Same.
In theory it means they're mediocre at everything but in practice what you actually see is characters going full Mary Sue where they can solve every problem easily because their class/power set has solutions to everything.
I've read a few great Jacks of all Trades because the main characters were mediocre in combat but used their brains and varied kits to survive encounters.
Yea those are the ones I like. A rope trap that binds up and then throws big rock off cliff that drags the beast terrorizing the small village was one of my favorite bits.
I know I read it like 15 years ago on story forum back when online forums where a thing on all of the web comic sites. No idea if they ever made more of it. But still remember that bit and use it as measure it of " Is this fool clever." metric.
But I find that my favorite books are where the classes are versatile and not set in stone. Meaning there could be more classes than one could even imagine.
Pugilist- FFS magic is REAL, and you just wanna punch stuff.
Don't get me wrong, there are some great Pugilist characters written in across the genre, but I just find the class a boring choice
I really like the associated imagery that comes with a magus being high on himself and his powers, looking down on those he considers mundane and brutish but not having an answer for someone who can punch away a lightning bolt. That recent Mashle anime was basically 24 episodes of that kind of absurdity. It was great.
I wish pugilists were at least weaker than armed classes, since it costs less to own no weapon, there is no weapon to have destroyed, damaged, stolen or disabled during combat, and the complexity of using a weapon and one's body is higher than just one's body, meaning the skill ceiling is higher for using weapons masterfully.
All in all, if someone decides they'll use no weapon and maybe even conjure up their own armor cuz "obviously I'll fight without weapons because my fists are always available and can't be taken away", then I expect them to be a lot weaker in many ways than someone who had to rely on a supply chain of crafters to get their equipment, then maintain, protect from theft and master it.
Ultimately it comes down to weapon reach. A guy with no weapons basically has to move twice as fast as the guy with weapons or they get skewered before they can get close enough to do anything. Either that or they have to be some unbearably tanky op character that catches swords in his mouth and then breaks them by biting down.
Exactly, irl if someone with a black belt attacks a reasonably skilled person holding a sword, the black belt is dead.
If you add magic or system bullshit then.... they both have access, and the person with the sword should really still win.
I’d say there’s still a lot of skill and strength involved in just using one’s fist and body. The coordination, footwork, and overall skill level shouldn’t be that much lower than a sword or other weapon. Not to mention how much more efforts pugilists have to go through to condition themselves. If you’ve seen the knuckles of shaolin monks, you know it’s insane.
And magic and system bullshit are supposed to even the odds. Otherwise, you might as well say someone with a gun will still beat a guy who trained with an axe for his entire life. That’s obviously true in real life, but with systems physics and common sense goes out the window. A pugilist would obviously gain some benefit or skill to make up for their lack of a weapon.
Edit:
I just read down below that OP seems to differentiate between martial artists and pugilists, so that makes some sense. I guess pugilists are just less graceful and skilled punch-ey kick-ey classes?
>I’d say there’s still a lot of skill and strength involved in just using one’s fist and body
Yeah, sure. But there's a reason that weapons were invented.
>Otherwise, you might as well say someone with a gun will still beat a guy who trained with an axe for his entire life.
Yes, someone with a modern gun almost certainly beats someone with an axe unless they start very near each other.
>That’s obviously true in real life, but with systems physics and common sense goes out the window
Are you supposing that only the unarmed person has magic?
The way I've written my books is that a gun is closer to a magic wand so to use one as your main weapon you would be considered a type of mage. It's also nerfs a gunslingers to a point because any bullets would be conjured by the gun or gunslinger. This also means the power of the shot is determined not only by the gun but also the gunslinger. This evens the playing field alot.
No, because wizards can rely on magical equipment and consumable materials. A wizard tower is probably pretty expensive to build and maintain too if the setting has them.
Both classes ought to be strong in different ways so it's hard to compare.
It should cost mana or something to enforce a fist style to the degree needed to match an armed style. To give it a price in trade off against the problems a weapon brings.
But then there's risk of mc learning to regenerate enough mana by Meditating 24/7 without the meditation at all hindering their thoughts, actions or awareness
Jokes aside, I don't expect a lack of mana to consistently limit mcs, since generally they'll have just enough. I think in Dragonize, there's a Stamina system that refills like 12/12 of the resource after sleep, and we know the costs of all skills, each being called out, so in that novel the author gave themselves no wiggle room for bullshitting. Most of everywhere else, inconsistent mana regen is fair game.
I really should stop expecting mcs to not have things unfairly bent in their favor. Can't really have Heroes without unfair advantages or luck aiding them. Meaning the Pugilist class doesn't need to be balanced.
how come so many MCs hit up the mediation skill and just have it permanently on for 1000% mana regen, like how is that fair for any of the other characters, I'm pretty sure mediation is meant to have a downside and they're all just chilling with it while fighting and it actually *improves* their focus. Frustrating.
Pugilists works better in less realistic settings. Anything that starts out resembling a Factory Setting Human would be stupid to fight mundane wildlife without a weapon, let alone overpowered supernatural monsters. It can work in Xianxia.
Carl has the humour to make the punching acceptable. His early character experiences and the dark gritty nature of DCC, his skills make perfect sense. He is written so well that I honestly forgot about him just punching stuff.
Probably the comedy mainly because Azarith Healers punching also makes sense from a character perspective, yet I still found her boring
Carl also didn't choose punching. He was just unarmed at the start and got early levels in it. He then immediately tried to use weapons but found that hitting something upside the head with 10 foot steal pole did less damage than just punching it would. This was just barely enough justification for me.
I'd tag Carl as a Jack of all trades character - he doesn't punch his way through, he outthinks the system. And he's got more of a general style command ability as the story goes on - I can't wait to see what happens during the faction wars...
I also don’t like how they just don’t even attempt to try to pick up any kind of weapon skills. You in a system with accelerated learning and skills that help you use the weapon. Also the ones where the fighter gets hurt every time they punch something because they are two strong to handle the force. That just annoys the shit out of me. Or they couple it with some kind of overpower regeneration. I read one where he was just an upper torso and part of his head left and he still survived because of his super regeneration. That’s just lazy in my opinion
I am not a fan of pugilists either, but more so because I find martial artists to be the more interesting hand-to-hand combatants. Too much of a bore to read about someone punching everything to death.
Counter argument: punching things is dope.
Actual counter argument: in a world where magic exists and people don’t just all do that, I’m willing to accept that conventional rules for weaponry don’t apply as much. Otherwise, just use magic.
Tbf typically in worlds with magic, pugilist use magic to enhance their body. They become more durable, they're get tougher than the average person, and in some cases like azarinth healer they use magic to give their attacks special effects.
At least in my experience, the only books I've really read with a pugilist is azarinth healer and primal hunter, others just have monks as a thing that exists and they mention ki but don't go into what monks can do.
Epic/legendary classes assigned right at the start for no reason. For example, in the newbie zone:
Bill: What's your class? I'm a Level 1 Rogue.
Bob: Let's see... I'm a Level 1 Planar Harbinger Shadowdancer.
Bill: Can I have your stuff?
Or you can do like Konosuba and have the bargain basement Adventurer class turn out to actually be the best class. Kazuma turns out to be a fantastic adventurer whenever he teams with competent people due to his sheer versatility, he just doesn't have a competent team.
Kazuma is fantastic due to his stats and team. Kazuma has insane luck, rivaled only by the goddess of luck Eris herself. That is why his steals are so dangerous. Steal generally has a chance of failing or even grabbing something inconsequential depending on your luck. But Kazuma's insane luck makes it overpowered. Similarly, his other skills like ambush, lurk and enemy detection use a mix of luck and intelligence, which are pretty good. Add in unique skills like drain touch, Aqua's ability to resurrect him any number of times he wants, Megumin's overpowered explosion and darkness's impregnable bulwark status, he is positively powerful.
Sure but his team are useless for mediocre quests, it is why they struggle until he >!earns a shit tonne of money!<. The light novels have a section where Kazuma swaps parties with Dust, Dust believing that Kazuma has an easy life because of his theoretically stacked party. Kazuma then proceeds to carry Dust's team on their quests using low level skills and spells efficiently. Dust begs to swap back because he realises how useless Kazuma's team are. The text makes it clear Kazuma is just really good and actually has a sound understanding of how adventuring should work.
All of Kazuma's team can do useful stuff in big boss fights but then only if they basically do what Kazuma tells them to.
It is his intelligence. His team isn't useless for any level job. Take a look at current season, >!the royal arc and recent battle.!< They are literally too hard to work with. But they respect Kazuma's intelligence and plans, having seen how effective they always are. It is just that sometimes, Aqua's own luck counters Kazuma's. After all, he suffers so much despite his luck thanks to Aqua simply destroying it with her own luck and intelligence. She isn't bad, but has to be tightly managed.
And Kazuma is just grounded in reality. With all the magic and sword flying around, people and especially adventurers forget about the mundane and logical methods. Take his dirt spell itself. No one sees any use in learning basic magic spell unless they are mages as all they create less for more mana. But Kazuma saw insta-sand and air, thus he uses the combo to spam dirt in the eyes.
I forgot to mention this but Kazuma's class is busted. Adventurer class offers no bonuses to aptitude or benefits for skill purchases but in return places no restrictions on what one can learn. An adventurer can theoretically learn advanced magic, advanced swordsmanship, powerful archery skills and undead spells without no restrictions that come with any class that offers these. But you need aptitude and this class is given to only those who lack in all aptitudes. Although with Kazuma being otherworlder, who knows what his aptitudes are?
The only time I agree with having a really good class from the start is when there's some sort of limitation to it that genuinely makes it harder to use until later levels. For example, legendary classes could be harder to level up, or a specific legendary class may have very little to no offensive abilities.
I've seen some where the class skills have huge mana usages which makes it hard or impossible for the user to use the entirety of the skill.
I think you'd like them more if they were based off Heracles from Fate/Stay Night. Now that is a tank's tank.
His kit has everything you'd want: crowd control (knock backs), insane damage absorption & movement speed for kiting squishes, and the most bullshit P2W ultimate ever envisioned.
