my earlier post suggesting that we abolish canned classes altogether.
The whole idea is: building, foresting, mining are just jobs. Why can’t we allow hearthlings to take on any combination of them (ideally with priority from NO to HIGH).
The tasks that a job is involved, is a separate thing. i.e. a job can require many kinds of tasks/actions.
Each task/action, how well a hearthling does them, depends on his attributes/skills. (and doing those task/actions will in a way train those attribute/skills, at a rate specified by the task.)
Any “abilities” should be (task, attribute/skill) specific.
E.g. A hearthling has super high construction skill. When he is building scaffolding, an ability that allows him to do it 2x as fast because his skill exceeds a threshold kicks in. That ability though is only for building scaffolding. however, the same skill (construction) can have a different ability for other tasks (e.g. carry 1.5 x more materials when constructing buildings).
What all the above implies is that “class” will become nothing but a template set of priorities for the jobs. (e.g. builder class template will have high priority for building jobs, maybe medium for hauling, and no priority for other crafts). Which, can be customized by the player.
e.g. want your builder to go fishing when he is idling? set “fishing” job from NO to LOW.
Want a super master crafter “class” that do all carpentry, masonry, metalsmithing? yes you can!
So how do people introduce “new” classes? well, they don’t, directly. They will introduce new jobs/tasks/skills instead. Then produce a “template” class that specifies prefixed priorities over them.
I hope to see the end of “canned classes” someday. 