A class is a starting point, not a sentence. At level 100 you take up a second one without losing the first. But every road still begins with a single choice of how you mean to survive Dark Hope.
No archetype takes more punishment or hands more of it back. The Warrior carries the deepest combat tree in the game. By the time the attacks stack up, one swing has become four, and disarm, smash, and berserk have turned a corridor fight into a rout. What it lacks in tricks, it makes up in raw, dependable attrition.
The Squire is a more refined craftsman of the combative arts than just a mere warrior, it's the only martial path that puts you on a mount and hands you a lance. Tactics, dirt kicking, and deflect attack reward a fighter who thinks about the field instead of just standing in it.
The Mage's body is an afterthought to its mind. Thinnest hit points of any archetype, and the widest arcane library to compensate; whether it's meteor swarm and fireball for damage, teleport and portal for travel, or enchant weapon and identify for everyone who never learned to cast a thing themselves.
The full cure ladder runs from a scraped knee to mass heal, and that's before bless, sanctuary, and dispel evil enter a fight. The Cleric doesn't need to out-damage anyone, a group with one standing behind it simply doesn't die the way a group without one does.
As much a master of the natural world as they are the arcane one, the Druids brew potions, invoke beasts of the totem, and bend the power of the forest itself to their will; track and campfire round it out as the archetype most at home outside a city wall.
The Sage never chose between the divine and the arcane, so its list holds both: cure and bless sit next to charm person and cone of cold, with gothic word and deadly word as the archetype's own invention. What it gives up in specialization, it earns back in never being caught without an answer.
No prayers, no spellbook, the Psionicist's power comes from discipline alone, and its skill list shares almost nothing with any other caster's. Mind thrust and ego whip open a fight; domination and disintegrate end one. Fragile, singular, and entirely its own tradition.
Nobody else's skill list looks like this one: shield block and whirlwind beside hide and pick lock, with a run of unique songs: ballad of force, chords of destruction, song of protection, all layered over the top. A little of everyone else's kit, tuned by an archetype that refuses to specialize.
Backstab is the opener that makes every other archetype nervous, and sneak, hide, and circle mean the Thief chooses when the fight begins, and often when it ends. Poison weapon and dual wield keep the pressure on once the element of surprise is spent.
The only archetype that fights and curses in the same breath. Parry and second attack sit on the same list as unholy armor, warp flesh, and raise hell. Its combat edge is rougher than a Warrior's, but nothing else can drain an enemy's energy and resurrect a fallen foe within the same skill tree.
Dual-classing means the archetype above is only ever your first commitment. At level 100 you take up a second class in full, and past level 200 the specialization trees stop caring what your class list ever promised you. Nobody stays exactly one thing in Dark Hope for long.
A class is only half the character. See what the ten playable races bring to the build.
View The Ten Lineages →