The dude wasn't a meathead, he knew his way around the sword and had his way with that even more bullshit swordie. Too bad she had a ranged dps to kite him to death :(
Also so many berserkers just… don’t seem berserk? They run straight at an enemy and all, but they completely keep their mental faculties, can talk just fine, etc.
Heracles is so imposing because of his massive size and seemingly mindless wrath, but even through that he is so skilled he can retain some finesse even through his madness.
Infrasound Berserker is also shaping up to be solid in that regard, but coming from the author of "Azarinth Healer", they've got a lot of practice writing battle junkies.
(Still salty about the utter failure of the castle to actually CASTLE, though.)
generic good guy paladin who has to save everyone with the power of friendship. extra points lost if he doesn't kill the baddies or convinces the big bad to change his ways.
second choice would be most spellblades. if your magic does things like haste and empowering your sword pr body then fair play. However, if you are balancing all of your stats and still beat everyone in both melee and casting while flinging fireballs or lightning bolts at people... just no.
I think Spellblade falls in the same category as Jack-of-all-trades classes like someone else commented. If done correctly and accurately, they are interesting, but most of the time, they are just making the MC good at everything.
>generic good guy paladin who has to save everyone with the power of friendship. extra points lost if he doesn't kill the baddies or convinces the big bad to change his ways.
Is there even an example of a character like this in the genre? The only paladin mc I've seen was the one from Paladin of the Sigil and he was ruthless.
The Knight in The Captain series by Will Wight but it all fairness, when you're deep enough into the genre there are going to be parodies, which I assume he is.
Aw yeah we love raion. Definitely a parody of power rangers. Will wight posted a picture of the power rangers with ration’s face from the cover of the new book over the red rangers face recently actually. And in my opinion, raion’s character goes deeper than generic good guy paladin too. I don’t know how to do that spoiler thing and I’m on mobile, but the sneak peak of the new book had some surprisingly dark backstory for him, I mean not too crazy, but I was definitely surprised.
Spellblades are only good if everyone can do it and it's nothing special. Infinite Realms does it well for example. Half of the characters we have seen are magical martials with the fullfledged martials and mages dominating their niche
I'll be honest, I really like the paladin thing when it's played straight, but less as a generic good guy and more of "doing what little I can" type of deal.
I remember really liking the faraway paladin because of this(and also the inverted party).
Also, spell blades are underused, most variations are just dude with sword who doesn't magic, with no combination.
If you are going to have the "change your ways" as a plot point it needs to make sense. Naruto gets joked about as somebody who converts all his enemies but in truth the only enemies he really flips are the ones who wanted him to be right anyway. He gets nowhere with people like Madara. The only person who flips who really doesn't think like Naruto is Sasuke and then only because he became convinced both he and Naruto would die as promised otherwise.
There's better be a big chunk of "I wish you were right" in the antagonist's thought processes if you are going to flip them. I'd also like to see them just fail completely trying to flip a Palpatine like character who's literal driving force is "want to be evil".
I'd probably agree with you on berserker, especially when they're conveniently forced into it by contrived circumstances. I'll take a break from the novel at best and drop it at worst.
I don’t know that I have a particular class exactly, but I prefer when the author takes at least a few liberties with specializing a class that isn’t necessarily standard. If done well it helps enhance the world building, rather than just being straight common class tropes where I know exactly how the character will progress for that portion of the story.
Generic mage #4. Fireball is a good spell but if the character can’t expand past that then it’s kinda meh. Give me the game breaking mage who can use a cantrip to explodify someone’s brain.
I want someone to pick one of these and just do a "guy who keeps setting things on fire", as in he goes into a castle to save someone and at the end somehow even the stone castle is burning.(See Dresden, the books, not the city)
It'd be pretty hilarious.
Eh depends on the execution for me. In a sufficiently grounded story with nice prose that makes you *feel* the umph of fireballs and the burning air and so on, I really enjoy fire magic. Tho this applies to literally any magic tbf
Sure, the problem isn't the quality of the fire magic, but rather the quantity of its use. As much as I like steak, if you serve it to me for 3 meals a day I don't think I could stomach even a wagyu after a while. People use fire magic as the 'basic' or 'beginner' level of magic for so much of fantasy (at least historically) that it's rather boring even when done very well.
Melee.
You're reborn/portaled to another world. Or your world is in a system apocalypse. Magic exists! holy shit, MAGIC EXISTS! Well what do you want to be sir? ... uh... a warrior. ..... zzZzzzzZz
I often think of magic as a high-skilled job in our world. You have many people out there that just don't have either the patience to learn it, the knowledge, or the ability. This would fit the vast majority of a population.
I mean I can see how some people are just not cut out for magic usage if there are natives that reject it or have issues with it. Nothing wrong with melee if can one shot a mountain at some point.
Yeah, there’s gotta be explanation tho. Sometimes the character has the option to pick magic and it’s just as easy as picking mundane weapons and they still go with a weapon.
Especially when it’s a boring type of warrior. Like you’re not even gonna pick up like a sick magic fantasy weapon, you’re just gonna go sword and shield?
I like when the choice is meaningful. Like maybe the MC was disabled and while magic is awesome, having full control of their body to an even greater extent than they ever thought possible, that could be a hard thing to pass up. Also, depending on the magic system for that universe, a warrior's daily life might be considerably higher quality because of how strong and healthy they are, whereas a mage might be able to do magic, but still feels like shit getting out of bed in the morning. It kind of depends on how everything is set up in the world.
It can get boring when most mcs are mages. Maybe being a warrior is in part due to authors trying to balance that. But on the other hand, it's certainly harder to make a warrior seem as interesting a class as a mage. Beneath the dragoneye moons had all classes have some associated element, so at least there whether mage or warrior, the class will still he "magical" as far as I'm concerned. Though there mc is a mage/healer.
There's like 7 archetypes of classes stories focus on and they've all kinds gotten boring
There's the necromancers
Then there are the mages non original it's usually all of the elements or space magic no between
There's the healers tha usually only heal themselves and maybe heal there enemies to death
Berserkers who just beat things to death with little to no strategy may end up murder hobo
The occasional time mage who only has time magic to facilitate a time loop for an ass pull training sequence and usually focuses on other types of magic
Then the perv Smutt classes that get power from fucking
Oh and make it eight
Forgot about the assassins who are actually mages but they stab things
And 80 percent of them end up Jack of all trades anyway especially the assassins
Space magic is straight up so fucking broken and if the user is in anyway competent, should auto win every fight. Meanwhile main character focuses on bags of holding. Or when it's an Isekai and the MC realises space magic should be able to do the same as time magic, just doesn't bother past huh, that's cool, and then doesn't use space magic for more then getting around.
My biggest problem personally is protags who's "build" has no real weaknesses.
Like why isn't everyone else just doing the same thing, picking the same class? I want there to be drawbacks to picking certain abilities, limitations that you have to work around or use others to balance out.
"My build is spellblade. I can cast magic and fight."
Oh cool! Maybe he'll have to utilize being meh at both of those things to balance out the pitfalls of melee and magic.
"I am now the best at magic and fighting."
Just why.
Knight/sword-and-board armored fighter. Not necessarily because I don't like the style, but because the people who write them *have no idea how armor, shields, or swords work*. They have the armor always being almost next to useless, or treat it as super cumbersome and/or easy to remove. Second, they have the character just turtle with the shield, entirely discounting it as a zoning and distraction tool, if not a weapon in its own right. And third, they always have them using swords as a primary weapon against *other armored opponents*, and treat them as like, semi-disposable, commonly available primary weapons.
Swords are expensive sidearms whose utility is in their ability to be worn in plainclothes and as long bars of metal with various ways of providing leverage, and are otherwise just a way to easily wound uppity peasants.
Shields are big surfaces that can block line of sight, tie up weapon arms, basically no-sell attacks in a large area, and deliver crushing blows at the right time.
And good armor in large part makes you *impervious* to attacks that don't come from either a highly trained opponent or an overwhelmingly strong force that the armor would STILL greatly protect you from! And doesn't actually bind or slow your movement!
Haha, I've got a supporting character in the story I'm writing where I am trying to be (somewhat) accurate with how he uses armor and a shield.
Granted it's still fantasy and so things get a bit exaggerated, but I really enjoyed writing a fight scene where he, the main character (mage), and their archer (almost) successfully fought a horde of goblins by having the armored guy with a shield just hold a chokepoint.
That's almost literally all he did. I wrote about him taking a few potshots with his spear when the goblins weren't quite so close, but he's also inexperienced so that wound up being a bad move because he got distracted by attacking and almost made an opening for some of them to slip past his guard. Otherwise, he held the line, shield bashed, and tanked any hits that did get to him because he was wearing chainmail.
Armor is *cool,* dammit.
YES. And it's not like goblins would have the body mass to take down someone like how you would do in human-human armored combat.
Honestly, if you haven't already, check out the various armored combat sports leagues and groups. The hits those guys take!
Here you are: [Blood of Dragons](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/88337/blood-of-dragons-a-tabletop-rpg-themed-litrpg)
The fight in question is a little bit later on, but I'm doing an early sprint for 5 chapters and then I've got a 3/week release schedule, so we should get there in just a couple weeks.
I'm split between rogues and swordsmen/aura users
Rogues can be good but the way they're typically built is just plain stupid. Daggers aren't weapons meant for combat and there are better alternatives for ambushes. A dagger is a last resort type weapon, you don't pick it as primary.
Aura is just bastardized magic. A combination of haste, reinforcement, regen, and a shield but mixed and weakened. It's neat but no one who uses it should ever be considered equal to a mage of the same level.
Rogues for sure. While daggers have their place as weapons (being better than just punching someone, and being easy to conceal, or use in the offhand as a parrying dagger or the like) they aren't ideal for most combat situations.
It doesn't help that stealth is generally a dull mechanic to read about. Oh boy, the protagonist successfully stealthed and negated combat. Like conflict is what makes stories interesting and avoiding conflict/solving all battles with a well placed backstab just doesn't feel as good to read as a proper fight.
It has huge potential as a side character but as a main character it struggles to make the stakes high when no one can see the rogue standing 3 feet in front of them, not noticing that their comrades get taken out one by one.
Rogue just seems hard to make compelling combats.
