This is just an idle topic of conversation, nothing big.

I like to tinker with the rules of games, and have my own self-imposed restrictions for most of them. Some of the rules I have for MM6 are about arms/armor access, as I want every class to be different. Here's what I have:

K = leather, chain, plate, shield...all weapons
P = leather, chain, shield...bow, spear
A = leather, chain, shield...bow, axe
D = leather...dagger, staff
C = leather...mace, staff
S = leather...staff

What I wanted to actually mod, but don't seem able to, was to make all staves have a default property of mana regen. Staves suck and have almost no variety in 6, but they're traditionally associated with casters and I thought that mana regen, something that's only really useful at low levels, would be ideal here. Casters having a crappy weapon would be balanced by having regen, letting them cast more spells each day.

Because Knights are generally seen as the weakest, I rule that only they have plate and only they can dual wield, doing sword/dagger or dagger/dagger.

What I'm idly curious about is if you'd keep spears/axes as I've assigned, or give axes to Ps and spears to As. I thought about giving swords to Ps and spears to Ds, as I want Ds to be a bit more melee oriented than C and S, since Ds dont' get mirror magic. But I'm thinking spears might be too much, dunno.

Your thoughts?

Paladins only having spears feels weird to me. I'd expect Swords or Axes from them more than spears. Archers feel a bit more Spear oriented than Axe oriented, so using your list as a base, I'd flip Axe and Spear.

Paladins not having plate also feels weird. Classic stereotypes tend to put them in that heavy armor, frequently with sword and shield; I'd be more tempted to say they can't wear leather than they can't wear plate, maybe not even chain. No dual wielding feels okay, though.

Druid with dagger or staff feels alright.

I think the balancing should be in the gain of HP and MP per lvl instead of skill restrictions.

Also, if you remove bows from D, C and S along with dagger from S, you are just nerfing them by letting them a) have no purpose early game when out of mana, and b) have 1-2 fewer items equipped, making them miss out on important enchantments.

I think giving staffs mana regen is a great idea (shame you couldn't do it), but I also think staffs should change to give way higher buffs for each skill level. Maybe give staffs +2, 4 and 6 armor per skill level on normal/expert/master.

+6 armor per skill lvl might seem excessive, but seeing as daggers and bows can have +5 levels or +10 end/armor/HP, forcing them to miss out on 1-2 such items can be a big detriment.

Paladin with a hammer is pretty much cannon.
But otherwise good to go.

The spears category includes halberds, which I associate with paladins, though it also has tridents, which I associate with hunting folk, like druids and archers/rangers. I tend to view polearms as "city" weapons, while axes as more wilderness weapons, but there's room to argue either way, hence my thread. I mean, the cannibals in bootleg bay have Deadly Swarm, an earth spell, suggesting more of an A class than P.

The reason I drop plate is game balance. In K vs P, Ps pick up self magic, making them more useful and powerful IMO. That's a big gain. I feel losing plate for that isn't even enough of a cost for all those extra spells. With P and A becoming a kind of K/C and K/S respectively, I feel that gaining magic skills means losing combat skills as a tradeoff, hence the loss of plate. Also, I don't think it fair that vanilla P gets plate while vanilla A doesn't. Old-school D&D lore that I disagree with. I am able to change the hp/sp for classes, and did do that. If you're interested, here's some before/after.
This link shows the gain for classes in vanilla, under "modifiers". As you can see, if you add the hp and sp for each promotion, the Might classes get 4/6/8 while the Magic classes get 5/7/9. Given that the casters are the most powerful, giving them even more points than the Mights just seems wrong. So I changed them to this, for hp/sp gain:

K = 5-0, 7-0, 9-0 (+1 net)
P = 3-1, 4-2, 5-3 (unchanged)
A = 3-1, 4-2, 5-3 (unchanged)
D = 2-2, 3-3, 4-4 (-1 net)
C = 1-2, 2-3, 3-4 (-2 net)
S = 1-2, 2-3, 3-4 (-2 net)

I lowered C and S the most since they have mirror magic, while raising K so that they have the highest to attempt to compensate for having no magic.

