Rough Concept Rune Fencer

Rune Fencer rough concept for FFXIV

Main weapon: Saber

off hand: Dagger

Role: Tank

Lore: These noble swordsman have trained and tempered their bodies by bathing in harmful magics, developing their defenses. They use their sabers to cut down those who treaten the innocent, and have strethened the off hands to dual use ceremonial daggers to block and engrave magic runes in about any submstance even the very air, developing a highly refined dual wield style of defending. Even though they can use heavy armor many rune fencers perfer to use light clothes embrodiered with engancheted thread to form ward runes that enhance their defense, allowing them to remain agile. These knights are bloodsworn to fight off any magical threat that threatens their kingdom.

Abilities of Note:
Tellus: Places a Earth rune on the rune fencer's body greatly increasing his defense and emnity gain
Lux: Places a light rune on fencer's body greatly increasing his offensive abilities
Valiant: Defense buff
Unda: Places a defense buff up on a party member
Ward field: Allows defensive runs to be places on nearby party members.
Runic Cypher: Uses runes carved into an enemies body (debuffs by certain rune fencer weapons skills) to damage the enemy and increase enmity. (1 rune 200 potency, 2 runes +5%, 3 runes +10%)
*finishing weapon skill combos will place a rune debuff on the target.

Weapons skills of note:
Swift cut: Basic starting weapon skill
Flabra: Finishing combo attack places fire rune dot (4% stack bonus for each flabra - max stack 12%)
Gelus: Finishing combo attack place ice rune heavy status debuff (2 stacks paralasis, 3 stacks Defense down)
Tenebrae: Finishing combo attack places a dark rune damage taken increase debuff (each stack add 4% potency, max 12%)

Traits of note:
Calligraphy - Increases potency of rune
Rune of Wards I - Increases the potency of Tellus
Rune of Aggression I - Increases potency of Lux

One of the major points about about rune is that you can place runes on yourself or your enemy and runes can stack with eachother, you can have up to three runes on each enemy of any combination (example Flabra, Flabra, Tenebrae) adding some utility to the job as well as sharing defensive or other buffing runes with party members.

Edit: RUN would use magic as the resource for using runes, and the maximum number of runes that can be placed on the enemy is 3, and the max number of runes that can be placed on the rune fencer is 3.

Also the rune fencer can only use certain abilities with the right combination of runes, and will expend runes in doing so.

Casting new runes will override the newest runes first.

Edited posts do not have character restrictions. I recommend that you edit all details into the first post, and use the second for Notes, and the third for Responses, or some similar division between each.

For now, there's just not enough content here to give any worthwhile feedback on the idea.

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Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Edited posts do not have character restrictions. I recommend that you edit all details into the first post, and use the second for Notes, and the third for Responses, or some similar division between each.

For now, there's just not enough content here to give any worthwhile feedback on the idea.

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Thank you Shurrikan that was helpful advice and makes it so much cleaner :D

But sadly I'm not quite sure what you want out of a rough concept. Rough concepts are basically general ideas that aren't complete. I would have to have a complete understanding of what it would take to program these things as well as other aspects of keeping the game balanced in order to do a complete concept. But I am open to hearing what more you'd like to see in the rough concept ^^

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Leobein

But sadly I'm not quite sure what you want out of a rough concept. Rough concepts are basically general ideas that aren't complete. I would have to have a complete understanding of what it would take to program these things as well as other aspects of keeping the game balanced in order to do a complete concept. But I am open to hearing what more you'd like to see in the rough concept ^^

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How do you envision the job playing out? What makes it special in its actual gameplay? Does it have any unique mechanics?

At present you have the mechanics shared by virtually every job in role, but this amounts to little more than a shortlist of Job-appropriate names.

You don't need to know how to code it: leave that much to the player's imaginations, and retailer whatever you catch the most flak for seeming impossible if and when you create a way to maintain the entertainment from it without needing to spend as much development resources. Dream big first, as long as it can still fit within the basics of the game's system (e.g. it makes use of GCDs, MP, and/or TP, abilities have cooldowns or resource costs, and certain skills may have combo requirements... it's pretty loose, really).

ok I'm still drawing a blank here for the most part. What tank has stacking debuffs that you can use in combinations? Or that you can expend those debuffs for a huge enmity gain? I don't tank very much but what job uses the debuffs like I have described in my concept? WAR builds up wrath and does fell cleave or cyclone or that one aoe (not dependand on a debuffs), PLD i'm pretty clueless about because I find the job to be pretty boring, Dark is mostly special because it uses some magic and has more draining abilities to maintain it's mana. What tank utilizes it's debuffs as I've described?

