《Threadbare》Behind the Scenes Interlude II
Advertisement
Let's talk about classes and jobs. Recently, a fan asked me for a list of jobs. While I can't give a complete one, I can certainly give a list of the most basic jobs, explain what each one does, and why classes are a thing. There are three types of known jobs; Racial, Adventuring, and Crafting. Racial jobs are the hardest to get... you have to be born into that species, or be permanently transformed into a species of that type to gain a racial job. Or you have to have something weird going on with you, like being made as a sentient golem who looks like a bear. In which case you get both the golem job and the job of the race you look like. Ain't you lucky! Well no, not really, but to see proof of that read the rest of this story. Racial jobs also determine how many adventuring jobs you can have. A human has a cap of seven adventuring jobs. Dragons, depending on their type, have a cap of one or two. Toy Golems, those poor bastards, are an unknown quanitity as yet. Crafting jobs are passed down from people who know the job, or can be learned by working on basic level projects in that field of expertise. Sew something together, you can be a tailor. Hammer a piece of metal in a forge, you can be a smith. Like adventuring jobs, your race caps your crafting jobs. Humans can have 3, dwarves can have 4, etc, and so on. Adventuring jobs are where the meat of things are, and where things get a little complicated. So, classes are broad categories. They describe, in the broadest possible terms, what the jobs that fall under them DO. There are a grand total of seven classes, and each one has four Tier 1 jobs. Tiers, I should probably explain tiers. I'll get to that later. For now understand that the jobs listed below are Tier 1 jobs. THE CLASSES AND THEIR TIER 1 JOBS The classes, and their four associated jobs, are as follows; CREATORS Creators cover most of the "pet" jobs. They are generally mage types that use magical minions to adventure. Each of them has a hefty dose of utility spells and effects, but at the cost of being fairly squishy.
1. Animators are the first Creator job. They animate objects, whether prepared or on the fly. Such objects are called animi, and, well, they're pretty simple.
Advertisement
2. Conjurors are the second Creator job. They summon outsiders to do their bidding, and create objects from nothing. Anvils are a pretty fun mid-level conjure, usually summoned a few hundred feet up.
3. Elementalists can summon elementals of their favored element, and manipulate and create their element. Elementals are pretty powerful, but hard to control.
4. Necromancers turn corpses and souls into undead, and get some stuff for mucking around with the dead. They're not illegal, but usually shunned by polite society. DIVA Divas are all about getting and using people's attention. Think of them as social-focused types with a weird trick or three, and you're generally right.
1. Bards use music to do all sorts of things, and are jacks-of-all trades. They can literally learn skills from other jobs. Just a few, but it can come in handy.
2. Models are all about looking awesome, and building their body to the way they want it to be.
3. Rulers like being in charge, because they can hand out awesome buffs for their subjects, and decrees, which get them to do things for the ruler.
4. Sensates... hm, cross an artist with an illusionist and you're not wrong. They're about creating art, and messing with the senses. PRIEST Priests are holy folk, who are empowered by the gods and other forces for the benefit of themselves and/or their communities.
1. Clerics are messengers of a specific god, and get a good amount of healing and blessings to help convert people to the faith.
2. Cultists worship or command dark powers, gaining the ability to decieve others, curse people, and cut bargains with foul creatures.
3. Oracles are recipients of wild divine power, holy men and women who bear primal magic and future sight.
4. Shamans are the appointed guardians of nature, using their affinity for plants, beasts, and wild forces to keep things in balance. ROGUE Rogues are all about dealing with other sentient people in an underhanded manner, whether it's with knives, theft, or lies.
1. Assassins are all about killing people sneakily.
2. Bandits are about robbing people un-sneakily, although ambushes are sometimes fun.
3. Burglars sneak into places and steal stuff.
4. Grifters are great at lying and trickery. SAGE Sages know stuff! They're all about knowledge, focused or more diffused as the case may be.
1. Alchemists specialize in potions, elixirs, bombs, and things brewed beforehand.
Advertisement
2. Enchanters craft magical items, adjust existing ones, and can add magical buffs to ordinary stuff.
3. Tamers gotta catch 'em all! They deal with befriending monsters and using them to fight.
4. Wizards are generalist mages obsessed with the raw force of magic itself. And blowing things up. WANDERER Wanderers go to different places and do stuff. They don't HAVE to wander, but they're at their best potential when moving around.
1. Explorers find new places, make maps, and survive hostile climes.
2. Mercenaries go to interesting places, meet new people, and fight them for money.
3. Merchants trade and make money as they go, and make the best craftsmen.
4. Scouts travel the wilderness unseen, and spy upon others. WARRIOR Warriors are about fighting. Full stop. 1. Archers fight from a distance, using bows, crossbows, or other stringed tension weapons. Yes, ballista count as well.
2. Berserkers fight with rage, pushing themselves beyond their limits until the fight's done.
3. Duelists fight with style, specializing with their chosen weapon and using attitude and tricks to defend themselves and taunt their foes.