Rogues aren't built for combat but they also suck at stealth. If you are hidden and have to take someone out then use a bow or some other ranged option. That way if you get caught you have time to change weapons.
It's probably authors that like playing stealth characters. So they write about much fun they'd have or what they'd do. Doesn't mean it isn't entertaining, but it doesn't usually make for a compelling narrative.
The generic type of class that authors always go for where the MC has some esoteric, rare and slightly looked down upon power that always ends up falling under time, gravity and necromancy themes.
Necromancer/Warlock/Edgelord classes. They were an interesting twist once or twice. After that they were just...ugh. Stories using them tend to be very cookie cutter and assinine.
Wait, but what about a literal Edgelord class, where the MC is empowered by cringe? And the development is from confusion, to embarrassment, to embracing the cringe?
Yeah it’s so often like. The potential is there. So much there. But it ends up kinda boring, similar to all the others, and often not the best written either
How many berserkers did you even read, actual, proper berserkers are extremely rare in this genre, i should know they are one of my favorite classes and every time i make a post asking for some berserker MCs i get the same 3\~4 recs.
The one I remember being pretty fun was knights apocalyptica.
Iirc it was somewhat sci-fi but the MC was looking to be a berserker, with all the advantages and drawbacks.
For me its the reverse aside from really good ones like dcc i only read/listen stories only about mages. That is the reason i am in fantasy litrpg and games. Magic
Especially in the beginning when i was reading fantasy not yet litrpg I have often tried like the way of shadows and first yeah assassins are also interesting but then comes a mage side character and blasts his way out of prison walks to the king and blazes them in wrathful fire. Or the watcher series a mage criminal that secretly used magic to become one of the crime bosses and thought i want this story.
Spellswords because it tends to become generic has everything OP skill.
The tamer/beast master types get an honourable mention due to how often the pet is unreliable or just a liability to let side plots happen. If the story says there are real consequences like perma-death and life isn't cheap, you ain't keeping around a trash pet that only serves to hold the job up and put you in unnecessary danger.
I don’t usually like summoner or beast tamer.
Usually, either one is their class on paper, but they really have a second, hidden class: the *I’m the main character class* iykwim… because they somehow have all the personal fighting power of a regular combat class while *also* being able to summon/tame beasts.
Bonus points if the beasts they tame become ridiculously OP versions of their mob counterparts (tame a lvl 1 slime and it’s still somehow viable in a fight well into the lvl 60s). Bonus points if the tamer gets a portion of their tamed beasts’ exp (if they can also level) and exploits the hell out of this. Bonus points if the MC can somehow tame the random ass *level 2000 SSS+ class Fenryr of Dark Oblivion* or something in the first dozen or so chapters.
I dislike summoners because I often see it done in a gacha style. Like, “oh, what ever will I summon on my first pull” and you pull fucking ultra instinct goku or something like that.
I've seen a whole lot of spears lately. A halberd here and there too. I think the authors caught on that while swords are more popular in fantasy, spears were the weapons of war.
In magic-smithing, mc, with a whole lot of skills for wielding a hammer, made herself a katana enchanted to be set on fire via mana. It was a somewhat lackluster weapon in her hands and even cauterized the wounds it dealt. Her next weapon was a hammer, and that worked just great for her.
Use to think the same but if you think about it most people when they think of a fantasy type setting there is usually a sword involved, so most people are going to be familiar with a sword
There are two I feel very strongly about to the point that I'll often drop the book right there:
(1) Anything (besides mage) that comes after "he wanted to choose mage, but..."
If you're railroading, own it. Have classes be offered singularly, not picked. Otherwise show someone who genuinely wants to be punching/sneaking/slashing/shooting.
(2) Any edgelord class with death, blood, curses, or (especially) necromancy. Yawn.
Honestly none but if I had to pick it would be maybe necromancer although they are fun to play in games. Necros in stories are usually evil bastards and the protagonist ends up "killing" it.
Ooooh I mentioned that as a berserker I didn’t like in another comment actually. The berserker class just seemed so much less interesting than the other options, and then he picked it out of panic because they got attacked. And I just couldn’t keep reading
I like berserkers, but I will admit there are many that are kind of repetitive.
As for my least favorite class, it's gotta be glass cannons and completely lopsided builds. In a system that increases all stats per level in addition to extra ones, I don't mind. But in a system where you have to manually add everything, and a character just ignores vitality in order to minmax damage, it annoys me.
Especially because the authors don't let their main characters die in a single hit from ennemies. So they somehow have no stat investment in health, but plot armor keeps them alive.
Knight, necromancer, and worst of all: Spellblade. Really hard to find a guy who like magic and make stuff, but no, slashing people is faster than casting spell it seem.
Spellblades or gish builds as another called them, can be rather annoying. I wish mana couldn't be used to self buff and self heal like it usually is, or wasn't as effective. It just doesn't feel right that a mage can do everything a warrior can and then some. Warriors should at least easily enough outlast mages who need mana to self-buff.
Wish there were more interesting fighter classes. For example, I (barely and probably with errors) recall 1 skill which disabled a limb at like 10 cuts to it, did so permanently at 100 or maybe 50, and killed the target at 1000 cuts. Obviously, this skill would need some balancing, lest someone wields a truly silly weapon with a thousand tiny edges like a broom, to instakill or at least maime multiple limbs of anything it can scratch. But point stands that physical fighters can have interesting abilities and combat with lots of nuance and strategy involved, not necessarily being outdone by mages and their endless versatility "cuz mana can do anything so any mage mc can do anything".
Alternatively, I like settings where the only or main energy for both mages and warriors is the same, thus a mage trying to be a physical fighter with a couple self-buffing skills would need to contend with a warrior whose most skills are such.
That skill is broken, but in a "this is useless" way. Unless your fighting a giant monster, or something where you can only do surface damage anyways, just dealing a deep cut is better, you destroy part of the muscle, potentially even severing it, and make a massive hole for blood to fall out.
Also, the shear number of strikes needed makes it better to just damage the limbs Normally until you can get to the head, neck, or heart, assuming they don't bleed out first.
It takes far less effort to cause a cut than a large gash or even to severe limbs. Note that fighting happens in a litrpg setting, so tanky fighters can exist who can be scratched but are hard to injure, or even if injured, don't bleed or can take on the "tis but a flesh scratch" attitude
Secondly, I think mc who had the skill, also had a skill for landing multi-hits, like 1 landed attack causing 2 cuts (though for balance reasons I wish the two attacks became weaker or the second had a cap on power). Meaning, the right supporting abilities makes this more valid
Thirdly, enemies are more likely to be ok with taking relatively harmless cuts, though many with insufficient poison res would likely be wary (no reason this skill user couldn't wield poison as well).
Fourthly, what if the enemy has regen, whether fast-acting during combat, and/or plan to flee to heal up after the fight? Imagine your usual regenerating berserker finding their ability to regenerate their limbs inhibited or stunted? Or after a skirmish, the enemy side failing to recuperate on time (the permanent maiming effect is probably very hard to cleanse or undo).
Lastly, one can fight like a warrior but use this ability as a fallback in case the foe can heal up somehow or be healed by others, or is just too tough, all the while trying to do real blows to them. It doesn't have to become the cornerstone of one's build.
As you can see, there are plenty of ways for this to work- it just takes strategy, the right Build & tools and circumstances (can't have a build be always highly valid). It's not an ability for your classic warrior fighting another classic warrior.
Though you were right that it'd be highly effective against large monsters as well (though I'd assume it can't instakill some Titan)
Tamers. I dislike almost all tamed companions I have ever read.
The concept that tamers are just slavers if the tamed get more intelligent has made it even worse
Not exactly what you asked for but if there’s a class mechanic and a main character doesn’t try and understand the technicalities and maybe use it to their advantage, it annoys me.
For me it's Rogue's.Rogues even more than other classes feel very situational, the only people who I can remember that were rogues like sung Jin woo had other abilities to make up for the rogues lack of combat ability
I may anger a lot of people here but a demolition expert? Falls into the same category as melee people are making comments about here for me. Making or buying bombs just isn't magical enough for me
Pretty much the same. Barbarians, zerkers, or any other melee only class. BORING.
I want more casters. Also can we get some non-human/elf mcs? There are like 4 series with non-human mcs. BORING. Life Reset was uh-mazing.
Oh yeah, I hate when the main character gets to pick a race and there’s tons of insane options from dragon men to demons to classic elves and dark elves to fae and even mixed races like fae orcs or demon elves, and then the main character just says I like to stick with what’s familiar so I looked at none of the other options and picked the human, which has absolutely nothing special about it except maybe getting an even stat spread or the ability to learn slightly more or slightly faster
Right. I'd rather skip character creation in the story if that is all you are going to do. "There is an elf, a dwarf, lizardman, dragon man, werewolf, omegaunkillablemonsterman, and oh look a human! I think I'll go with that, none of the rest of this seems very interesting. Plus I get 0.00003% increase to reputation gains." Blehhhhhhh
Yeah it’s the worst! And sure it inevitably ends up paying off somehow because it’s fiction, but it gets dragged out and just leaves me wondering if a different choice could’ve had an even cooler payoff
I love me a non-human mc, it's just hard to find something that isn't dragon/undead/slime/swarm of some description. There's a few but it'll be something like fox person or, animal that eventually gets a shapeshifter skill.
Warriors. You went to a fantasy world with all kinds of cool magic and other powers, and decided to beat things over the head with a sharp piece of metal? Really?
The same goes for spellblade characters. It sounds cool in theory, but in practice the author tends to forget about all the cool powers they gave their mc and it devolves into them hitting things with a sharp piece of metal, but the metal has glowy sparkles now.
I'm so sick of mages, just so goddamn bored of them.
I get it man. New world. Magic is real! Holy cow. I'm gonna be a super cool magic user! As original as fucking sand. Everyone fucking does it. It would be one thing if speccing into a mage build was like... An actual trade off, like the MC isn't as tanky and is bad at melee in return for casting power... But no. No, not at all. 9 of 10 MCs become spell blades or use some other bullshit to become better in melee than dedicated melee fighters.
God forbid anyone write a balanced system.