I think the Rune System is a very good start.
One question I have is are the runes you use on yourself stances? It looks like Tellus is your Tanks stance and Lux is your DPS stance. But then you are allowed to have 3 runes on your player, so maybe it's more like you can mix and match them like you can with your enemy runes? Like you can have 2 Tellus runes and 1 Lux or vice verse or 3 of a kind. Also, does Unda fall under the same rules, seeing as it can effect a partymember? Or is it just a regular cooldown like DRK's The Blackest Night?
I think Flabra and Tenebrae are good but Gelus is kind of underwhelming unless you have 3 of them but it becomes redundant because Tenebrae has a similar effect (increasing damage done onto the target).
I would also like to see your weaponskill combos and how you generate emnity fleshed out more.

The idea is that Tellus is Rune's shield oath and Lux is it's sword oath, and unda could be a cool down or a stackable buff depending on how it balances out. It would be cool that if you have three undas on an ally you can use an ability to expend them and heal them :D

And honestly it was a bit hard for me to come up with good debuffs that weren't completely redundant or too op XD

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Originally Posted by Leobein

ok I'm still drawing a blank here for the most part. What tank has stacking debuffs that you can use in combinations? Or that you can expend those debuffs for a huge enmity gain? I don't tank very much but what job uses the debuffs like I have described in my concept? WAR builds up wrath and does fell cleave or cyclone or that one aoe (not dependand on a debuffs), PLD i'm pretty clueless about because I find the job to be pretty boring, Dark is mostly special because it uses some magic and has more draining abilities to maintain it's mana. What tank utilizes it's debuffs as I've described?

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I do not mean to attack your mechanic. I'm just wondering where the effective difference is, what the players would actually feel, that you want to build.

Though, if you want the short of it, a consumption mechanic does very little different from standard play except to provide ramp-up, unless multiple options (in its source combos) are actually usable. Consider: you use a combo finisher 1-3 times on a target, and then you consume their resource for enmity (+ an effect, which would be indifferent from something embedded in the combos itself except for its timing, which has no control advantage if it is not difficult to maintain and no combos which would have short-term or time-sensitive benefits). How does that meaningfully differ from simply having access to a high-enmity combo and even a vulnerability passive activating a combo finisher, except that while a high-enmity combo secures threat in 2-3 GCDs, this would take 3-9 + an ability?

Consider what it's actually doing for you and whether that gameplay, not the mechanic itself, would be unique and enjoyable.

Now, the system itself is actually really, really neat on paper, but you have to consider also: When would Gelus actually be useful? With 3 other party members or more, could Flabra ever outperform Tenebrae? If not, your gameplay is essentially just Tenebrae while stuck in Tellus for sufficient enmity until (if ever) you have enough enmity of Runic Cypher alone to swap to Lux.

It's a combination of factors, for instance, that makes the Warrior IR-Zerk phase feel urgent and impactful -- FC damage, Onslaught damage, the effective proximity between the two, what RI does given job gauge generation, the duration of RI as overlaps with Berserk as to allow either 130 (2 Onslaught, 1 Upheal + FCs) or 125 (max FCs) Rage spending over the duration, Onslaught CD as to be ready and syncable, the need to bank without overcapping in advance, etc., etc. Similarly, Dark Knight feels different primarily through its APM and because of how much is sacrificed to use an enmity combo, the relative and situational value of mana, the stance dependence of BW and BP in order to maximize that mana, this constant state of (however shallow) mana-gambling, etc.

What I meant to ask was, what are you going for here? What are supposed to be the exciting, not just functional, moments that let it feel different?

Oh I never felt you were attacking me Shurikhan, it's more or less that I'm not fully comprehending what you're saying before and it's frustrating me. Words can be funny like that lol.
What I would want for Rune Fencer is to have highly useful abilities that make use of the runes on you and/or the enemy to powerful effects and utility, I haven't necissarily thought up all the potential abilities that could make use of the expendature of these runes, but again this is why this is a rough concept kind of a point to start with and refine as you get input and constructive criticisms and ideas from your other players :)

I guess what I would aim for is while PLD is the reliably defensive tank, WAR the high HP and high dps tank, and DRK the edgy magic using tank, Rune be the tank with higher utility than the others.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Leobein

What I would want for Rune Fencer is to have highly useful abilities that make use of the runes on you and/or the enemy to powerful effects and utility.

I guess what I would aim for is while PLD is the reliably defensive tank, WAR the high HP and high dps tank, and DRK the edgy magic using tank, Rune be the tank with higher utility than the others.

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Oh, it sounds like it's a good direction, for sure.

