Hexen Character Class Balance

[Russell_P]

I've just started playing around with hexen editing and, since I haven't played hexen for years, I'm fairly unfamiliar with the various character classes. From a design point of view, is it simply a case of placing the appropriate weapons for the differing classes, or do the 3 classes require differing ammounts of healing, mana, pickup items, etc. for map to remain balanced for each character type?

I realise a lot of this will depend on level design. For instance, monsters on high ledges (and similar) will be inaccessable to the fighter initially since he doesn't get a ranged weapon until weapon slot 3, whereas the mage gets one from the outset. But I'm not really talking about this.

As a general rule of thumb, can I just place items in the map and make them exist for all character classes, or does the number of each item type need to be tailored for each different class?

I'd welcome opinions on this :)

[Ichor]

The only things that are different for the classes (other than certain monsters) is weapon placement and how effective certain armors are for each class. For the weapons, they are usually put in the same area, but with the fighter weapons only visible to the fighter, the cleric weapons only visible to the cleric, and the mage weapons only visible to the mage.

As for armor, this is how much each piece adds for each class:

Armor - Fighter +5, Cleric +2, Mage +1
Helmet - Fighter +3, Cleric +1, Mage +2
Shield - Fighter +4, Cleric +5, Mage +3
Amulet - Fighter +1, Cleric +4, Mage +5

[Vegeta]

There are flags that points if the item apears with fighter, cleric, or mage clase, with this you can modify the monsters (or whatever thing) the player encounter (this is very used in some of Raven's map) but isn't really needed, just design the map balanced for the Fighter and the other classes will not have much problems.

[Draconio]

For the most part I think you can place the same health, ammo, and artifacts for every class and expect it to work okay. You might want to playtest thoroughly and fine-tune it for each class if you want to be sure.

As for differences, there are a few others that Ichor didn't mention. Certain artifacts work differently for the classes. IIRC these are the Flechette, Icon of the Defender, and Mystic Ambit Incant. Icon of the Defender is basically invulnerability for everyone, just with slightly different additional effects, so it doesn't matter too much.
Flechettes are pretty different between classes, and in particular I think the Cleric can be a real devil with them by using certain tricks such as using a Disc of Repulsion to throw the gas at an enemy (I'm unsure if this trick works in all versions of the engine). I find the Mage's flechettes to be the least useful, but that might just be my playing style.
Mystic Ambit Incant gives armor to the Fighter, health to the Cleric, and mana to the Mage. I've heard that the effects of this artifact extend to nearby co-op players as well, but I haven't tried it or looked at the code.

There are a few other differences that are probably balanced out by the characters' other attributes. The mage is the slowest and the fighter is fastest, so use them as gauges of whether a gap can be jumped across. Also, they have slightly different base armor classes, so a fighter without armor should still take less damage than a mage without armor, for instance. The difference may not be enough to worry about.

[Ichor]

Oh yeah, those. Flechettes are usually common to all classes and Icons of the Defender are usually quite rare, so it doesn't matter all that much. And the Mystic Ambit Incants are generally used in co-op or even deathmatch. In single player, they're basically a lower powered version of other artifacts and kind of redundant.

[Russell_P]

Useful information, thanks guys.

[Vegeta]

And some notes that not everybody knows:

-The Serpent Staff can steal health from the enemies.
-The Reyvers can steal your health with the close range attack (you can create a super Reyver if you get close to one with inmortality for a long time (I'm not sure if the same happens if it's forced to attack a dormant monster and then forced to attack the player).
-You can use scripted "marines" in ZHexem (that use Fighter's skin), they look odd if attack with a firegun, but look fairly nice if they have the berserk, or fists.