Magic is fine, but it's so oversaturated at this point. Give me a non-magic fighter. Give me a Knight. Give me something
Mages, never really really liked the strict mage class with low defense and throwing fireballs, although I do like magic just in different applications, like Jake from primal hunter, he’s an archer but he’s just as much a mage, I like his class because whenever he uses magic he describes the intensity of the energy and how he wrestles control of it and manipulates it, it’s not just “I threw a fireball, I shot ice spikes” I feel like magic should have more significance than that, every time there’s a mage they just get downplayed so hard like ice spikes become normal arrows and they blend in with every other typical class, there’s no difference in power, you have the ranger, the melee fighter, and the mage, all at the same class all with the same exact strength, if mages have to sacrifice defense they should have way more power, they’re using fucking magic bro, they should be like super saiyans lol
Magic haters (pugilists warriors berserkers etc.) Esp ones that scorn people who like and enjoy magic.
Like it instantly takes me out of the story, you're telling me magic is real and you want to hit people with a stick? Omg waw so cool and unique, hate on those "nerdy" magic users too why don't you.
Especially if they're stupid or a goody two shoes. Instant drop.
Pugilists especially. I mean, I could definitely enjoy some kind of martial artist monk style character, but when some guy gets access to incredible magic powers and goes yeah, I’m just gonna get really get at punching things. Like come on, you’re not even gonna learn how to actually fight? Your whole thing is gonna be your fist?
See I don’t mind berserkers just because a lot of people in litrpgs come from earth where we’re so heavily weighed down by societal norms that everyday can be a struggle with mitigating pent up aggression from the everyday life that exploding in a world with magic can be completely normal. Does it happen a lot, yes. Can it be used as a plot point to show growth, also yes. Now if their entire fighting style is hinged on being a berserker then yeah I can see it’s bit of an issue. To answer the question, I can’t really say if a class bothers me but more of the person who it is attached to. I’ve seen pugilists, fighters, druids, paladins and whole plethora of classes that aren’t standard by any means and work really well with the story. Yet if the person is absolute garbage or has their head so far up their rear end that they can literally re-eat the food that they just ate. Then it doesn’t matter if the class is terrible or amazing or useful in every situation. It’s just bad character design.
Let’s take fighter for example. The most basic of basic classes. Personally one of my favorite classes because I love being up close and personal but this class can be insanely powerful via subclasses that can make someone hit like a truck. Yet if there character is an ass, than it just ruins the whole dynamic of the book.
Siri from arcamy online isn't bad. She's a bit of a meat head but also a good general and a decent back story. Tho she is a side character not the Mc. Tho, I haven't seen too many Mc berserker s
The Dwarven Berserker in The Dark Profit trilogy is, once he starts on his path of redemption in the first chapter, one of the most intelligent, levelheaded, and considerate characters I've come across - he's only a raging lunatic when he is 'beserking'.
It’s not the classes i hate but when the class does everything. I read a book this guy could: stealth complete with backstab damage, use magic, had a pet, was a paladin. The only real difference is he used a hammer.
Pure Mages or Summoners.
They're just so... Boring. They always end up either the most powerful being to ever exist, or mid af that can barely handle the average enemy they encounter without a full team to support them. And even then, they take a backseat to everyone else in a fight.
Everyone saying "Yeh but magic is REAL and you wanna punch/hit stuff with (insert) weapon? Bruh" when you have strength stat or agi stat numbering in the tens of thousands and can move faster than the speed of light, or punch a hole in reality, why the hell would I lob a basic bitch fireball at a dude?
Fellow meatheads, where you at?
It was... Okay? I guess.
Like I enjoyed the concepts behind it, in that it had connections to the spiritual side of things. That each animal group was in some way a sect, a martial arts group with their own rules, styles, concepts and beliefs. It's just limited in that the creator never went in depth with it beyond the toads and to an extent, the snakes.
Then it was also left to the way side in favour of the Naruto and Sasuke being the chosen ones, and aliens. For some reason.
I've seen SOOOO many Spellblades/Magic Swordsmen over the years that just seeing one nowadays is already more than enough for me to drop. A lot of them are just wizards with swords at the end of the day which I'm so sick of seeing. I don't have a problem with warriors that use magic to enhance their combat capabilities. Oh you can ignite your blade on fire? That's cool! Or if they just use it to boost their physical characteristics, that's also acceptable. But it's just the idea that a warrior could stand in the back and just bombard their foes with more magic than the average wizard has. I can go all day talking about my hate for Spellblades, please don't get me started.
I definitely see your point, but as a bit of an aside, I’d actually like to see more “spellblades” that really are just wizards with swords, Gandalf style. Like I personally don’t mind an overpowered spell blade who’s good at magic and swords, but why do all the wizards insist on not also having a melee weapon? What’re you gonna do if you run out of whatever magic juice you use? If something gets too close or attacks too fast for magic to help? There’s almost always a situation in which literally any melee weapon would be better than magic, and almost always they just end up struggling to wrestle a goblin or some shit to the ground
I totally agree!! I think the best representation I have seen of a berserker is the one from the anime Fate Stay Zero. I like the idea of this dark tormented person and I think a proper depiction should be about the terror of living that life. I think Guts is a pretty close depiction of this but they tend to lean to heavy of the meathead I’m going to conquest thing.
I’m growing tired of the summoner archetype, mostly because it’s a “overpowered MC who also has loads of summons”
It was cool the first couple times. Not anymore
the beserker class, seems to borrow from the hulk motif way too often, but a bane like beserker though iv always found interesting.. personally I find mages boring, unless they are able to switch it up, either hand to hand or with weapons, but just a staff and some incantations while remaining a stationary target? nah fam... there is just way too much plot armor protecting them.
Berserkers and Paladin.
Although these two classes aren't used all that often, but i still don't like them.
Although I hate Paladin more than Berserker.
Mostly because the class depends on outside power and needs you to be devoted to some god.
Only way I can stomach this class is if the Protagonist was forced into it was planning on eventually usurping the god he is drawing power from or something like that. Although I haven't seen that happen.
And I don't like Berserkers because I don't like meatheads that don't think and tackle everything head on.
I was reading a book one time, forget what it was called, but the basis of it was some guy got summoned to another world, and because he’s from earth he could just kind of cancel our magic I think? Something like that, which was a really cool premise because it set him up to be a cool anti magic character, and then he ended up picking a berserker class that just felt like it reduced his options to get get angry and resist magic. One of the other options was some kind of anti magic monk too that sounded so cool.
The Barbarian/Berserker stereotype is based on Norse/Viking Berserkers. It feels really racist and I'm not sure why this stereotype keeps getting a free pass.
The horny bard is another pet peeve. I'm not sure where it started, but it's like everyone is stuck on these stereotypes. These are NOT archetypes and I hate it when people can't tell the difference.
And paladins treated as police officers! They are part of the church's army, defenders of the faith, not some baron's town guard. Unless you have a hard-core theocracy, Paladins aren't breaking up bar fights and taking people to jail for theft. No, a paladin doesn't get hired to clean your barn. They already have a job!
summoner/necromancer/tamer
I'm so sick of it, and it feels like so many stories will try to shoehorn a familiar or a golem or a construct into them when it just doesn't make sense. There's nothing wrong with them, I just wish they didn't seem to squirm their way into so many stories.
Any form of a sword and board character. You’re in a world where magic exists and you choose both the most boring type of fighting and a basic weapon like a generic SWORD?
So what i read from that is we need a mc thats super shy, timid, and talks with low volume.
But when he goes into battle he goes all berserk like.
His battles will range from killing minsters to talking to Royals and nobles.
Loses until berserk kicks in and goes off in the most gruesome and lol way possible.
Hehehehehehe
Jack of all trades.
Same. In theory it means they're mediocre at everything but in practice what you actually see is characters going full Mary Sue where they can solve every problem easily because their class/power set has solutions to everything.
I've read a few great Jacks of all Trades because the main characters were mediocre in combat but used their brains and varied kits to survive encounters.
A jack of all trades is a master of none, but oftentimes better than a master of one
Yea those are the ones I like. A rope trap that binds up and then throws big rock off cliff that drags the beast terrorizing the small village was one of my favorite bits.
Which book is this scene from?
I know I read it like 15 years ago on story forum back when online forums where a thing on all of the web comic sites. No idea if they ever made more of it. But still remember that bit and use it as measure it of " Is this fool clever." metric.
If the best tool for the job isn't around, it's best if a multi tool is because the job doesn't stsy static
I made a similar comment in the past, but having your main character be a jack-of-all-trades sort of defeats the purpose of having a class system.
But I find that my favorite books are where the classes are versatile and not set in stone. Meaning there could be more classes than one could even imagine.
Jack of all trades-crafter-spellsword-beastmasters
Wow, This feels like a direct aim at Mayor of Noobtown.
There are uncountable of these. Noobtown has at least limits by the system fucking him up
The humor in noobtown is what I enjoyed. But between shart, the system, and fecking pumas it balances it out I think. And …… chickens
The only time I have seen it done well was in a side charicter Colth the Supporter from The Wandering Inn.
Pugilist- FFS magic is REAL, and you just wanna punch stuff. Don't get me wrong, there are some great Pugilist characters written in across the genre, but I just find the class a boring choice
I really like the associated imagery that comes with a magus being high on himself and his powers, looking down on those he considers mundane and brutish but not having an answer for someone who can punch away a lightning bolt. That recent Mashle anime was basically 24 episodes of that kind of absurdity. It was great.
I tried to like mashle but when the mc got really confused about how doors worked in the first episode, I noped out XD
damn bro sounds like you didn't try all that hard
I wish pugilists were at least weaker than armed classes, since it costs less to own no weapon, there is no weapon to have destroyed, damaged, stolen or disabled during combat, and the complexity of using a weapon and one's body is higher than just one's body, meaning the skill ceiling is higher for using weapons masterfully. All in all, if someone decides they'll use no weapon and maybe even conjure up their own armor cuz "obviously I'll fight without weapons because my fists are always available and can't be taken away", then I expect them to be a lot weaker in many ways than someone who had to rely on a supply chain of crafters to get their equipment, then maintain, protect from theft and master it.