Just going to warn again, though, be careful of looking for a niche in capability, as they tend to be oversold. Paladin has less defensive maximal potential, for instance, than Warrior, and possibly even Dark Knight unless given massive tankbusters at reliable 20-30s intervals to maximize Shelltron. Dark Knight has scarcely higher anti-magic potential, and its using magic is only really felt via Dark Arts and having a ranged AoE, etc., etc. Reliable but rotationally driven (effectively, short-cooldown and pre-decisive) utility would be functionally and stylistically new, however, which I really like here.

I look forward to seeing how the idea fleshes out with time.

yeah in many ways it feels like SE has to play of game of balancing a lot lol

Also, a good reason why I shouldn't give concrete advice outside of effect viability...

This was done in ~30 minutes (a little over 4 loops of Prompto's overworld theme), from off the top of my head:

Job: Rune Knight
Source Class: Warden
Weapon: Longsword
Skillcap: Disturbingly High

Necessary Background Changes:
Interception - Almost all mob and boss attacks are now interceptable, acting either as cumulatively mitigated AoEs (every reduction to damage taken by a target along its path affecting the AoE itself, and therefore cumulatively affecting its damage to each enemy then and beyond), or striking the first in enemy in their path. Additionally, the hitboxes of tanks are conditionally enlargeable (such as by Shield Oath, Shelltron, Bulwark, Shadow Wall, Dark Mind, Grit, Defiance, Thrill of Battle, and Vengeance), but this extra area is used only when overlapping with an ally's who would otherwise take an interceptable attack, making it easier to intercept the given attack in their place.

*Grounded Steps - This one's really pushing it... This essentially means that rather than gliding during any animation, one would take conditionally drawn steps in order to accomodate the chosen movement, and the player's weapon would be reangleable, and its dependents with it, based on the angle to the enemy. *Not wholly necessary, but important.

Lore:
The Warden were once a proud sacred, although largely secular, order hailing from the northeast and far eastern regions of what is now the edge of the greater region of Gardemald. Though the threats they face have since turned inwards and largely imaginary, the individuals of their order, especially those who still follow the older ways, are ever stoic, ever vigilant, adaptive but resolute. Theirs is a tactical and decisive form of defense, knowing when to retreat and when to charge. Though the modern order may pretend otherwise, their tactics are based, after all, on the mercenary parties of old. A warrior must pick their battles just as surely as he must win them; else he will die to circumstance.

Be it due to the turbulent wills of regional politics or grudges grown out of proportion from the Witch Wars almost two centuries past, the Warden has often been known as the guardians against corruption, and while that used to refer to tyranny and disorder, it has come to mean primarily magic -- now thought corrupt its every form not of divine basis. While the Wardens themselves are mostly more understanding of the necessary and peaceful keepings of magic in their realm, new orders have formed to seal away or crush any upsurgence of magic. These orders are collectively called Sanctum, and their members the Rune Knights, empowered with the ability to store away magic and redouble against anyone who may resist their peacekeeping. They have, in a sense, become what they originally most stood against, a perversion of reality, not in the sense of bent time or world logic, but of perception from fact.

Seeing this far truer corruption among their own, many of the order have tried to move themselves as far from the Sanctum or any of its political ties as possible, hoping to do good as they once had before. But having been met in Garlemald with distrust or persecution of any order as old and willful as their own, some have travelled still further, outside of their own lands... even as far as Eorzea. And there, free from the watch of the Sanctum and the now-rotted Warden hierarchy, many among them have come to embrace the full potential of their traditions and training.

Playstyle:
The Warden is what might be called a half-tank. While he provides as much overall mitigation as one who would take the brunt of each enemy's attacks, this is not always the best course of action for the Warden. Instead, he may support his allies in less direct ways, bending the battle lines and blending his presence fore and aft thereof, sweeping in, cutting through, and securing ground or using the attack's impetus to safely extract himself.

Unlike users of the greatsword, the Warden's attacks are swift and finely crafted, offering a high rate of attack at the discretion of the Warden himself. Positioning is of vital importance to the Warden, in a manner unique of course among tanks, but also among damage-dealers, able to hasten blows made in the direction of movement in order to manipulate windows of opportunity. This is not to say, however, that he is constantly redirecting enemy attention: so blindingly quick are the Warden's blows at times, that he can step aside unseen, and his technique of attack allows him to maintain a parry's displacement of his enemy's strikes even while winding in a blow, or several, of his own. Each of the Warden's attacks glides between any of five positions, which act as guards when stationary, and strikes or parries in transition: Boar, Falcon, Ox, Plow, and Tail. These are the basis of his strike combinations: each strike is dependent in upon distance, given by the position, to the opponent, and momentum is maintained between strikes, and reversed upon parries.

