Propose a new Hexen class

What other classes could Hexen have? Describe the parameters, weapons, effects of flechette, icon of the defender, and mystic ambit incant.

Has anyone tried making new Hexen classes before? I think it could be a great way to breathe new life into familiar levels.

Doomg*mauled by bears*


Frankly, my "snap your fingers and a 4th class gets dropped into Hexen in the past" class would pretty much be Hexen II's assassin: super-quick dagger, crossbow, grenades, and some mystic mumbo jumbo superweapon. Not particularly imaginative, but it's what exists in my head.

Though "caltrops" is the easy call for flechettes, changing it so they shatter instantly and send out a spray of poison daggers sounds more interesting and less following the Cleric's poison cloud trope.

Icon makes the assassin invisible, but in the Descent style where enemies target your last known location (by sound), rather than the near-useless Doom style. This requires custom code but we're speaking hypothetical anyway so let's pretend Alternate-Universe Raven would do this.

For the incant, perhaps a stackable speed boost? It fits with the character.

Corvus. Necrogauntlets (less damage and shorter reach than the fighter and cleric melee attacks, but high rate of fire and stunlock effect), crossbow for green mana; blaster for blue mana; phoenix rod for ultimate with greater damage radius and player not affected by damage. Timebomb flechette. Golden invulnerability. Mystic ambit incant works as tome of power; powered up weapons work like in Heretic except the phoenix rod gets a "rain of fire" effect similar to the powered-up skullstaff. Perhaps update the phoenix rod to a phoenix bow like in Heretic II.

I think it's been done to some degree in a mod but I always fancied the idea of a necromancer. His base weapon is a wand that fires a short range bolt, think mini Thunderbolt from Quake. His next two weapons are crafted from monster bones/remains, and do mana drain and health drain at close range respectively. Otherwise they could fire projectiles taken from the monsters themselves. His final weapon raises a small group of Reavers to shred his enemies. The flechette will infect an enemy, who has a small chance to infect two additional enemies, after a short duration of infection they explode, damaging everything around them.

The Icon of Defender places the necromancer into a phase state, so he can move through enemies and strategically decimate a large group from within.

The incant I'm not sure about, maybe it could increase the range and strength of his draining weapons, to make them even deadlier from a distance. Anyway, sounds like a fun class I would play a lot!

Bard.

Gez said:

Timebomb flechette.

We already have that thing for the Mage.

Jayextee said:

Bard.

I'm going to elaborate on this, right, for kicks.

The Bard is fucked-up. Musicians, right? Guy's done so much medieval-fantasy drugs the Flechettes are actually health pickups. Health pickups are ammunition for his lute and other instruments-of-the-era he's using as weapons. Leaving the mana as basically BARRELS THAT EXPLODE ON TOUCH. For no reason other than Bard.

Also Korax is replaced by Edgar Allan Poe's head on a stick, because Raven innit. Eromreven, eop llik tsum uoy emag eht niw ot.

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I have all the best ideas.

Maulotaur... Has 200-400hp (or more?), some natural armor (thick skin?), but all the regular armor items are removed from the levels. Move as fast as the fighter.

Weapons: 1) hammer melee with splash damage, 2) flail/meteor hammer/hook that throws some sharp/explosive things around, at melee range can grab the enemy, and throw it into a wall/other monsters, or just tear it apart 3) lance, does the charge attack, nearly invulnerable while charging (invuln requires mana) 4) something that sends out those floor fires, maybe send multiple...

Flechette: cracks the bottle like a beer can... explodes around player, large radius (no self damage). Friendly Maulotaur: throws one of 3 human characters as a helper (with weapons 2 & 3). Porkalator: turns the enemies into pigs, but they kinda like how the maulotaur smells, so they help him too. Icon of Defender: invulnerability, on fire.. kind of like continuous flechette effect (but smaller radius/damage). Mystic ambit incant: what's this... uhh... Fires the BFG 9000?

Kirt from Shadowcaster.

Weapon 1: triskel boomerang. Ranged, unlimited use, however rate of fire depends on how far your target is since it has to fly all the way out there and back. If an enemy is within melee range, kick attack instead.
Weapon 2: maorin morph. Four clawed arms scratching away for a lot of damage with a fast rate of fire.
Weapon 3: caun morph. Summon insect swarms at enemies (work a bit like the lightning spell), in addition with this form selected you are smaller and therefore can pass under shooting traps. If wounded, you slowly heal automatically at five hit points per point of mana drained.
Weapon 4: ssair morph. Belch streams of fireballs at your enemies, and in addition while in this form you are immune to damaging floors and get a few seconds of flight every time you fall (not allowing you to fly upward, but that lets you cross larger distances, or correct a misstep while platforming).
Flechette: let a carnivorous flower grow. It'll serve as a temporary obstacle and will bite monsters nearby. Can be killed by monsters quickly, and won't stay around longer than a friendly maulotaur.
Icon of the defender: grost form. As a hulking stone golem, your punches are slow but devastating, killing any trash mob in a single hit and ignoring shields. You are not fully immune to damage, however, rather damage you receive is divided by 50 (before armor damage reduction), rounded down, so only the most powerful attacks can hurt you.
Mystic ambit incant: no idea. perhaps mana refill, like the mage.
Special bonus: class is immune to porkelator.