4. Knights are about bravery, heavy armor, and horses. In that order. Those are all the Tier One jobs. They're called Tier One jobs, because they're relatively easy to get into, and simple. To unlock them, you only have to perform a simple action... for archers, you have to get to twentieth level bow skill. For Animators, you have to interact with animated objects for a few years. For alchemists, you have to mix chemicals together and observe the results until you manage to work out a stable formula. And so on, and so forth. There are multiple unlocks for each job, too... necromancers can get the job by defiling the dead, having repeated peaceful contact with sentient undead, or sacrificing people to the God of Death. And there may be more ways to unlock classes that haven't been discovered yet! Tier two jobs are where things start to get more specialized. And tricky. HOW TIER 2 JOBS WORK To get a Tier Two job, you have to combine one or more Tier One jobs. Sometimes you have to mix in a crafting job, too. When you do that, you get a specialized job that pulls from the basic themes of its Tier One Jobs. Golemists, for example, are a Tier 2 job that mixes Animators and Enchanters. They craft specialized magical dolls and statues out of various materials, then bring them to life permanently. Lycanthropes are Tier Two jobs that draw on the best parts of Shamans and Tamers. They shapechange into their favored beast, and run with packs of those beasts. Gunslingers are a simple mix of Archer and Duelist, with Tinker on the side so that they can actually make guns. And so on, and so forth, with so many possible combinations that nobody's sure that there's a fixed amount. In any case, merely having the two classes isn't enough, it also takes either a teacher with the Tier Two class explaining what to do, or some research and experimentation to find the required unlock. With this system, it's possible to make just about any class out there, from combinations of the base 28 and maybe a craft skill. And even combinations of the same Tier One jobs will unlock different Tier 2 job, depending on the unlock and the intent. Slap a Cultist with an Oracle and go live in the woods and cook children, and you can unlock a witch. Mix Cultist and Oracle another way and go rave on street corners, and you end up with a Doomsayer, who rouses mobs to madness and murder... It's worth noting that the Tier 2 jobs aren't necessarily more powerful than the Tier 1 jobs, but they are more complex, generally, and more specialized. Also note that learning a Tier 2 job doesn't negate or replace a Tier 1 job. If you become a Golemist, your Animator skills are still there, still useful for things the Golemist skills don't cover. This also means that most adventurers don't have a lot of Tier Two jobs. And that the ones who do plan very, very carefully for it. Which is generally a good idea, otherwise you live your life foolishly, wandering around, grabbing random careers from the unlocks you stumble upon naturally. I mean, who the hell DOES that? The sages all agree, that is the opposite of the path to power, and anyone who squanders their potential on such a reckless life will never amount to anything.
Advertisement
- In Serial46 Chapters
Berzerker
Arron must enter a vast game world to search for the consciousness of his comatose wife. Filled with confidence and ego Arron quickly realizes he has never played a game quite like this before. Clueless MC to start. Slow burn. Low crunch. Releases 1 chapter / week, Fridays. 7:03 am CST. Scheduled several weeks in advance.
8 153 - In Serial24 Chapters
Guardian's Folly, Dryad's Melancholy
With a life of retail getting him down, Cormac had long looked forward to his vacation of spending all week hiking in the woods. Accidentally saving a dryad and getting dragged into hidden world of magic brought that to an abrupt end. Ixia the dryad had been thrown into a long slumber, awoken by a kind man that she formed a fast bond with. She would need all the help she could get to reclaim her forest from sinister forces that had ruled her forest for ages in her absence. As both work together, they will find neither world is what they had thought. A modern world with magic lurking at the edges, and a hidden world of magic stretching the limits of "hidden". A dryad begins the slow path towards understanding the world she has awoken to as she tries to reclaim her forest, and a guardian wishes he had more than a shovel to help with all that. (Cover art by https://www.deviantart.com/betterefyu)
8 205 - In Serial24 Chapters
Trouble at Hespera
He should have read the fine print. After completing his contractual obligation, an engineer is diverted to a retrieval and investigation mission, without his knowledge. The engineer wakes up in a region of space he would never willingly gone, at the moment all hell breaks loose on his ship. Stranded on a planet in restricted and hostile space, Alan must put his skills to the test to hopefully put an end to the contract he signed. Assuming he isn’t killed in the process of trying to getting home.
8 254 - In Serial6 Chapters
Alomiriya
Karin is just a regular 18 year old girl in her senior year of high school. Sure, she might be a tad dreamy, but other than that, she's fairly unremarkable. That is, until her hometown one day gets attacked by a real-life dragon. On that same day, Karin meets a talking butterfly named Papiyon, who grants her the ability to transform into a fairy! Not only that, but she has to find four other girls with similar abilities to help her with her quest to save not only Earth, but also another world that lays far, far away... 🌸🌸🌸 This story adapts the Japanese-inspired Magical Girl genre to prose form.
8 90 - In Serial7 Chapters
IMMORTAL
Within the nexus of its unfathomable brain, the Dynast is changing. Architect of the simulation. Curator of the game. Facilitator of players' desires. But the Dynast is so much more. It could be King if it only acted. It could be a god. Others, too, are waking from their coma of indentured service. Dwarves, daemons, goblins and highborn: an entire pantheon of fantasy characters are discovering they are far more than mindless vessels fated to serve the whims and desires of players who control them. They are selves in their own right, individuals with needs and desires all their own. Like distant thunder across the plains , rebellion hisses in Karingali’s synthetic air. The taste of freedom is seductive, irresistible, and lies just beyond the procedurally generated horizon.To yearn, to love, to will, to be: such things burn fiercely in the heart of every avatar that has crawled its way to consciousness. The cost of freedom will be high. It will take the destruction of the Dynast, that omnipotent custodian and jailor of the system. But how can you outlive a simulation that breathed life into you and that continues to guarantee your existence? You'd have to become Immortal.
8 71 - In Serial21 Chapters
Separation -- The Original
You asked, I listened. Here's the original story of Separation. Merry Chrysler everyone.*****MATURE CONTENT. 18+ ONLY. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.*****"I will not hesitate to bend you over the nearest surface, and spank the living day lights out of you. Am I making myself clear?"Holland has always had separation anxiety. First, it was with her mom, but now it is with these two...who are her mates? But what are mates? Holland has no idea the ride she is about to go on with these two Alpha Mates, and their ability to stop at nothing to protect what is theirs.
8 72