Weaponskills:
The following positionals are not relative positionals, as per Front, Flank, or Rear. Rather, they refer to a conditions shared by all weaponskills, whereby certain weaponskills are available from a given position -- Falcon (above one's head), Ox (above either shoulder), Boar (low, either side, downward facing), Plow (low, either side, upward facing), or Tail (far left or far right, low, downward angle, past the point at which hand position would switch when one the side opposite the dominant hand) -- or the one adjacent with a distinct swing time (GCD).
Wrath > Mansfall <Ideal from Ox. Ends opposite Boar.>
Turn > Knightsfall <Ideal from Ox. Ends opposite Ox.>
Hew > Housefall <Ideal from Ox or Falcon. Ends same Ox.>
Rise > Kingsfall <Ideal from Boar. Ends opposite Ox.>
Dive > Skyfall <Ideal from Falcon. Ends open Boar.>
Cross > Armsfall <During change. Ends variably.>
Hidden > Landsfall <Ideal from Tail. Ends variably.>
Bold > Godsfall <From mid-position. Ends variably.>
Will > Claimance <From any impale. Ends variably.>


(These were originally to be named after Meyer's longsword mastercuts / Meisterhauwen, such as Zornhau, Krumphau, Zwerchhau, Scheitelhau, and Schielhau, and a few more to fill out the clockwork of the positions, but some of the Masterhauwen had already been used -- as misnomers -- in the Red Mage toolkit, so I used English approximations of their embedded meanings. Thereafter, the augmentive forms -- as "---fall" seemed particularly fitting for the lore I'd alleged for the Warden. The head-taking cleave, Zwerchhau, or Hew, is the fall of a House, a lateral and decisive critical blow; Rise, or Unterhau, makes for the fall of Kings, unseen.. uprising. Cross, or Krumphau, is a disarming strike, and in a metaphorical sense as per Warden speech ideosyncracies (see below) crossing off or krumping (crumpling) an enemy force would be to disempower or defang it; the sweeping, length-cloaked strike from Tail via Hidden takes the land out from beneath its enemies; Zornhau, or Wrath, the most generally useful strike for quickly dispatching a single opponent becomes Manfall, and Schielhau, or Turn, the strike which inserts itself into and defeats a Zornhau becomes the bane of any arrogant knight.)

Abilities:
Dauntless
Bastion
Final Stand
With Honor
Inspirit

Mechanics:

• No GCD on weaponskills. Instead, weaponskills have refresh times based on the distance between where the sword is now and how long it'd take to strike the enemy from that position. Moreover, they do not merely queue the following skill: once the strike has been made, though it will carry through to a given position, it can already be blended into the following strike.
• Relative positioning. Moving into an enemy during lunge makes it hit sooner; stepping outward while drawing your sword back from their chest accelerates that. Moving past the opened side of an enemy during a strike from Tail deepens that lateral cut. Being further from an enemy gives you more time to build up swing momentum. Being closer hastens the strike. Etc., etc.
• True and False (Edges). Depending on which is closer for the particular strike at the moment, the Warden will use either the true edge (the edge which gives maximum reach, and least contorts the blow) or false edge (the edge that would normally be facing oneself, and as such has less reach) of the blade, where the true edge has more potential swing.
• Momentum. Your strikes, unless met with resistence (striking at all counting as some resistance, while strikes made while out of range will have neither damage, obviously, nor resistance and can therefore doubly ready momentum), will continually accelerate swing times in the same direction and at certain derivatives thereof. Complex to explain; watch any video about flourishing and await formulas for emulation thereof.
• Ghosting and Locking. Your strikes made while moving conditionally leave behind a ghosted image, which your enemies will continue to attack. You still receive a variable portion of this damage, but this allows you to use your relative positioning periodically even while tanking. Locking refers to forcing an enemy into a specific angle, whether by a maintained parry or by impaling the enemy.
• Interception. Positioning matters defensively as well. Rather than a passive parry chance, the Warden uses proper ending position relative to enemy attacks, rising up from the opposite edge to ready for a downward blow, etc.

Gameplay:
Warden feels a lot like a blend between an action game and your standard tab-target affair. It cares about positioning despite being a tank, is open to complex manipulation, and has opportunity for active mitigation, but because damage is still largely unavoidable this is felt in a more strategic manner, opening with one combo in order to prep into another at a precise time in order to take advantage of or nullify an enemy attack.

