Fanmade:Arcane Warrior
The Arcane Warrior is a highly magic augmented warrior that could focus equally on melee or missiles. His main skills are enchantments on his weapons and armor that add elemental or other magical properties.
Contents
|
The Arcane Warrior is not an official class: It's a fan class. Author(s) of the article are:
|
Background
| Diablo III Class [e] | |
|---|---|
| |
Arcane Warrior
 Fan-made Class | |
| Role: | Melee/Ranged/Caster hybrid |
| Primary Attributes: | Strength Dexterity Willpower Mana |
|
Skills and Traits | |
| Origin: | Sanctuary |
| Affiliation: | None known |
| Friends: | None Known |
| Foes: | None Known |
Upon the destruction of the Worldstone 20 years ago, a Vizjerei elder concluded that the mortal powers of Order had failed. Secretly, he went to the Viz-Jaq'taar Assassins to share his concerns and make a proposal. Even though the Prime Evils were defeated, mortal powers and agents were still not powerful enough to save the Worldstone. He feared that following it's destruction, things would get worse and proposed that the Assassin's lack of magic was weakness, that the time would soon come to fight fire with fire. He suggested that they should begin to incorporate magic to counter the coming flood. He was rejected outright by most of the clan, and nearly slain on principle, but one Assassin elder had reached a similar conclusion, but didn't know how to act upon it. With this opportunity, he stole away with the Vizjerei elder and a few of the younger clan members, to work on combining their knowledge and powers to create a new breed of mage-knight. Once the Viz-Jaq'taar realized what had transpired, they decreed death for all violators, but the group dissappeared and no one had heard from them to this day. All knowledge of what had transpired was hidden.
They spent years hidden away from the world in the northern reaches near the ruined Mt. Arreat. They honed their skills, focusing less on subversion and more on direct confrontation. From the Assassin's understanding of the mind and martial combat and the Vizjerei elder's understanding of the Elemental magics, a marriage was made into magically enhanced warriors. This combination of studies gave special insights into the nature of the world and gave these new warriors the power to tap into the very elemental threads that are woven into our world and weave them into their own bodies and equipment. They also gained some insight into exploring the Ether. They spent a great deal of time developing methods of countering and diffusing hostile magicks and it's practitioners, as per Assassin tradition, up close and at range. They also knew, however, that the demonic hordes need not rely on magic to reek their destruction, so great emphasis was also placed on raw combat power and fortitude.
With the coming of the falling star, they knew that their time had arrived. They re-emerged into the world to discover what foul forces were involved. While two of the apprentices were away doing reconnaissance, their base of operations was utterly destroyed. Most were killed, the rest were missing. The elders were not among the remains, nor were there any clues as to the perpetrators. Had the Assassins finally caught up to them? Was it the mustering forces of evil? The two apprentices had no answers, but were determined to fulfill their duties. They ventured into the world on their own to discover what evil schemes plotted against Sanctuary and to put it to an end... or die trying...
Character Design
The Arcane Warrior is a highly magic augmented warrior that could focus equally on melee or missiles. Her main skills are enchantments on her weapons and armor that add elemental or other magical properties, possibly even castable on allies. In D2 terms, it'd be something of a cross between a Paladin, Amazon, and Assassin.
Attributes and Skills
Arcane Warrior Skills
The Arcane Warrior skills are arranged into to three distinctive skill tree categories:
- Weapon Enchantments
- Armor Enchantments
- Weapon skills
All three trees have a combination of active and passive skills. Active skills are used in combat, while the passive skills boost or change the behaviour of the active skills.
Weapon Enchantments Skills
Once a Weapon Enchantments spell is cast, any subsequent attacks will automatically take on the spell properties for the duration.
- Flame Sabre: Converts physical damage to Fire. Works on Missiles too, maybe needs a better name. Could also have ice and lightning variants.
- Fire Blast: On attack, explosive fire is dealt to neabry units (ala D2 Fireball or Explosive Arrows).
