[lonnarin]

After the post about nostolgia games, I loaded up Might and Magic 8 and was pleaseantly reintroduced to a favoriote CRPG class of mine, the Engineer. Unlike spellcasters, the engineer had ZERO mana, but could produce spell-like abilities through his myriad inventions. While the mage or cleric or Bishop all used mana to do damage, the engineer was restricted to collecting parts and melding them together, and using mechanical enginuity to bring damage to the foe. Rather than use up mana, the engineer used up stamina, much akin to the Elder Scrolls: Oblivion stat which dictated how long you could run or how powerful your chops and blocks were. If you run out of stamina, you pass out for the time being. I could just imagine the crazed little gnome aligning the lense and power stone, hammering the nails and screwing the bolts in place quickly, becoming exhausted by manual labor rather than magical drain. It made for a very fun alternative crossbreed.

Oh man, the engineering skill rules. Not only was this class skilled at disabling traps, picking locks, etc, but he could really roll out the damage, and had primative aquebuses and rifles to peg the enemy at a far distance. And for each invention, he would have to collect and combine strange drop items and plot items like lenses, energy stones, springs, boxing gloves, blades, etc. The gameplay for this class in M&M 8 was pretty nice, this little gnome could maybe zap people for mage calibre damage 3x per battle, and the rest of the time he worked as a trap/locksmith and ranged fighter. I'd LOVE if there was some non-magical or magi-techno hybrid skills to excentiriac the Goranites. Make them less magical as they would be golem/summons creators and long range blasters. This sort of meshes with the MMORPG concepts of gameply behind WoW's hunter or Hellgate: London's technician. Have a set of skills that can let a player do magic-like damaging abilities, create constructs to defend them, and be skilled at anything mechanical like a lock or trap. And rudimentary firearms that are less accurate, but more damaging than bows, especially at shortrange. And nice long range zingers at higher levels.

Engineers and inventors make a fun little niche in the gameplay. Not as cutthroat as rogues, but more like trapmeister rangers.