Sidenote: Though the Wardens are allegedly an anti-magical and almost anti-(new)scientific order, their diction often suggests otherwise, using such terms as eutectic for a nation made less resolute or more susceptible to change since the addition of another member people, despite its relation at the time to alchemy, or terms like convergent or divergent in the sense borrowed from Garlean manaficers, or the idea of sacred numbers drawn from the region's druids. Perhaps this is evidence primarily of a certain worldliness and deep sense of study. To converse with a Warden fully, one often seems to need to know excessively much about virtually everything, from smithing to mathematics to philosophy. Be prepared, also, for a large span of language use, wherever the client language may fail to generate a one-word translation. They can limit their references, but their speech among each other seems to assume an almost inexhaustible memory and an unconscious passion for knowledge that even Artificers might find troublesome. Rune Knights tend to take this even further in areas of magic, often giving practical theory and definition even to other's magics that had until then been performed unconsciously or on feeling alone, all while having the utmost, almost religious, respect for the presence of mind that would discover and produce such magics. This excludes, of course, those members in keeping with the Sanctum philosophies, who desire only to categorize magic insofar as is useful to dominating and quelling it.

Rune Knight

Summary: The basis of the Rune Knight lies in a practical application of regional druidic magics, or world-lie (as in latent potential lying beneath the world), whereby magic could be absorbed, shaped, and diverted similar to through Arcanistry, but without requiring the user to be aetherically or elementally attuned. Rather, they need only know the sign, and concentrate on the presence thereof, a process that tapped more deeply into meditation and language than it did into more typical magical foci. It was essentially a reception of magical force and spirit, rather than a manipulation. The Warden acted only as a mediator or instigator, allowing the magic to follow its natural course in a seemingly different direction, generally causing it dissipate into the worldlie rather than harming the Warden.

The Rune Knights took this one step further. Rather than merely consigning the magic to the worldlie, they found ways to trap and divert it -- still through the underlying rules of all magic, but in a way that played more into their own strengths, even allowing something very alike to aetherical or elemental attunement. These are derivative magics, based on a trapped but mobile, rather than generated, source. And throughout all of this, the wielder himself still has no need to be magic attuned themselves. They need only be receptive to it, and understand its forces and those that act upon it. This is carried primarily through four signs, which work in combination:
Earth - That which manifests - Principle of Cause
Fire - The impetus, and half of the spirit - Principle of Desire / Future
Air - The void between - Principle of Correspondence
Water - The reception, opposite half of the spirit - Principle of Understanding / Past

Of the two, Fire and Water are "hosts" and "mortal", Earth and Air are "domains" and "immortal", though all are of divine spirit. More on how this works later.

Notable Additions:
Earth*
Fire*
Air*
Water*
Crux
Smite
Advent
Wake
Pellucid
Labyrinth
Oblivion

Playstyle:
Naturally, the Rune Knight takes much from the Warden class sourcing it. It retains the positions of Falcon, Ox, (Mid), Plow, Boar, and Tail, and similarly avoids an actual combo system in favor of unshared cooldowns and momentum. But, it allows a noticeably higher sense of control. Where a Warden might open from a sprint into Hew > Housefall or Hidden > East Wind to rapidly engage in cleave as to prep himself into a Rise and Falcon on a focus target, this would be a more long-term decision for a Rune Knight, because, if given no magic to work with, he can still, in effect, generate his own. He always carries a bit of magic on himself, etched into his blade and armor, and this can work to generate elements of magic through his actions. In short, the Warden ought always to take the course of action that would be the most physically efficient for what he's trying to accomplish, always in short-term tactical stretches. Because there are derivative impacts of those physical choices for a Rune Knight, however, he may end up making some seemingly more gaudy or style-based choices in order to reach maximum efficiency in a much longer stretch of time and/or prepare for later events. These manipulations of weaponskill choices are paired against the Rune Knight's ability to absorb element from more direct, external means, whereby Lightning turns into Fire and Air, Ice to Water and Earth, and the remaining four their own individual elements; Unaspected sources whatever element is currently dominant for the Rune Knight.

And it already has me designing new expansion zones and characters in the back of my mind while typing that out, and already includes a mechanic entirely new to action games (apart from particular physics based hack-and-slashes, though poorly implemented there), let alone GCD-based MMOs... v.v

Wow that is a lot of text... Lore wise I appreciate what you're going for. But gameplay wise.... doesn't feel like it would fit inside FFXIV, there are way too positionals, and positionals aren't functional for tanks. There's also the matter of ox, boar, falcon, tail etc. They seem like positionals, but you don't have a key for what positionals they are, I would assume that tail is the backside. And there doesn't feel like there is a key for a lot of important information.

By any chance have you played FFXI Seekers of Adoulin?