Since you may be planning to have a Sheperd Class introduced into the game, here are some suggestions for the class.
-
should be a companion class (a dog/wolf/fox would be ideal; please make it exclusive to the Sheperd class like Falcon is exclusive to Falconer class)
-
should feature sheep [a sheperd without sheep wouldn’t be a Sheperd].
Here are some ideas of how the class works:
The skills should mainly be focused on the dog companion and the sheep. The Sheperd itself doesn’t need any attack skills that don’t make use of sheep & dog. The number of sheep should be limited by the skilllevel of a skill called sth like “Herding”, which allows you to have 1 sheep per skilllevel for a total of 5 sheep. The skill is active and can be used to summon sheep at any time up to the maximum limit of sheep you can summon; CD time should be several minutes.
Sheep have their own stats which can be increased via attributes of the skill Herding. Normally, sheep are summoned as female [without horns], but via an attribute, you can increase the amount of rams summoned by Herding by 1 per attribute level(up to 5). Rams can hit the enemies harder due to their horns and stun them when attacking.
To keep the sheep in check, there should be two skills:
- one featuring the dog who encircles an area when used, forcing the sheep in that area to gather in the center [the AoE should be increasing by skilllevel]
- the other one building an enclosure around a certain area, making use of the wood items ingame. This skill could also be used as a way to capture monsters; all fences created by the skill should have a specific number of HP and take 1 damage when hit [they break upon depletion of HP].
The number of fences built should depend on the skilllevel, and higher levels (lvl 3+) should get an attribute that includes a fodder box inside the enclosure. Lvl 1 should start with a triangular shape (3 fences), lvl 2 quadrangular/square [4 fences] and so on until you get an L-shaped enclosure with 7 fences at lvl 5.
The building of the fences should take 1 second per fence [& 3 seconds for the gate] and it should be treated as a channeling cast[as you can’t do anything else while putting up the fences]; however, if you get interrupted in between, all fences you already built before will remain intact.
Players should be able to jump over them, but monsters should not be able to cross them. There could be an attribute for it to reinforce the fences with barbwire, causing damage to anything that attacks it.
Once you open the gate of the enclosure, all sheep outside will go inside or the other way around if they are already inside. This is a way to keep your sheep safe during certain situations and/or to focus on the dog.
The enclosure should have a basic lasting time of around 10+2xskilllevel seconds. However, the duration counter should be stopped as long as sheep are inside. You can only have one enclosure up at a time, and if you build a new one, the old one [or the fences built] gets removed.
To control the sheep and dogs, there should be a recall skill similar to the Falconers “Call” skill that calls the dog and sheep back to the Sheperd, with attributes that exclude either the dog or the sheep when activated.
Would be nice if the Sheperd was ringing a bell to command them.
The sheep should have several skills that affect mainly their formation.
-
loose/passive formation [could be called Pasture formation or whatever].
This will allow the sheep to move freely around according to their AI.
They will loosely follow the Sheperd when he moves away, and sometimes graze the ground if there’s some greenery around to recover their HP, as well as run away if they are attacked by monsters. Requires lvl 1 Herding. -
Line of Horns. The sheep will all stick close together side by side in a straight line and move forward slowly.In this formation they will actively look for monsters around and will attack anything that is directly in front of them.This skill requires at least lvl 3 Herding.
-
Bulwark. This skill makes the sheep take a circular formation around the Sheperd with their heads facing outwards, rendering the sheep immovable until another command is given. The sheep are highly defensive in this formation and will harshly retaliate any enemy that tries to get into the circle by attacking the sheep. This draws all aggro onto the sheep and resets the threat of the Sheperd inside. This skill requires lvl 5 Herding as the formation requires at least 5 sheep to work.
The Sheperd should also have a skill that makes the sheep and/or dog in front of him[within a certain area] rush forward and knockdown any enemy standing/walking in their line of movement. The number of targets[i.e. sheep and dog] affected should be 1+1 per skilllevel, with the dog having the priority over the sheep.
The dog also needs some more skills, but it’s hard to think of some because there are so many possibilities.
Some could include:
-
Dig . Makes the dog dig in the selected area to uncover some items. Uses the dogs stamina. Stamina can be recovered by feeding the dog bones of monsters.
-
Keen sense. The dog uses his nose to detect hidden enemies + items in the ground that can be uncovered by using Dig. The dog will move besides the items/monsters location and bark
-
Bodyguard. The dog will sit down close to the Sheperd and retaliate against any enemy coming close and attacking the Sheperd. He will start barking first once they enter a certain area with the chance to inflict the fear status ailment on the monsters within this area and attack once the Sheperd is damaged by the monster. Attacked targets will be staggered for a second until they can attack again.
-
Territorial capture. The dog will aggressively attack anything in the chosen area but also rapidly deplenish his stamina. Once he runs out of stamina or if there are no more targets in the area, he returns to the Sheperd and will lie down until his stamina is recovered.