Blademaster Class Postmortem
Five years after the last new class (Bard) was introduced to Achaea, we wanted to create some exciting new content for our players. We felt that combat balance was at a state where we could take a step back from our in-depth classlead evaluation and focus on a new class. The idea for Blademaster had been tossed around in the Garden of the Gods for a few years, but serious planning and development really began in August 2009.
We knew swords were going to be the basis of our new class before we began design. The main skill, Two Arts, is heavily referenced in Achaea’s history and was an obvious choice for a foundation. Our biggest question was how to make Blademaster live up to its legendary reputation without being overpowered. The design went through several iterations, with early designs resembling a reskinning of current classes. In the end we tried to make Blademaster as unique as possible without overcomplicating things – we didn’t want to be forced to create a new combat system just for this class. We are proud to say that, out of 54 total abilities across the new skills of Two Arts and Striking, only 5 are shared with other classes. The third skill, Shindo, is referenced in the games history (though not by name) as being very similar to the existing skill of Kaido. We decided to preserve this trait, splicing old favourites with 15 new abilities.
