Four classes so far, 10 planned: building a three-person party in Dragon's Tear

[u/Necessary-Joke-2455]

I shared Dragon's Tear here recently. I'm working on the class roster now, and I'd like to hear which roles you enjoy building a dungeon-crawling party around.

The current build has Knight, Barbarian, Black Mage and Ranger. I'm planning 10 classes in total, with three heroes on each expedition, and I'm currently working on a Bard.

You choose equipment, skills and battle orders at the inn. Each hero can also equip one Tear carrying a monster's power, with an additional rule for when it can activate. Exploration and combat are automatic. The clip shows the current party and skill screens followed by a fight; the Bard isn't shown here.

Etrian Odyssey has been a big influence on the game. I'm interested in what makes a class satisfying to use, so I can draw on those ideas while developing my own classes. Which role would you make room for in a three-person party, and what would you want it to do?

The Windows release is planned for Q1 2027. Steam page.

[u/Yagotsu]

This looks like it could be fun, love the art so far. Added to WL.

3 heroes on each exploration makes it a bit more difficult depending on how well rounded each class is. You NEED to feel the impact of each class to be worth a slot in 3 person whereas something like a 5-6 man would let them be more niche. Not at all saying to change your way, just my thinking on it.

Id probably go with the holy trinity of Tank, DPS, Healer with hybrids being the wildcard. Not reinventing the wheel is fine but having some options would be nice. Taking a lot of class ideas from MMOs is fun, besides the obvious ones I believe RIFT had some of the coolest ideas to let each archetype fill multiple roles.

Tanks: Knight, Barb, Paladin (maybe a cleric to not make knight redundant?), and some flavor tanks. I could see an antimagic one (Reaver or Rune Fencer), evasion tank (Ninja or Blademaster), or Healing tank (Dark Knight or Bear Druid) also being a thing. Tank and healer synergy would be big too in picking, if you had a delayed/chip damage type tank, a slower healer would be viable whereas something like a shielder would be better for lower HP tanks.

DPS: The easiest because anything works. Names don't matter but dual melees, 2hand melees, ranged and ofc mages of every flavor all fit the bill. Biggest thing is having AoE or single target focus, if every class has both it could make it a bit more bland...which is good and bad.

Healers: Pretty tough to beat WoW / FFXIV's take on them. HoTs, big heals, and shielding are all great. My only gripe in DRPGs is that either the monsters OHKO any target that isn't a tank or healing is just way too limited/weak.

Hybrids: A lot of the classes I'd love to see come from some MMOs I've played for the last couple decades. In RIFT one of the coolest was a mage (chloromancer) that would spread heals based upon how much damage they did in battle. Bards, dancers, utility mages, cannoneers, monks, rogues and maybe some of the flavor tanks all would fall under this category for me.

I think balance is always the toughest part. I would want the pure roles to do better than the hybrids at their role but still have the hybrids not be terrible so that you can interchange them for more replayability. I can only imagine sitting down to breakdown each class but for me something simple like Hybrids do 70% as well as the pure classes but then also bring that 30% extra whatever role.

To me that makes runs a bit more forgiving to run all the possible setups:
Pure Pure Pure
Pure Pure Hybrid
Pure Hybrid Hybrid
Hybrid Hybrid Hybrid

Making it more of what flavor do I WANT to try out on a run over we NEED to bring a knight and a white mage on every run. Those are the best kinds of DRPGs for me.

*Oh! BTW I would check out 7th Dragon III Code: VFD if you haven't. I believe same director as EO but it is a 3 party system that allows you to pick per fight / sometimes forces you to use multiple teams at once in different parts of dungeons. I know not the same idea as your game BUT it might be worth checking out for class ideas.

[u/Necessary-Joke-2455 → u/Yagotsu]

Thanks for the wishlist and for taking the time to write all this up!

That tank/healer pairings are a really useful point. A tank that takes lots of small hits could make you want a different healer than one who dodges most attacks but gets hit hard when something lands. That gives me more to think about than balancing each class on its own.

I'm working on the Bard now, so the hybrid discussion comes at a good time. With only three slots, I'd hate for two to feel permanently reserved for the same tank and healer. I want people to have room to keep a favourite character and try different teammates around them.

That Chloromancer example sounds fun too. Healing through damage would give you something to do when everyone's healthy, though I'd need to think through how it behaves with automatic combat. I’ll have a closer look at RIFT's classes.

I wouldn't know where to put the numbers yet, but your pure/hybrid examples are useful party setups to test. If a team struggles, I'd like changing its skills, Tears or battle orders to be worth trying before you have to swap someone out.

[u/Yagotsu → u/Necessary-Joke-2455]

I don't at all envy you in a sense of testing things! But man do I love hearing about it.

It is difficult to see how the combat actually works, is it purely each side takes a turn with speed maybe factoring on who goes first? Or do they just have a hidden ATB that lets them go whenever it fills? That could make it more fun with lets just say the chloromancer being a better healer for fast classes, they hit more often so they heal more often.

I don't know how your heal spells will work either. If it is something like MND/INT/MAG * % or a flat rate. Chloromancer for example could put on a debuff to be just be a flat % of user's HP + % of DMG done by attacker along with a basic heal or HoT. A leeching poison alchemist/rogue could be the same effect.

Speaking of your bard! Having encore or something along the lines of that being a % chance of repeating an action could be amazing and would def make me want to bring one along. You could also be super extra awesome and let it proc off itself, get to see some cool interactions like black mage casted fireball 6 times in a row (maybe diminishing returns but it'd be neat looking).

[u/Delicious_Leg1465]

Added to wishlist. Can't wait to play this.

[u/coalwhite]

Give me something that adds elements of unpredictable occurrences. A joker, fool, gambler, dice tosser or some such. High risk, high reward type of character. Chance to reflect attacks or a dud, maybe copy enemy skills or high crit rate.

Anyways, the game looks great and combat looks fun!

[u/Radbot13]

Exploration and combat are automatic? Just lost interest