Ultimately it comes down to weapon reach. A guy with no weapons basically has to move twice as fast as the guy with weapons or they get skewered before they can get close enough to do anything. Either that or they have to be some unbearably tanky op character that catches swords in his mouth and then breaks them by biting down.
Exactly, irl if someone with a black belt attacks a reasonably skilled person holding a sword, the black belt is dead. If you add magic or system bullshit then.... they both have access, and the person with the sword should really still win.
I’d say there’s still a lot of skill and strength involved in just using one’s fist and body. The coordination, footwork, and overall skill level shouldn’t be that much lower than a sword or other weapon. Not to mention how much more efforts pugilists have to go through to condition themselves. If you’ve seen the knuckles of shaolin monks, you know it’s insane. And magic and system bullshit are supposed to even the odds. Otherwise, you might as well say someone with a gun will still beat a guy who trained with an axe for his entire life. That’s obviously true in real life, but with systems physics and common sense goes out the window. A pugilist would obviously gain some benefit or skill to make up for their lack of a weapon. Edit: I just read down below that OP seems to differentiate between martial artists and pugilists, so that makes some sense. I guess pugilists are just less graceful and skilled punch-ey kick-ey classes?
>I’d say there’s still a lot of skill and strength involved in just using one’s fist and body Yeah, sure. But there's a reason that weapons were invented. >Otherwise, you might as well say someone with a gun will still beat a guy who trained with an axe for his entire life. Yes, someone with a modern gun almost certainly beats someone with an axe unless they start very near each other. >That’s obviously true in real life, but with systems physics and common sense goes out the window Are you supposing that only the unarmed person has magic?
By your logic, since IRL a great sword wielder would die to a reasonably skilled person holding a gun, every MC should be a gunslinger.
My next book's title gonna be "Mages are strong, but I got a Glock" lmao
The way I've written my books is that a gun is closer to a magic wand so to use one as your main weapon you would be considered a type of mage. It's also nerfs a gunslingers to a point because any bullets would be conjured by the gun or gunslinger. This also means the power of the shot is determined not only by the gun but also the gunslinger. This evens the playing field alot.
So, would you expect a wizard to be weaker than a spellsword?
No, because wizards can rely on magical equipment and consumable materials. A wizard tower is probably pretty expensive to build and maintain too if the setting has them. Both classes ought to be strong in different ways so it's hard to compare.
I would expect a wizard to be more dangerous, but a spellsword harder to kill, assuming equal resources and training time
It should cost mana or something to enforce a fist style to the degree needed to match an armed style. To give it a price in trade off against the problems a weapon brings.
But then there's risk of mc learning to regenerate enough mana by Meditating 24/7 without the meditation at all hindering their thoughts, actions or awareness Jokes aside, I don't expect a lack of mana to consistently limit mcs, since generally they'll have just enough. I think in Dragonize, there's a Stamina system that refills like 12/12 of the resource after sleep, and we know the costs of all skills, each being called out, so in that novel the author gave themselves no wiggle room for bullshitting. Most of everywhere else, inconsistent mana regen is fair game. I really should stop expecting mcs to not have things unfairly bent in their favor. Can't really have Heroes without unfair advantages or luck aiding them. Meaning the Pugilist class doesn't need to be balanced.
how come so many MCs hit up the mediation skill and just have it permanently on for 1000% mana regen, like how is that fair for any of the other characters, I'm pretty sure mediation is meant to have a downside and they're all just chilling with it while fighting and it actually *improves* their focus. Frustrating.
Pugilists works better in less realistic settings. Anything that starts out resembling a Factory Setting Human would be stupid to fight mundane wildlife without a weapon, let alone overpowered supernatural monsters. It can work in Xianxia.
Carl makes a pretty interesting pugilist though right?
He's more of a demolition class though
He can demolish me with that smush of his - AI probably.
Carl has the humour to make the punching acceptable. His early character experiences and the dark gritty nature of DCC, his skills make perfect sense. He is written so well that I honestly forgot about him just punching stuff. Probably the comedy mainly because Azarith Healers punching also makes sense from a character perspective, yet I still found her boring
Carl also goes pretty hard into demolitionist as the series goes on, so he's not just a pugilist.
Don’t for get the Smush. Cause we know the AI ain’t gonna
Carl also didn't choose punching. He was just unarmed at the start and got early levels in it. He then immediately tried to use weapons but found that hitting something upside the head with 10 foot steal pole did less damage than just punching it would. This was just barely enough justification for me.
I'd tag Carl as a Jack of all trades character - he doesn't punch his way through, he outthinks the system. And he's got more of a general style command ability as the story goes on - I can't wait to see what happens during the faction wars...
I also don’t like how they just don’t even attempt to try to pick up any kind of weapon skills. You in a system with accelerated learning and skills that help you use the weapon. Also the ones where the fighter gets hurt every time they punch something because they are two strong to handle the force. That just annoys the shit out of me. Or they couple it with some kind of overpower regeneration. I read one where he was just an upper torso and part of his head left and he still survived because of his super regeneration. That’s just lazy in my opinion
Wow, you're not pulling any punches, are you?
I am not a fan of pugilists either, but more so because I find martial artists to be the more interesting hand-to-hand combatants. Too much of a bore to read about someone punching everything to death.
100% I don't get mcs who just punch stuff when you have access to insane weapons.
Counter argument: punching things is dope. Actual counter argument: in a world where magic exists and people don’t just all do that, I’m willing to accept that conventional rules for weaponry don’t apply as much. Otherwise, just use magic.
Tbf typically in worlds with magic, pugilist use magic to enhance their body. They become more durable, they're get tougher than the average person, and in some cases like azarinth healer they use magic to give their attacks special effects. At least in my experience, the only books I've really read with a pugilist is azarinth healer and primal hunter, others just have monks as a thing that exists and they mention ki but don't go into what monks can do.
It’s been a while since I read Cradle, but wasn’t Akura Fury a pugilist. I loved his character.
Epic/legendary classes assigned right at the start for no reason. For example, in the newbie zone: Bill: What's your class? I'm a Level 1 Rogue. Bob: Let's see... I'm a Level 1 Planar Harbinger Shadowdancer. Bill: Can I have your stuff?
I agree, I think everything should be earned.
Griff: Noobs. I'm a level 3 Barbarian and I just found this stick.
Or you can do like Konosuba and have the bargain basement Adventurer class turn out to actually be the best class. Kazuma turns out to be a fantastic adventurer whenever he teams with competent people due to his sheer versatility, he just doesn't have a competent team.
Kazuma is fantastic due to his stats and team. Kazuma has insane luck, rivaled only by the goddess of luck Eris herself. That is why his steals are so dangerous. Steal generally has a chance of failing or even grabbing something inconsequential depending on your luck. But Kazuma's insane luck makes it overpowered. Similarly, his other skills like ambush, lurk and enemy detection use a mix of luck and intelligence, which are pretty good. Add in unique skills like drain touch, Aqua's ability to resurrect him any number of times he wants, Megumin's overpowered explosion and darkness's impregnable bulwark status, he is positively powerful.
Sure but his team are useless for mediocre quests, it is why they struggle until he >!earns a shit tonne of money!<. The light novels have a section where Kazuma swaps parties with Dust, Dust believing that Kazuma has an easy life because of his theoretically stacked party. Kazuma then proceeds to carry Dust's team on their quests using low level skills and spells efficiently. Dust begs to swap back because he realises how useless Kazuma's team are. The text makes it clear Kazuma is just really good and actually has a sound understanding of how adventuring should work. All of Kazuma's team can do useful stuff in big boss fights but then only if they basically do what Kazuma tells them to.
It is his intelligence. His team isn't useless for any level job. Take a look at current season, >!the royal arc and recent battle.!< They are literally too hard to work with. But they respect Kazuma's intelligence and plans, having seen how effective they always are. It is just that sometimes, Aqua's own luck counters Kazuma's. After all, he suffers so much despite his luck thanks to Aqua simply destroying it with her own luck and intelligence. She isn't bad, but has to be tightly managed. And Kazuma is just grounded in reality. With all the magic and sword flying around, people and especially adventurers forget about the mundane and logical methods. Take his dirt spell itself. No one sees any use in learning basic magic spell unless they are mages as all they create less for more mana. But Kazuma saw insta-sand and air, thus he uses the combo to spam dirt in the eyes. I forgot to mention this but Kazuma's class is busted. Adventurer class offers no bonuses to aptitude or benefits for skill purchases but in return places no restrictions on what one can learn. An adventurer can theoretically learn advanced magic, advanced swordsmanship, powerful archery skills and undead spells without no restrictions that come with any class that offers these. But you need aptitude and this class is given to only those who lack in all aptitudes. Although with Kazuma being otherworlder, who knows what his aptitudes are?
The only time I agree with having a really good class from the start is when there's some sort of limitation to it that genuinely makes it harder to use until later levels. For example, legendary classes could be harder to level up, or a specific legendary class may have very little to no offensive abilities. I've seen some where the class skills have huge mana usages which makes it hard or impossible for the user to use the entirety of the skill.
I think you'd like them more if they were based off Heracles from Fate/Stay Night. Now that is a tank's tank. His kit has everything you'd want: crowd control (knock backs), insane damage absorption & movement speed for kiting squishes, and the most bullshit P2W ultimate ever envisioned. The dude wasn't a meathead, he knew his way around the sword and had his way with that even more bullshit swordie. Too bad she had a ranged dps to kite him to death :(
Also so many berserkers just… don’t seem berserk? They run straight at an enemy and all, but they completely keep their mental faculties, can talk just fine, etc. Heracles is so imposing because of his massive size and seemingly mindless wrath, but even through that he is so skilled he can retain some finesse even through his madness.
Alpha Physics had a pretty good berserker side character. Being a berserker actually cost them a lot and was usually a fatal class choice
Infrasound Berserker is also shaping up to be solid in that regard, but coming from the author of "Azarinth Healer", they've got a lot of practice writing battle junkies. (Still salty about the utter failure of the castle to actually CASTLE, though.)
generic good guy paladin who has to save everyone with the power of friendship. extra points lost if he doesn't kill the baddies or convinces the big bad to change his ways. second choice would be most spellblades. if your magic does things like haste and empowering your sword pr body then fair play. However, if you are balancing all of your stats and still beat everyone in both melee and casting while flinging fireballs or lightning bolts at people... just no.
