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Levels, Experience, Talents, and Attributes

I left Logar heading south for Pioneer Village (the starting town) as a level 1 knight/ 1 mage. Even though I had ten levels of mage, the level my secondary class could not exceed that of my primary class. So, when I gained a level, I became a 2 knight/ 2 mage; the system scaled the level of my secondary class automatically.

A quick look at my skills (talents in RoM) revealed two interesting tidbits. First, I had a very low pool of talents points (TP), which players spend to raise the level of their skills. A little like a skill tree in a hack and slash game, talents in RoM can increase by one point per character level. Players don’t earn enough TP to level each skill to the max; that’s where customization comes into play. The reason my TP was so low is because the TP and XP for each class is completely separate. I had started over at zero in both columns when I became a knight.

The other thing I discovered was that I had no mage talents available to put in my hotbar. Some talents are class-specific and cannot be carried over when that class is set to secondary. Plasma Arrow and Flame, my staple spells as a mage, are class-specific. It wasn’t until my knight reached level four (and my mage levels scaled up) that I had access to Fireball, the first of my mage talents that could be used with mage set to secondary. Even then, the talent was at its weakest level. As my levels increased, the power of Fireball continued to rise until it reached the highest I had developed it, Fireball +5. I then tried to spend some TP to increase Fireball only to find I could not spend knight TP on a mage talent—even a talent that counts when mage is my secondary class. These are important lessons to remember about dual-classing.

Finally, an important aspect of any class is its attributes or statistics. All characters of the same class start with identical attributes, and they seem to increase at a fixed rate based on class with each new level. Customization comes in two forms: tweaking with gear and the attributes of the secondary class. The Dual Class System gives a character a bonus of 10% of the secondary class attributes. Since a naked level one mage has a strength score of 10, setting mage to the secondary class results in +1 strength.

Putting it All Together and Making a Wise Pairing

Unless you are a super-casual gamer who enjoys a little chaos in your character development, I recommend doing some planning before making a character in RoM. Consider talents, available gear, and attributes before making a dual classed character. For instance, the rogue’s stealth talent is class-specific, so you cannot add secondary levels of rogue to your primary priest to allow him to hide in dangerous places. Similarly, rogues can wear better armor than priests, so that pairing will require you to keep a spare set of gear. Finally, rogues have poor wisdom growth, and wisdom is a key attribute for priests.

Despite the potential negatives, a rogue could make the perfect dual class choice for a priest based on some other talents. The ability to inflict damage over time in the form of bleeding could work very well for a player who wants a priest who does some melee damage. One swing adds the bleed effect, and the rest of the time can be devoted to healing. For the priest who wants to be able to contribute damage without getting into the fray, the rogue talent to use projectile weapons could be just the trick.

Some very helpful official forum members compiled a list of secondary skills and an explanation of the ground rules I explain here, and Ten Ton Hammer will continue to investigate the Dual Class System in Runes of Magic to bring our readers the information they need to make good decisions.