Alternative ideas for weapons 3 & 4:
Kappa form: sonic shockwave attack, mana regeneration on water terrain.
Opsis form: death stare attack, considered to have a map revealer active while in this form.

Blacksmith!



Its been so long since I played Hexen that I don't remember enough about the classes to give blacksmith a detailed rundown. Nails instead of caltgrops? Gotta have a badass hammer though, and perhaps an enchanted apron! :)

There should be a clumsy ninja class. Your character is really fast and agile but tends to trip and stumble. That might seem unfair, but it has a few perks. For example, you're surrounded by baddies and trip and fall just as they throw fireballs, but they miss and instead hit each other killing themselves, and those that survive start infighting.

Piper Maru said:

There should be a clumsy ninja class. Your character is really fast and agile but tends to trip and stumble. That might seem unfair, but it has a few perks. For example, you're surrounded by baddies and trip and fall just as they throw fireballs, but they miss and instead hit each other killing themselves, and those that survive start infighting.

In other words, a clumsy Lo Wang?

Following the road of logic that's been paved out by the porkilator spell gives us Parzival the Pig Sorcerer, an upstanding pig in a robe. He'd be a mostly mid-range spell-caster with a central, limited access to the porkilator, who attacks ham-fistedly and by flinging magical mud and arcane apples. Hurling apples at porkilated enemies triggers an unprecedented explosion. Eating the pigs outright replenishes health and mana.

Has a unique squeal taunt.

A Rogue type character seems like the obvious choice to go with the others. I didn't entirely like the way it was implemented in Hexen II, but eh, sort of.
Speed similar to Fighter, but armor/endurance similar to Mage. Armor pref: Amulet of Warding > Mesh Armor > Falcon Shield > Platinum Helmet.

I didn't think out the weapons and their balance super deeply, but eh.
Weapon 1: Daggers, similar in power to the Mace of Contrition but you get a bonus if you hit an enemy who's not yet "awake".
Weapon 2: Enchanted Bolas that do modest damage, but can temporarily stun/slow minor enemies and make them more vulnerable to the daggers.
Weapon 3: Enchanted Crossbow that snipes accurately.
Weapon 4: A scorpion staff that rains poison (sort of like Heretic's powered hellstaff)

Flechette: Planted like a land mine which does not explode until an enemy touches it.
Icon of the Defender side effect: partial invisibility: Lacks the projectile pass-through, but enemies may delay waking similar to Heretic's Shadowsphere.
Mystic Ambit Incant: Clones a random artifact from each of your nearby allies' inventory into your inventory. Could be weighted/limited if cloning powerful things like Icons was too much of a concern.

A dark class similar to Hexen II PoP's Demoness, complete with its own expansion/quest to kill some good guys (in the form of the class bosses).

Anything with all weapons (and possibly also item powers) being hitscan-based. Hexen rather lacks hitscans.

I always wanted Hexen to have a Witch class.

The rest of my proposed class is just a ragtag bunch of things Hexen is missing tbh -- but nothing super elaborate, just things you might've expected vanilla Hexen to have if you hadn't experienced the whole game yet.

Weapon 1: Needs to be a melee weapon, really. Less damaging than the gauntlets, more damaging than the mace.
Weapon 2: A crossbow or bow and arrow -- one fast projectile, which would be just damaging enough to kill an ettin in one shot, but which has a fairly long delay after firing, possibly comparable to the SSG.
Weapon 3: Rapid-fire projectiles a la Heretic's hellstaff.
Weapon 4: Hitscan that bursts into a ring of projectiles when it hits something, like the tomed dragon claw in Heretic.
Flechette: Remains on the ground until something walks into it, and then explodes with about the same damage and splash as the fighter's grenades.
Mystic ambit incant: I have no idea, I've never played multiplayer Hexen and I have no idea what ideas would work.

If you were really adding a new class to the game, what you'd want to do is change certain things about the existing classes, in my opinion. For example, the best gameplay all-round might come from giving your new class one of the existing weapons and assigning a new weapon to an existing class in its place. Plus, obviously the sapphire wand and the cleric's flechette should be nerfed.