I think Spellblade falls in the same category as Jack-of-all-trades classes like someone else commented. If done correctly and accurately, they are interesting, but most of the time, they are just making the MC good at everything.
>generic good guy paladin who has to save everyone with the power of friendship. extra points lost if he doesn't kill the baddies or convinces the big bad to change his ways. Is there even an example of a character like this in the genre? The only paladin mc I've seen was the one from Paladin of the Sigil and he was ruthless.
The Knight in The Captain series by Will Wight but it all fairness, when you're deep enough into the genre there are going to be parodies, which I assume he is.
Aw yeah we love raion. Definitely a parody of power rangers. Will wight posted a picture of the power rangers with ration’s face from the cover of the new book over the red rangers face recently actually. And in my opinion, raion’s character goes deeper than generic good guy paladin too. I don’t know how to do that spoiler thing and I’m on mobile, but the sneak peak of the new book had some surprisingly dark backstory for him, I mean not too crazy, but I was definitely surprised.
Spellblades are only good if everyone can do it and it's nothing special. Infinite Realms does it well for example. Half of the characters we have seen are magical martials with the fullfledged martials and mages dominating their niche
Spellblades can be done well. But the people who do them tend to unbalance them. They just want a power trip fantasy instead of a solid character.
[удалено]
As it should be.
I'll be honest, I really like the paladin thing when it's played straight, but less as a generic good guy and more of "doing what little I can" type of deal. I remember really liking the faraway paladin because of this(and also the inverted party). Also, spell blades are underused, most variations are just dude with sword who doesn't magic, with no combination.
If you are going to have the "change your ways" as a plot point it needs to make sense. Naruto gets joked about as somebody who converts all his enemies but in truth the only enemies he really flips are the ones who wanted him to be right anyway. He gets nowhere with people like Madara. The only person who flips who really doesn't think like Naruto is Sasuke and then only because he became convinced both he and Naruto would die as promised otherwise. There's better be a big chunk of "I wish you were right" in the antagonist's thought processes if you are going to flip them. I'd also like to see them just fail completely trying to flip a Palpatine like character who's literal driving force is "want to be evil".
I'd probably agree with you on berserker, especially when they're conveniently forced into it by contrived circumstances. I'll take a break from the novel at best and drop it at worst.
Sounds like you just dislike badly written berserkers.
I don’t know that I have a particular class exactly, but I prefer when the author takes at least a few liberties with specializing a class that isn’t necessarily standard. If done well it helps enhance the world building, rather than just being straight common class tropes where I know exactly how the character will progress for that portion of the story.
Generic mage #4. Fireball is a good spell but if the character can’t expand past that then it’s kinda meh. Give me the game breaking mage who can use a cantrip to explodify someone’s brain.
Fire elementalists are just awful. Literally all of magic and they pick the most boring and generic type.
I want someone to pick one of these and just do a "guy who keeps setting things on fire", as in he goes into a castle to save someone and at the end somehow even the stone castle is burning.(See Dresden, the books, not the city) It'd be pretty hilarious.
Lmao that's actually This Quest is Bullshit. Secondary MC gets a fire mage class and manages to burn down a dragon _and_ a volcano by the end.
I remember dropping that very early on, I should go back to it at some point.
If you can do the humor i highly recommend it. Gets very fun and out of control.
Eh depends on the execution for me. In a sufficiently grounded story with nice prose that makes you *feel* the umph of fireballs and the burning air and so on, I really enjoy fire magic. Tho this applies to literally any magic tbf
Sure, the problem isn't the quality of the fire magic, but rather the quantity of its use. As much as I like steak, if you serve it to me for 3 meals a day I don't think I could stomach even a wagyu after a while. People use fire magic as the 'basic' or 'beginner' level of magic for so much of fantasy (at least historically) that it's rather boring even when done very well.
Best line in Vathara's "Embers" is "Everything Burns". (Not LitRPG, I know, but still.)
Melee. You're reborn/portaled to another world. Or your world is in a system apocalypse. Magic exists! holy shit, MAGIC EXISTS! Well what do you want to be sir? ... uh... a warrior. ..... zzZzzzzZz
Agreed. No reason you can't just pick up a sword after you've got magic anyway. Look at Gandolf.
I often think of magic as a high-skilled job in our world. You have many people out there that just don't have either the patience to learn it, the knowledge, or the ability. This would fit the vast majority of a population.
Lol magic is STEM
That's what the M stands for!
That's really how I map it in my head.
I mean I can see how some people are just not cut out for magic usage if there are natives that reject it or have issues with it. Nothing wrong with melee if can one shot a mountain at some point.
Yeah, there’s gotta be explanation tho. Sometimes the character has the option to pick magic and it’s just as easy as picking mundane weapons and they still go with a weapon.
Especially when it’s a boring type of warrior. Like you’re not even gonna pick up like a sick magic fantasy weapon, you’re just gonna go sword and shield?
I like when the choice is meaningful. Like maybe the MC was disabled and while magic is awesome, having full control of their body to an even greater extent than they ever thought possible, that could be a hard thing to pass up. Also, depending on the magic system for that universe, a warrior's daily life might be considerably higher quality because of how strong and healthy they are, whereas a mage might be able to do magic, but still feels like shit getting out of bed in the morning. It kind of depends on how everything is set up in the world.
It can get boring when most mcs are mages. Maybe being a warrior is in part due to authors trying to balance that. But on the other hand, it's certainly harder to make a warrior seem as interesting a class as a mage. Beneath the dragoneye moons had all classes have some associated element, so at least there whether mage or warrior, the class will still he "magical" as far as I'm concerned. Though there mc is a mage/healer.
Aw yeah I remember that. Didn’t like the series for other reasons, but that’s one way of making the warrior classes magical and interesting still
But Magic Melee. I'd choose a spellsword/duelist or a druid (go full Werewolf on someone).
Bad crafters that magically find the cheat class/skill with next to no knowledge on how crafting actually works. How material mechanics work.
There's like 7 archetypes of classes stories focus on and they've all kinds gotten boring There's the necromancers Then there are the mages non original it's usually all of the elements or space magic no between There's the healers tha usually only heal themselves and maybe heal there enemies to death Berserkers who just beat things to death with little to no strategy may end up murder hobo The occasional time mage who only has time magic to facilitate a time loop for an ass pull training sequence and usually focuses on other types of magic Then the perv Smutt classes that get power from fucking Oh and make it eight Forgot about the assassins who are actually mages but they stab things And 80 percent of them end up Jack of all trades anyway especially the assassins
Space magic is straight up so fucking broken and if the user is in anyway competent, should auto win every fight. Meanwhile main character focuses on bags of holding. Or when it's an Isekai and the MC realises space magic should be able to do the same as time magic, just doesn't bother past huh, that's cool, and then doesn't use space magic for more then getting around.
Rogues. What's the point of giving the mc a stealth class or rogue-type build only for them to be jack of all trades.
My biggest problem personally is protags who's "build" has no real weaknesses. Like why isn't everyone else just doing the same thing, picking the same class? I want there to be drawbacks to picking certain abilities, limitations that you have to work around or use others to balance out. "My build is spellblade. I can cast magic and fight." Oh cool! Maybe he'll have to utilize being meh at both of those things to balance out the pitfalls of melee and magic. "I am now the best at magic and fighting." Just why.
Knight/sword-and-board armored fighter. Not necessarily because I don't like the style, but because the people who write them *have no idea how armor, shields, or swords work*. They have the armor always being almost next to useless, or treat it as super cumbersome and/or easy to remove. Second, they have the character just turtle with the shield, entirely discounting it as a zoning and distraction tool, if not a weapon in its own right. And third, they always have them using swords as a primary weapon against *other armored opponents*, and treat them as like, semi-disposable, commonly available primary weapons. Swords are expensive sidearms whose utility is in their ability to be worn in plainclothes and as long bars of metal with various ways of providing leverage, and are otherwise just a way to easily wound uppity peasants. Shields are big surfaces that can block line of sight, tie up weapon arms, basically no-sell attacks in a large area, and deliver crushing blows at the right time. And good armor in large part makes you *impervious* to attacks that don't come from either a highly trained opponent or an overwhelmingly strong force that the armor would STILL greatly protect you from! And doesn't actually bind or slow your movement!
Haha, I've got a supporting character in the story I'm writing where I am trying to be (somewhat) accurate with how he uses armor and a shield. Granted it's still fantasy and so things get a bit exaggerated, but I really enjoyed writing a fight scene where he, the main character (mage), and their archer (almost) successfully fought a horde of goblins by having the armored guy with a shield just hold a chokepoint. That's almost literally all he did. I wrote about him taking a few potshots with his spear when the goblins weren't quite so close, but he's also inexperienced so that wound up being a bad move because he got distracted by attacking and almost made an opening for some of them to slip past his guard. Otherwise, he held the line, shield bashed, and tanked any hits that did get to him because he was wearing chainmail. Armor is *cool,* dammit.
YES. And it's not like goblins would have the body mass to take down someone like how you would do in human-human armored combat. Honestly, if you haven't already, check out the various armored combat sports leagues and groups. The hits those guys take!
I've looked at some of that before, but it's been a while. That's probably a great idea to look at for reference.
What's the name of the story and where can I find it
It's not posted yet—just waiting for the final touches on some art for the cover—but I plan on posting it soon! I'll tag you with a link when I do.
Here you are: [Blood of Dragons](https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/88337/blood-of-dragons-a-tabletop-rpg-themed-litrpg) The fight in question is a little bit later on, but I'm doing an early sprint for 5 chapters and then I've got a 3/week release schedule, so we should get there in just a couple weeks.
I'm split between rogues and swordsmen/aura users Rogues can be good but the way they're typically built is just plain stupid. Daggers aren't weapons meant for combat and there are better alternatives for ambushes. A dagger is a last resort type weapon, you don't pick it as primary. Aura is just bastardized magic. A combination of haste, reinforcement, regen, and a shield but mixed and weakened. It's neat but no one who uses it should ever be considered equal to a mage of the same level.