Another change I really wanted to make, but can only do in MM7 and 8, not 6, was to make the cheapest attack spell for each school be free. So flame arrow, earth arrow, cold beam, static charge, spirit arrow, mindblast and harm would be free. I think it's silly that casters can shoot bows all day long, but casting free spells would be OP.

Mana regen staves and zero cost damage "cantrips" would make casters more useful at low levels, and more thematic, so it sucks that I can't do it, and can't think of ways to compensate or simulate it. : ( In addition to mana regen, I also wanted staves to give casters more mana, either with a direct mana boost, or a bonus to meditation skill, so the bonus increases as you train your med skill. But that requires modding skill beyond me.

Making Flame and Magic Arrow hit with less damage would be required if they are to be the equivalent of arrows. They don't hit often but can do good damage in an early fight when they do hit.

But other low-level spells that are free--- and don't miss--- would make clearing out New Sorpigal very easy along with much of the Iron Fist and Misty Isle maps.
Static or Harm that don't cost anything makes every early player the equivalent of a good archer with a descent bow.

Recharging Blue Goo is pretty easy as is.

Edit. Cleared-up a botched sentence.

I like this, but have you considered switching the starting class and final promotion for the casters when it comes to mana? You could let them have 1-4 as sorcerers, 2-3 as wizards and 3-2 as archmages (and similar for clerics)?

This would give them more mana early game and more hp late game.

It was just an idea I got from the top of my head so I haven't thought it through or anything.

Seems rather backwards that the higher you promote, the less mana you get.

I'm going to have to challenge your idea that Knights are the weakest, particularly in relation to the Paladin. Taking away Plate ( and dual-wielding ) from the Paladin is a major nerf and would put him far behind the Knight!

The Paladins access to Self-magic is a great convenience and always helps out a little bit even if you have other more dedicated Self casters, but it doesn't actually make him any more powerful in the late game; which is when both Paladins and Knights are at a disadvantage anyway. Before midgame is when Knights and Paladins excel and they are by far the best classes at this stage.

The Knight has some distinct advantages over the Paladin already:

1) The Knight has a much bigger health pool (and gets even more of an advantage through his improved Bodybuilding). Given how weak healing is in mm6 this is a major deal. Note that the entire party will benefit from this through 'shared life' (the only truly viable healing spell) which makes the Knight a much bigger healing asset for the party than the Paladin can be.

2) The Paladin is "forced" to invest in Self-magic to utilize his only advantage, if he doesn't he becomes nothing but a low-hp Knight. As such the Knight will have many more available skillpoints to spend on Weapon skills and Misc skills. Not only does this make the Knight a more flexible Misc asset for the party, it also makes it much easier for the Knight to reach that magical 'minimum recovery time' for his Weapon skill of choice.

3) 'Insanity' is a godly condition for melee characters. It doubles your Strength, increases your Endurance by 50%, and increases your Speed by 20%. Paladins can not make use of this buff since Insanity tanks their Personality and thus removes their ability to use Self-magic. Only the Knight can utilize this massive melee buff and experience no disadvantage.

4) Lack of 'insanity', and the fact that they also must focus on increasing Personality, makes it very hard for a Paladin to reach that ever-sought-after 350 Endurance where taking hits no longer adds to your recovery time. Knights, on the other hand, has no issue reaching this milestone.

As you can see the Knight is simply all around better built to maximize their melee efficiency, and will help the party out by giving them a much stronger healing pool and a slot to store Misc skills to boot! The Paladins access to Self-magic is great for some convenience spells and some additional spellpoints for healing, but it doesn't warrant removing their Plate and dual-wielding when they already struggle to keep up with the Knight on the melee front.

knights and pallys ain't that bad in the late game with the vampyric + recovery weapons (of darkness I think?). the main reason you want a paladin over a knight is so you can actually do something about your main healer getting fucked which is a pretty big advantage compared to having to go see a healer whenever someone hits a strong negative con on your healer.

Thumbs up on shared life and Knights.

A cannot use shield, surely? (unless by a mod). Must use spear for its protection. I don't agree with the name, by the way; I see the class as like a Japanese samurai: aggressive medium protected melee fighter as well as archer, plus the magic.

How about observing MM7's limitations, e.g. bow - beginner for all, expert for KPAC, master for A only.

And no stat boost from Shrine of the Gods until after completing all 12 pilgrimages.