Spell Shop is held responsible for is content trivialization, the sole existence of it diminishes Priest as it can’t compete with shops as those have access to high level equipment and more stat points. Foreseeing this they added a 30% value restriction to counter that but it only affects rank 8 and 9 characters. As Blessing adds fixed damage and Sacrament doubles it any monster under 5k HP is no threat as they die less than 4 hits, this isn’t even enough to be harmed and even if so Aspersion and Increase Magic Damage give defensiveness enough to nullify their damage.
The most elegant way to solve such problem is by adding a proportional rate based on customer and seller ranks, as such it’s possible for shops to consume less material for lower power buffs, the default consumption is 10 materials per buff and can be replaced by 1 per customer rank.
Example
Customer - Rank 2
Seller Rank 8
Material Consumption 2 per buff
Buff Power 2 / 8 = 0.25 * 0.7 = 17.5%
At the current state a 1k Blessing (lvl 15, 357 SPR) would grant 700 additional damage, but changing it to a rank proportion it would be only 175 as a Priest at the same rank could reach around 190 (lvl 5, 52 SPR), even a rank 9 Pardoner (1k SPR) would reach only 332 bonus damage - it’s way more reasonable.
Despise that there’s another issue with Spell Shop when taken with a party Priest - buffs can’t be overwritten nor improved. This measurement protects the Pardoner service as it’s something that cost money, at one end you get the purchased buff with the penalty that lasts for long and can’t be removed, at the other you can’t have them at full power in case you have a Priest. There’s a really simple way to fix it, change it to a line two or three buff and disable the effect if a stronger buff is applied.
As for what can be improved by leveling, perhaps the ideal might be… nothing. As other shops don’t have any requirements Spell Shop can get away with as a single point skill, tho that can’t be done at the current state. Another option is to have maximum rank power or rank proportion limit based on skill level, this isn’t as interesting as makes the skill mandatory to be maxed.
This used to be the peak of the class before Increase Magic Defense was added to Spell Shop and since then it can’t be dropped, it may be more beneficial to Pardoners to have only one or two buffs per shop as they’ll have more options on building instead of the same 40 mandatory points on Priest and 20 on Pardoner.
Oblation doesn’t even counts as a skill and needs a complete rework to be usable, it also shouldn’t be placed at the same circle as Spell Shop as they both operates as shops. As usual the this is the rank where combat power falls so Decatose would make a huge difference here instead of being late at the next circle.
Decatose (B) - Relief
Since Pardoner is all about money, and divinity, it feels reasonable to use it to smash the hell out of demons, it’s the kind of creative freedom that works even without a source counterpart to back it up. I wouldn’t be surprised it Decatose have a meaning to match the concept but i couldn’t find any useful information on it.
By default crafting classes have two common issues, the first one is the lack of combat potential as skills are mostly business oriented or are completely supportive, the second one is that the real combat oriented skills are introduced at the last circle - Decatose is exactly that.
Adding a damage skill as the only last circle skill doesn’t improve the class at all, it does solve the damsel in distress issue that those classes and such is more appropriate to be at circle 2. Aside that there’s no particular issue on it, it fits the theme and has an unique mechanic, fairly good.
Unlike the first circle this one has basic skills in their full power, tho that’s the only thing this circle brings to the table as the second circle is mostly completed on its own and Oblation can’t be taken seriously. As much as Decatose works in theme it arrives too late and isn’t enough to be worth of c3, there’s no reward for keeping the class till its very end yet stopping midway isn’t an option.
Conclusion
Pardoner has an interesting and unique role in the game, it provides useful buffs at all stages of the game and also some few skills to be casted, that’s a great feature for solo play and parties that can’t take a priest.
The one crime Pardoner is guilty of is to diminish Priest on its regular use, its services are so powerful that even those that got to Priest 3 can dismiss their skills due the over extended duration Pardoner provides and also the commitment required to overcome them. As it is, Pardoner kills most of Priest potential as a standalone class and also doesn’t allow players to use high level scrolls as their cost is too high to be viable.
What this class needs is more diversity on build paths, Priest takes too much on it and Simony can’t sustain the class on its own, the remaining skills don’t even scratch the surface as they either don’t offer enough or have no use.
| C 1 | C 2 | C 3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | E | A | D |
| Theme | C | A | B |
| Gameplay | F | D | B |
| Cohesion | E | C | B |
| Point Distribution | F | F | C |
| Dropout | F | F | C |
That finishes up the Cleric steak, the next class will be Wizard as even after the latest changes it has issues on how it deals with a specific mechanic. As usual drop any arguments and opinions to keep the subject rolling.