Rogues for sure. While daggers have their place as weapons (being better than just punching someone, and being easy to conceal, or use in the offhand as a parrying dagger or the like) they aren't ideal for most combat situations. It doesn't help that stealth is generally a dull mechanic to read about. Oh boy, the protagonist successfully stealthed and negated combat. Like conflict is what makes stories interesting and avoiding conflict/solving all battles with a well placed backstab just doesn't feel as good to read as a proper fight. It has huge potential as a side character but as a main character it struggles to make the stakes high when no one can see the rogue standing 3 feet in front of them, not noticing that their comrades get taken out one by one. Rogue just seems hard to make compelling combats.
Rogues aren't built for combat but they also suck at stealth. If you are hidden and have to take someone out then use a bow or some other ranged option. That way if you get caught you have time to change weapons.
It's probably authors that like playing stealth characters. So they write about much fun they'd have or what they'd do. Doesn't mean it isn't entertaining, but it doesn't usually make for a compelling narrative.
The generic type of class that authors always go for where the MC has some esoteric, rare and slightly looked down upon power that always ends up falling under time, gravity and necromancy themes.
Necromancer/Warlock/Edgelord classes. They were an interesting twist once or twice. After that they were just...ugh. Stories using them tend to be very cookie cutter and assinine.
Wait, but what about a literal Edgelord class, where the MC is empowered by cringe? And the development is from confusion, to embarrassment, to embracing the cringe?
At this point I am listening and strangely interested
Heh - go for it
Interestingly, whenever these classes shows up, they’re not really leaning into the class itself, like they’re always a blend of “edge lord” classes.
Yeah it’s so often like. The potential is there. So much there. But it ends up kinda boring, similar to all the others, and often not the best written either
How many berserkers did you even read, actual, proper berserkers are extremely rare in this genre, i should know they are one of my favorite classes and every time i make a post asking for some berserker MCs i get the same 3\~4 recs.
And those recs are?
Victor of Tucson is one the recs hopefully. Victor is LITRPG Hulk smash.
The one I remember being pretty fun was knights apocalyptica. Iirc it was somewhat sci-fi but the MC was looking to be a berserker, with all the advantages and drawbacks.
side character, but Alpha Physics had a good berserker
You'll want to pick up "Infrasound Berserker" then.
Way ahead of you, literaly, i am a patreon subscriber.
Rogues/archers for sure
For me its the reverse aside from really good ones like dcc i only read/listen stories only about mages. That is the reason i am in fantasy litrpg and games. Magic Especially in the beginning when i was reading fantasy not yet litrpg I have often tried like the way of shadows and first yeah assassins are also interesting but then comes a mage side character and blasts his way out of prison walks to the king and blazes them in wrathful fire. Or the watcher series a mage criminal that secretly used magic to become one of the crime bosses and thought i want this story.
Spellswords because it tends to become generic has everything OP skill. The tamer/beast master types get an honourable mention due to how often the pet is unreliable or just a liability to let side plots happen. If the story says there are real consequences like perma-death and life isn't cheap, you ain't keeping around a trash pet that only serves to hold the job up and put you in unnecessary danger.
I don’t usually like summoner or beast tamer. Usually, either one is their class on paper, but they really have a second, hidden class: the *I’m the main character class* iykwim… because they somehow have all the personal fighting power of a regular combat class while *also* being able to summon/tame beasts. Bonus points if the beasts they tame become ridiculously OP versions of their mob counterparts (tame a lvl 1 slime and it’s still somehow viable in a fight well into the lvl 60s). Bonus points if the tamer gets a portion of their tamed beasts’ exp (if they can also level) and exploits the hell out of this. Bonus points if the MC can somehow tame the random ass *level 2000 SSS+ class Fenryr of Dark Oblivion* or something in the first dozen or so chapters. I dislike summoners because I often see it done in a gacha style. Like, “oh, what ever will I summon on my first pull” and you pull fucking ultra instinct goku or something like that.
bonus points when they get a % of the stats of the beasts or vice versa.
Can’t believe I forget that one lol, one of the worst offenders
Swordsman because they are just so common Please pick a different weapon I am so tired of everyone being a swordsman
I've seen a whole lot of spears lately. A halberd here and there too. I think the authors caught on that while swords are more popular in fantasy, spears were the weapons of war. In magic-smithing, mc, with a whole lot of skills for wielding a hammer, made herself a katana enchanted to be set on fire via mana. It was a somewhat lackluster weapon in her hands and even cauterized the wounds it dealt. Her next weapon was a hammer, and that worked just great for her.
I love that one, I hope the author is alright
I personally thank Randidly Ghosthound for the proliferation of spears as main character weapons.
Use to think the same but if you think about it most people when they think of a fantasy type setting there is usually a sword involved, so most people are going to be familiar with a sword
There are two I feel very strongly about to the point that I'll often drop the book right there: (1) Anything (besides mage) that comes after "he wanted to choose mage, but..." If you're railroading, own it. Have classes be offered singularly, not picked. Otherwise show someone who genuinely wants to be punching/sneaking/slashing/shooting. (2) Any edgelord class with death, blood, curses, or (especially) necromancy. Yawn.
Honestly none but if I had to pick it would be maybe necromancer although they are fun to play in games. Necros in stories are usually evil bastards and the protagonist ends up "killing" it.
I am getting sick and tired of all of the necromancer stories. I will end up disliking them out of spite more than anything.
Have you checked out Antimage- Ends of Magic? Very interesting and fresh take on a berserker class.
Ooooh I mentioned that as a berserker I didn’t like in another comment actually. The berserker class just seemed so much less interesting than the other options, and then he picked it out of panic because they got attacked. And I just couldn’t keep reading
I like berserkers, but I will admit there are many that are kind of repetitive. As for my least favorite class, it's gotta be glass cannons and completely lopsided builds. In a system that increases all stats per level in addition to extra ones, I don't mind. But in a system where you have to manually add everything, and a character just ignores vitality in order to minmax damage, it annoys me. Especially because the authors don't let their main characters die in a single hit from ennemies. So they somehow have no stat investment in health, but plot armor keeps them alive.
I'm kinda sick of the gish builds.
What is gish builds?
Sword mages. People who use a combination of spells and sword fighting
Knight, necromancer, and worst of all: Spellblade. Really hard to find a guy who like magic and make stuff, but no, slashing people is faster than casting spell it seem.
Spellblades or gish builds as another called them, can be rather annoying. I wish mana couldn't be used to self buff and self heal like it usually is, or wasn't as effective. It just doesn't feel right that a mage can do everything a warrior can and then some. Warriors should at least easily enough outlast mages who need mana to self-buff. Wish there were more interesting fighter classes. For example, I (barely and probably with errors) recall 1 skill which disabled a limb at like 10 cuts to it, did so permanently at 100 or maybe 50, and killed the target at 1000 cuts. Obviously, this skill would need some balancing, lest someone wields a truly silly weapon with a thousand tiny edges like a broom, to instakill or at least maime multiple limbs of anything it can scratch. But point stands that physical fighters can have interesting abilities and combat with lots of nuance and strategy involved, not necessarily being outdone by mages and their endless versatility "cuz mana can do anything so any mage mc can do anything". Alternatively, I like settings where the only or main energy for both mages and warriors is the same, thus a mage trying to be a physical fighter with a couple self-buffing skills would need to contend with a warrior whose most skills are such.
That skill is broken, but in a "this is useless" way. Unless your fighting a giant monster, or something where you can only do surface damage anyways, just dealing a deep cut is better, you destroy part of the muscle, potentially even severing it, and make a massive hole for blood to fall out. Also, the shear number of strikes needed makes it better to just damage the limbs Normally until you can get to the head, neck, or heart, assuming they don't bleed out first.
It takes far less effort to cause a cut than a large gash or even to severe limbs. Note that fighting happens in a litrpg setting, so tanky fighters can exist who can be scratched but are hard to injure, or even if injured, don't bleed or can take on the "tis but a flesh scratch" attitude Secondly, I think mc who had the skill, also had a skill for landing multi-hits, like 1 landed attack causing 2 cuts (though for balance reasons I wish the two attacks became weaker or the second had a cap on power). Meaning, the right supporting abilities makes this more valid Thirdly, enemies are more likely to be ok with taking relatively harmless cuts, though many with insufficient poison res would likely be wary (no reason this skill user couldn't wield poison as well). Fourthly, what if the enemy has regen, whether fast-acting during combat, and/or plan to flee to heal up after the fight? Imagine your usual regenerating berserker finding their ability to regenerate their limbs inhibited or stunted? Or after a skirmish, the enemy side failing to recuperate on time (the permanent maiming effect is probably very hard to cleanse or undo). Lastly, one can fight like a warrior but use this ability as a fallback in case the foe can heal up somehow or be healed by others, or is just too tough, all the while trying to do real blows to them. It doesn't have to become the cornerstone of one's build. As you can see, there are plenty of ways for this to work- it just takes strategy, the right Build & tools and circumstances (can't have a build be always highly valid). It's not an ability for your classic warrior fighting another classic warrior. Though you were right that it'd be highly effective against large monsters as well (though I'd assume it can't instakill some Titan)
Necromancer. Being able to control armies is stupidly OP.
Tamers. I dislike almost all tamed companions I have ever read. The concept that tamers are just slavers if the tamed get more intelligent has made it even worse
Not exactly what you asked for but if there’s a class mechanic and a main character doesn’t try and understand the technicalities and maybe use it to their advantage, it annoys me.
For me it's Rogue's.Rogues even more than other classes feel very situational, the only people who I can remember that were rogues like sung Jin woo had other abilities to make up for the rogues lack of combat ability
Fine, mate, we don't have much love for the redditor class either 😋
I may anger a lot of people here but a demolition expert? Falls into the same category as melee people are making comments about here for me. Making or buying bombs just isn't magical enough for me
Pretty much the same. Barbarians, zerkers, or any other melee only class. BORING. I want more casters. Also can we get some non-human/elf mcs? There are like 4 series with non-human mcs. BORING. Life Reset was uh-mazing.
