PLEASE explain switching professions to me!

[Mr Creosote]

Totally confused. I thought I grasped this but apparently not.
So... I switch my say Lev 5 Fighter to a Mage, now they are novice mage with all the skill set of a mage, fine, all well and good, now when they reach Lev 5 Mage the fighter skills should be available, right? but they arent, I cant use Fighter armor or weapons, in fact I cant see why one would ever switch professions, unless I am missing something. Can someone please explain to this simpleton!!!

Thx

[Nix]

You're thinking the dual-class system of Baldur's Gate --- the class switching rules here are quite different. I have seen a number of posts regarding that topic here, suggest you do a search.

Think of the class switching rules of Wiz8 in terms of the following key principles:
- The skills/abilities AND restrictions of your current class will always apply, regardless of your level (not like BG).
- Skills from your old profession which are not inconsistent, or a restriction, of your new profession will be retained or usable. However, they will no longer improve with practice. For ex, a bard with 15 in music switched to a fighter can still play instruments, but his music skill will not go up with practice.
- Special and unique class-specific abilities (like berserking) is lost once you change to another class.
- Finally, there is no resetting of a character's experience table when he switches class. That means it basically takes as much xp to go from Level 6 to 7 in fighter, as it does for a L5 fighter/L1 bard to go up to level L5 fighter/L2 bard.

Pretty sketchy, but hope it helps.

[Jem]

Here are the basics:

1) Once you switch professions you immediately lose all the special abilities and especially armor/weapon use from the old one. This is not dependent upon level in your new profession at all and as long as you are in the new profession those items and special abilities are unavailable to you.

2) You retain your class levels from your old profession so if you could use certain non-weapon items (like instruments or gadgets) in that profession, you can normally use them in your new one.

3) You retain any skills earned in the old profession but if your new one does not share them, the skills will not go up again.

4) You also retain any spells learned in the old profession but if the new one doesn't have spells or uses a different school you will not be able to increase that school anymore but your realm skills will continue to rise (unless it's a non-spellcaster of course).

Example: A monk switches to a psionic. He no longer gets stealth or critical kill but retains what he had in them from his old class and is able to continue learning from the Psionic spellbook.

In your case: If you keep your fighter as a mage for a couple of levels and then switch him back to a fighter, he'll retain the spells he's learned and can cast them but he will not be able to improve those spells further or learn any new ones. He will also be able to continue where he left off as a fighter with the skills he couldn't improve while he was a mage and will be able to use the armor/weapons from before the mage time.

I hope that helps you out some.

[ 02-21-2002: Message edited by: Jem ]

[Nix]

quote:

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Originally posted by Mr Creosote:
I cant see why one would ever switch professions, unless I am missing something.

---

Some reasons:

1) To gain an initial boost in certain skills. Ex., some people start with a mage then switch to bishop (the real class aimed for) in order to get the initial magic realm points.

2) When the character has maxed out his class-specific skills. Ex., a Level 18 bard with 100 in the music skill has arguably reached his plateau. One could switch him to rogue or fighter to gain additional skills from the new class.

A key principle of class switching is that you want the two classes to have enough overlapping skills/abilities, so that not much is wasted by the switching. Examples are the spellcasters and their corresponding hybrids: samurai/mage, monk/psionic, ninja/alchemist, ranger/alchemist.