- Flame spray: Melee, causes a spherical firewall centered on target. Missiles cause a trail of fire to form under arrows path.
- Chain Static: Causes electrical damage to target that jumps to any units next to them, etc, etc, rippling through tightly packed enemies.
- Nova strike: On attack, causes a nova to launch from target. Especially nice with missiles: long range Nova. And don't get me started on hitting multiple targets... :evil:
- Lightning Rod: When enemy is struck, a lightning bolt goes from character to target. Can trigger multiple bolts from one attack with missile Piercing or Ricochet.
- Ice Blast: Like Fire Blast, basically a D2 equiv. of Glacial Spike.
- Tiamat: Adds elemental damage of all 3 elements similar to Pally Vengeance, but lasts through the duration.
- Channeling: Passively increases elemental damages. Could be broken into 3 skills.
Armor Enchantments Skills
Once a Armor Enchantments spell is cast, any subsequent attacks will automatically take on the spell properties for the duration.
- Fire Shield: Lifted from D&D as long as WotC doesn't come after me. :shhh: Deal fire damage to any attackers.
Fire Aura: Causes the ground around the character to burst into fire
- Cold Armor: Similar to D2 Sorc cold armor spells. Increased Defense and chill attacking enemies.
- Cold Aura: Basically a castable Holy Freeze, no melee damage added, just aura.
- Thunderclap: When an enemy attacks, has a chance of triggering a shockwave that knocks all foes back within a small radius, plus dealing damage.
- Attune: Increases resistance to fire/ice/lightning. Passive.
- Soul of Fire/Ice/Lightning: When cast, Absorb that element, but reduces other resistances.
Weapon Skills
Weapon Skills are per attack skills, and in some cases, are just directly cast spells.
- Twitch: Essentially a Missile based Zeal.
- Magic Arrow: Maybe an enhanced version of D2 Amazon's.
- Ricochet: When a target is struck, the arrow jumps to the nearest target. Everytime a target is struck, the arrow keeps retargetting up to a skill based maximum or it misses one.
- Pierce: Identical to Amazon's Pierce. Ricochet missiles are not subject to Pierce.
- Sweep: Spins once in a circle, striking any surrounding enemies within range. Enchantments can only be triggered once (maybe?).
- Lunge: Attack and move forward in a short burst, knocking foes back a ways and following. Sort of a short burst Charge, but foe must be in melee range. Useful to break out when surrounded.
- Ethereal Anchor: A successful attack, melee or missile, anchors the foe in place, unable to move, but can still attack. Doesn't work on bosses or other players.
- Ice Prison: Not really a weapon skill, not an enchantment. Like Bone Prison, but made of ice.
- Shift Stirke: This is one of my babies here. :D He quickly teleports next to an enemy, attacks, then zips back to his original location. This could have abuse potential, but make it to where if hit, he's stuck where he's at. This might also be a good one for a Rogue style class instead.
- Displace: On striking, teleport to another random position next to target. Should be a "skill used per attack" skill so it isn't abused (too much). As above, may be better for a different class.
Development
The Arcane Warrior was first posted 9 June 2009 [1] by Technomancer on the Diii.net forums. It was re-posted as a wiki article by Holyknight3000 and Leord on 10 June 2009.
Technomancer Notes
Perhaps combining the Enchantments into one tree and add a new 3rd tree maybe? This class would satisfy a lot different "archetypes" in one. Another Melee class, a Missile class, a worthy Pally replacement, and open to any form of backstory.
This is something I've wanted to see since before I even heard D3 was in development. It's actually a re-adaption of a class I'd come up with for my own turn-based game that'll probably never get done, and that was a re-adaption of an AD&D 2nd Ed. class I came up with about 8 years ago.
I figure a 5th class would be some kind of War Priest/Inquisitor/Exorcist (I mean, hey, SOMEONE has to cast Holy Bolt, right? ), or another physical character that's really out of the box, Rogue/Assassin style. It'd be a good fit for those last 2 skills.
Arcane Warrior Concept by Boqu
References