Oh yeah, I hate when the main character gets to pick a race and there’s tons of insane options from dragon men to demons to classic elves and dark elves to fae and even mixed races like fae orcs or demon elves, and then the main character just says I like to stick with what’s familiar so I looked at none of the other options and picked the human, which has absolutely nothing special about it except maybe getting an even stat spread or the ability to learn slightly more or slightly faster
Right. I'd rather skip character creation in the story if that is all you are going to do. "There is an elf, a dwarf, lizardman, dragon man, werewolf, omegaunkillablemonsterman, and oh look a human! I think I'll go with that, none of the rest of this seems very interesting. Plus I get 0.00003% increase to reputation gains." Blehhhhhhh
Yeah it’s the worst! And sure it inevitably ends up paying off somehow because it’s fiction, but it gets dragged out and just leaves me wondering if a different choice could’ve had an even cooler payoff
I love me a non-human mc, it's just hard to find something that isn't dragon/undead/slime/swarm of some description. There's a few but it'll be something like fox person or, animal that eventually gets a shapeshifter skill.
The upper class/1%
Warriors. You went to a fantasy world with all kinds of cool magic and other powers, and decided to beat things over the head with a sharp piece of metal? Really? The same goes for spellblade characters. It sounds cool in theory, but in practice the author tends to forget about all the cool powers they gave their mc and it devolves into them hitting things with a sharp piece of metal, but the metal has glowy sparkles now.
I'm so sick of mages, just so goddamn bored of them. I get it man. New world. Magic is real! Holy cow. I'm gonna be a super cool magic user! As original as fucking sand. Everyone fucking does it. It would be one thing if speccing into a mage build was like... An actual trade off, like the MC isn't as tanky and is bad at melee in return for casting power... But no. No, not at all. 9 of 10 MCs become spell blades or use some other bullshit to become better in melee than dedicated melee fighters. God forbid anyone write a balanced system. Magic is fine, but it's so oversaturated at this point. Give me a non-magic fighter. Give me a Knight. Give me something
Mages, never really really liked the strict mage class with low defense and throwing fireballs, although I do like magic just in different applications, like Jake from primal hunter, he’s an archer but he’s just as much a mage, I like his class because whenever he uses magic he describes the intensity of the energy and how he wrestles control of it and manipulates it, it’s not just “I threw a fireball, I shot ice spikes” I feel like magic should have more significance than that, every time there’s a mage they just get downplayed so hard like ice spikes become normal arrows and they blend in with every other typical class, there’s no difference in power, you have the ranger, the melee fighter, and the mage, all at the same class all with the same exact strength, if mages have to sacrifice defense they should have way more power, they’re using fucking magic bro, they should be like super saiyans lol
Magic haters (pugilists warriors berserkers etc.) Esp ones that scorn people who like and enjoy magic. Like it instantly takes me out of the story, you're telling me magic is real and you want to hit people with a stick? Omg waw so cool and unique, hate on those "nerdy" magic users too why don't you. Especially if they're stupid or a goody two shoes. Instant drop.
Pugilists especially. I mean, I could definitely enjoy some kind of martial artist monk style character, but when some guy gets access to incredible magic powers and goes yeah, I’m just gonna get really get at punching things. Like come on, you’re not even gonna learn how to actually fight? Your whole thing is gonna be your fist?
See I don’t mind berserkers just because a lot of people in litrpgs come from earth where we’re so heavily weighed down by societal norms that everyday can be a struggle with mitigating pent up aggression from the everyday life that exploding in a world with magic can be completely normal. Does it happen a lot, yes. Can it be used as a plot point to show growth, also yes. Now if their entire fighting style is hinged on being a berserker then yeah I can see it’s bit of an issue. To answer the question, I can’t really say if a class bothers me but more of the person who it is attached to. I’ve seen pugilists, fighters, druids, paladins and whole plethora of classes that aren’t standard by any means and work really well with the story. Yet if the person is absolute garbage or has their head so far up their rear end that they can literally re-eat the food that they just ate. Then it doesn’t matter if the class is terrible or amazing or useful in every situation. It’s just bad character design. Let’s take fighter for example. The most basic of basic classes. Personally one of my favorite classes because I love being up close and personal but this class can be insanely powerful via subclasses that can make someone hit like a truck. Yet if there character is an ass, than it just ruins the whole dynamic of the book.
Siri from arcamy online isn't bad. She's a bit of a meat head but also a good general and a decent back story. Tho she is a side character not the Mc. Tho, I haven't seen too many Mc berserker s
The Dwarven Berserker in The Dark Profit trilogy is, once he starts on his path of redemption in the first chapter, one of the most intelligent, levelheaded, and considerate characters I've come across - he's only a raging lunatic when he is 'beserking'.
It’s not the classes i hate but when the class does everything. I read a book this guy could: stealth complete with backstab damage, use magic, had a pet, was a paladin. The only real difference is he used a hammer.
Full warriors are mostly boring because I'll just want to follow someone else instead and they'll have cooler powers.
Pure Mages or Summoners. They're just so... Boring. They always end up either the most powerful being to ever exist, or mid af that can barely handle the average enemy they encounter without a full team to support them. And even then, they take a backseat to everyone else in a fight. Everyone saying "Yeh but magic is REAL and you wanna punch/hit stuff with (insert) weapon? Bruh" when you have strength stat or agi stat numbering in the tens of thousands and can move faster than the speed of light, or punch a hole in reality, why the hell would I lob a basic bitch fireball at a dude? Fellow meatheads, where you at?
Right? I think Robert Jordan and Brandon Sanderson displayed well how magic has its limits but also how crazy destructive it can be.
What are your thoughts on summoning like they did in Naruto? *assuming you watched here lol
It was... Okay? I guess. Like I enjoyed the concepts behind it, in that it had connections to the spiritual side of things. That each animal group was in some way a sect, a martial arts group with their own rules, styles, concepts and beliefs. It's just limited in that the creator never went in depth with it beyond the toads and to an extent, the snakes. Then it was also left to the way side in favour of the Naruto and Sasuke being the chosen ones, and aliens. For some reason.
Berserkers/warriors. I find "regular" combat boring. Spellswords or whatever you want to call them are fine, so long as magic is mixed in.
I've seen SOOOO many Spellblades/Magic Swordsmen over the years that just seeing one nowadays is already more than enough for me to drop. A lot of them are just wizards with swords at the end of the day which I'm so sick of seeing. I don't have a problem with warriors that use magic to enhance their combat capabilities. Oh you can ignite your blade on fire? That's cool! Or if they just use it to boost their physical characteristics, that's also acceptable. But it's just the idea that a warrior could stand in the back and just bombard their foes with more magic than the average wizard has. I can go all day talking about my hate for Spellblades, please don't get me started.
I definitely see your point, but as a bit of an aside, I’d actually like to see more “spellblades” that really are just wizards with swords, Gandalf style. Like I personally don’t mind an overpowered spell blade who’s good at magic and swords, but why do all the wizards insist on not also having a melee weapon? What’re you gonna do if you run out of whatever magic juice you use? If something gets too close or attacks too fast for magic to help? There’s almost always a situation in which literally any melee weapon would be better than magic, and almost always they just end up struggling to wrestle a goblin or some shit to the ground
English literature
I totally agree!! I think the best representation I have seen of a berserker is the one from the anime Fate Stay Zero. I like the idea of this dark tormented person and I think a proper depiction should be about the terror of living that life. I think Guts is a pretty close depiction of this but they tend to lean to heavy of the meathead I’m going to conquest thing.
Rogue like characters, along the lines of jason asano
I’m growing tired of the summoner archetype, mostly because it’s a “overpowered MC who also has loads of summons” It was cool the first couple times. Not anymore
the beserker class, seems to borrow from the hulk motif way too often, but a bane like beserker though iv always found interesting.. personally I find mages boring, unless they are able to switch it up, either hand to hand or with weapons, but just a staff and some incantations while remaining a stationary target? nah fam... there is just way too much plot armor protecting them.
Rogue spellcaster
Berserkers and Paladin. Although these two classes aren't used all that often, but i still don't like them. Although I hate Paladin more than Berserker. Mostly because the class depends on outside power and needs you to be devoted to some god. Only way I can stomach this class is if the Protagonist was forced into it was planning on eventually usurping the god he is drawing power from or something like that. Although I haven't seen that happen. And I don't like Berserkers because I don't like meatheads that don't think and tackle everything head on.
I was reading a book one time, forget what it was called, but the basis of it was some guy got summoned to another world, and because he’s from earth he could just kind of cancel our magic I think? Something like that, which was a really cool premise because it set him up to be a cool anti magic character, and then he ended up picking a berserker class that just felt like it reduced his options to get get angry and resist magic. One of the other options was some kind of anti magic monk too that sounded so cool.
ends of magic I believe
I think you’re right! And I mean, no offense to the author or anything I didn’t think it was poorly written just, wow not for me.
The Barbarian/Berserker stereotype is based on Norse/Viking Berserkers. It feels really racist and I'm not sure why this stereotype keeps getting a free pass. The horny bard is another pet peeve. I'm not sure where it started, but it's like everyone is stuck on these stereotypes. These are NOT archetypes and I hate it when people can't tell the difference. And paladins treated as police officers! They are part of the church's army, defenders of the faith, not some baron's town guard. Unless you have a hard-core theocracy, Paladins aren't breaking up bar fights and taking people to jail for theft. No, a paladin doesn't get hired to clean your barn. They already have a job!
Rangers.
summoner/necromancer/tamer I'm so sick of it, and it feels like so many stories will try to shoehorn a familiar or a golem or a construct into them when it just doesn't make sense. There's nothing wrong with them, I just wish they didn't seem to squirm their way into so many stories.
Definitely summoner/tamer never like some dude saving the day because he has a bunch of familer do all his work for him.
Any form of a sword and board character. You’re in a world where magic exists and you choose both the most boring type of fighting and a basic weapon like a generic SWORD?
So what i read from that is we need a mc thats super shy, timid, and talks with low volume. But when he goes into battle he goes all berserk like. His battles will range from killing minsters to talking to Royals and nobles. Loses until berserk kicks in and goes off in the most gruesome and lol way possible. Hehehehehehe
Swordsman. So overdone. I'm kind of sick of swords.
dark assasins, are always written like edgelords.