I'd like to see a Berserker viking and the class would be an off shot of the fighter. One thing that would separate the two would be how the Berserkers health and damage worked. The more damage the Berserker takes the more damage his melee weapons do and the higher his over all attack and movement speed. Around 20% health the Berzerker would deal out massive damage per strike, move 15% faster than the Fighter and have a higher jump height.

Grain of Salt said:

I always wanted Hexen to have a Witch class.

Doh, why didn't I think of that? "Hexen" means "witches" after all...

Seraph Class

This guy is only wearing a swaddled loin cloth but has the same flying effect as Wings of Wrath with slightly increased speed and maneuverability. His primary weapon is a medium-range club and his long range weapon is a magical spear that he can throw (and re-materializes in his hand) and uses mana to do so. An alternative ranged weapon could be a sling which launches a missile cloaked in holy flames. His high tier weapon could be a holy staff that randomly calls down a thunderstorm of hail and fire, lightning bolts and bloody rain or a swarm of flesh-eating locusts.

Hiya!

What about an Alchemist? One that uses nothing but 'flasks'. For his starting weapon it would be a dagger, about as fast as the starting wand, about as damaging as the mace. After that, he gets flasks/flechettes he throws or places.

They could all default to the normal ones already found in the game, but give them a 'power up' where if he throws a 'normal' flechette he finds in-game, it counts as two of them. I foresee three different coloured flechette in his inventory to designate which 'type' it is for (Mage = gold, Fighter = red, Cleric = green). That way the player could distinguish between them.

EDIT: I guess we'd need a fourth 'color' for the flechette that are multiple class pick ups. Purple would be good I think. The player would know it's multiple, but not which ones, just for added fun! (or, if you really wanted to be specific, purple with a band of the normal colour...gold, red, green; so purple flechette with a gold and green band would mean mage and cleric only; I'd rather just stick with purple and make it a mystery until the player picks it up).

His "Power Weapon" would be the "Philosophers Stone" that he would hold in his hands. It would shoot out whatever flechette he has selected, for free, at 'rapid fire' (kind of like the Tome of Power Mace from Heretic); Mage 'mode' would use blue mana, Fighter would use combined, and Cleric would use green.

Maps that have already been made will likely have most/all placed flechette as available for pick up by all classes. So there would have to be a 'randomizer' for when a flask with multiple class choices on it (e.g., if set for M/F/C, it would randomly select one of the three upon pick up; if -/F/C, it would be between fighter and cleric only, etc).

I think that might open up some interesting play styles, and introduce a bit more item-management as the player would have to take care to not use all of his 'mage' flechette, for example, or he couldn't use that 'weapon mode' again until he finds a flechette for a mage.

A female character. I'd go with what Xaser or Quasar said. In particular they'd need their own side-quest too.

I miss the tome of power in Hexen so I'd make the 4th class Icon act like a Tome and alter all the weapon behaviours.

Xaser said:

This requires custom code

Can't any of that be done with ZSCRIPT by now?

The Guncaster:

1) Firemace - the Heretic weapon was clever, but weak.
2) Magma Shotgun - skulls, lava and spread!
3) Nailgun - archaic enough to still be a 'Medieval firearm.'
4) Hell Spike - skull gun that shoots spikeballs that split akin to powered dragon claw.

Mystic Incantation - halts all ammo use, shoot 4 free.
Flechettes - shrapnel explosion, bits Pierce thru enemies.
Icon - helps you aim (homing ability to all weaponshots, perhaps)

For some reasons, I just wonder why no one seems try to porting Hexen 2's classes to Hexen or ZDooM engines...

I would love the necromancer class in Hexen 1, perhaps it could have the ability to reanimate dead monsters into allies.

A warrior with a spiked shield only. You stand still and monsters take reflected damage even if they melee you. You say it is shitty design but it fits right with the decision philosophy of the game! Making you curse whoever designed certain things in it!

all other 3 weapons would be bigger shields that don't reflect damage and instead:
1)Absorb damage so you can shoot it. Pretend you are a centaur leader!
2)Absorb damage healing you.
3)Artifact shield : Does all 3 things at same time since making weapons absolute seems like the goal with them.

Edit: A better one this time.
Sorcerer class. Your weapons require timing as they feature charging up.

1)Green Mana Cube: A mana cube floats around you all the time. Charge up to decide distance it'll be launched before stopping, Then it pauses for a sec then moves back to you\Teleport if it hits a wall. Deals damage on way forward\stopping\returning so if you stop it directly on target you'll deal way more damage. Overlaps a bit with mage but weapon is harder to use.

2)Cyan Mana Cube: Another cube starts floating around you. Charges up your first mana cube with lightning then shoot it forward. Charge to increase the number of hits it performs, Pierces until it runs out of hits. Can hit the same target multiple times => stronger on bulkier ones. Cube teleports to you once it hits a wall\runs out of shots.

3)Red Mana Cube: A third mana cube starts floating around you. Charge it up to get a flame aura that damages nearby foes. Release to dash and deal more damage. If the dash stops inside an obstacle you are stunned and teleported back to your initial position.

4)Three crowns, one for each mana cube. Each crown increases the charging speed of the corresponding cube. Once you have all three you get the ability to mark a large area to be rapidly hit with lightning until you release the fire button or lose line of sight.

Flechette: Summons a wall that lasts 10 secs. Monsters who collide with one start attacking it. Has 120 hp. Not damaged by 2nd weapon but costs a hit.

I would change and fix the mage.

Amulet weapon: higher damage but after a few shots it must recharge. This is to make it less crap without making it too OP.

Frost shards: lower mana cost. Since it already does low damage, it's basically just a waste of mana and I always just use the amulet until I get the lightning. Maybe I'd make frost shards slow enemies and have a chance to temporarily freeze them, rather than permanently freezing them on death. While frozen they would take more damage but would not just shatter when you hit them. I might even lower its damage so I can give it super low mana cost and make it more of an auxiliary weapon to be combined with other spells.

Lightning: I'd make it last a while more reliably, maybe lower its DPS but increase its duration so you have more time to take advantage of...
...I'd make it so two enemies electrocuted next to each other generate a lightning bolt between them that causes extra damage to them plus some damage to anything between them.

Bloodscourge: the weapon is very powerful but boring. I'd make it sometimes convert enemies to fight for you instead of killing them. Same chance to work on any enemy, even bosses. When their hit points reach zero, there's a die roll to see if they are converted; if they are, it refreshes their hit points and makes them target anything that is hostile to the player. They retain their normal AI so some bosses with more complex AI patterns may not be entirely friendly...



@Pegg:
I really like your shield warrior idea! I have a few tweaks:

Starter "weapon": a spiked shield which when idle causes all melee attackers to take some reflected damage. When active (blocking), it offers extra protection from attacks coming from in front of you and reflects extra damage back to enemies attacking from in front of you.

Blue mana: a smooth shield which has superior defense including a very significant armor bonus at all times, and when active sometimes reflects missiles back to the attacker. If you have blue mana, the shield can spend mana to absorb hits that aren't reflected and charge itself. The higher charge level it has, the higher chance it has of discharging on an attacker. If it discharges, it deals a lot of damage to the attacker plus some around them, and reduces its charge level. If you have no blue mana, it still can sometimes deflect melee attacks but only reflects missile attacks.

Green mana: a small shield which offers no passive bonus but is extremely adept at reflecting damage if you block at the right time. If you have green mana, successful deflects will spend a bit of mana to add a flat amount of damage to the reflected hit, and also spread the added damage around the target. If you have no green mana, it still offers excellent protection provided you time your blocks well and face your attackers, but it never causes damage without mana.

Artifact shield: a totem shield with a complex and attractive appearance, it adds some armor at all times with the amount of armor added based on how much mana you have. This shield blocks some attacks automatically but only if you have both kinds of mana, and it costs a bit of each to block. Each successful block charges the shield. Activating the shield does not block but instead expends its charge gradually to heal you while also generating a potent damage field in a small radius around you. While in this healing state, any ranged attackers that hit you will be struck with a potent lightning bolt. Due to the rate of charge expenditure, you can't maintain the healing/damage state for long periods of time and most of the time you'll be charging it and waiting for the right moment to use it.

Fletchette: places fletchette on ground and it activates immediately, producing a blue aura around it. Any units inside the blue aura cannot receive or deal damage, but other effects can still happen such as using fletchettes or other items, teleporting, expending mana, healing, or charging/discharging shields.

Icon of the Defender: doesn't directly reduce incoming damage at all, instead it makes all of your shields block perfectly automatically and causes your action command to use the shield as a weapon rather than blocking. When used with the Artifact shield, you perform the same channeling effect based on shield charge level, but also fire a damaging beam of energy directly forward.

Mystic Ambit Incant: Fully charges your active shield. If you are using the small shield or spiked shield, they become electrified. An electrified spiked shield deals extra reflected damage and reduces its charge level each time it adds damage. An electrified small shield allows you to block earlier and still count (easier to time the block), and it adds extra damage which decreases shield charge level when used. If used with smooth shield or artifact shield, it both charges the shield and for a short time makes the shield gain a higher amount of charge when it charges naturally.