necessary roles and character splits.

[Abbayarra]

Every mud should have a split on characters and roles. Also, every mud should have at least 2 classes who can share the same role and then have a secondary role that is different than each other.

The roles are:

Tank: Get hit and keep others from getting hit

Damage: Do massive damage.

Healing: Heal party of damage and debuffs(all debuffs should show on glance with detect magic).

Debuff: Disable remove protections of opponents through spells or skills, primary high level effects should be able to affect groups.

Protections: Protect group members through skills and spells from damage and debuffs.

Scouting: Unlock and detect traps, lure when appropriate, find weaknesses of opponents, sneaks through some areas where cover is available.

Examples:
Warrior: Primary Tank, Secondary Damage
Invoker: Primary Damage, Secondary Debuff
Cleric: Primary Healing, Secondary Protections
Enchanter: Primary Protections, Secondary Damage
Rogue: Primary Scouting, Secondary Damage
Necromancer: Primary Debuff, Secondary Damage
These are just examples. Each class would have a second or third that could do the primary role just as well, but do different secondary role.

Also, every class should depend on equipment to be able to perform their primary role.
Warriors need armor class and hitpoints to tank well.
Invokers would need intelligence adding and skill/damage modifying equipment to do well.(i.e. an invoker naked but a book would mem much slower and do much less damage)
Etc.

[daggaz]

Enchanter: Primary protection; secondary debuff.

Hmm...with breach like it is, you could almost call us primary debuffers too.

[daggaz]

but uh.... the mud is already like this. whats your point here?

[daggaz]

but uh.... the mud is already like this. whats your point here?

[Dalar]

but uh.... the mud is already like this. whats your point here?

[Abbayarra]

Actually, what we have are pure classes and hybrid classes. This system would have every class have a pure core and a hybrid aspect. This way if you had a choice between a paladin, a warrior, and a dire raider, all would perform exactly the same if equiped the same and had the same practice on skills.
The hybrid classes cannot do anything as well as the pure classes(in many peoples opinions). They can do a little of everything. This can leave them no place. This would not be true if two hybrid were as useful as two pure classes.(i.e. 2 rangers = 1 invoker 1 warrior)

[kiryan]

quite a concept, i get it, but it would essentially make every class a hybrid. Instead of 1 class being best at something, you have each class being equal capable in two different areas. I don't think anyone would really be a hybrid, you'd all be just different classes.

but you would need to balance out relative importance of each niche, most likely by making certain niches MUCH MUCH more useful powerful than they currently are like debuffing for one. Equalizing melee and spell damage for a 2nd. Decreasing the emphasis on area damage. ect...

[Abbayarra]

Let me try and explain again.

Warrior and Paladin
Warrior and Paladin can and do tank the same mob the exact same amount of time successfully. They are primary tanks, it is what they do best. A ranger would be able to tank the same mob exactly 1/2 the amount of time successfully due to that being his secondary role.

The warrior secondary role is as a debuffer. His skills are exactly half as useful as a primary debuffer. That means he has secondary skills for like keeping a caster from casting, blinding, stunning.
A primary debuffer would have more powerful abilities and be able to affect multiple mobs at one time.

A primary scout can see through closed doors, lock door to prevent tracking, hide and sneak when terrain permits it. Backstab for damage and effects, and through awareness intercept incoming hostile mobs and prevent backstab damage to fellow group members. This would be a rogue and illusionists primary role. You can call it what you want but each class would handle these primary roles differently.
Rogues secondary role would be damage, doing is 1/2 as fast as the best rate for a primary damage dealer. The secondary role for an illusionist would be debuffer.
Thus each class has a primary role that only 1 to 3 other classes can do as well and a secondary role that they can do 1/2 as well as a primary would do it.
This in my opinion would make balancing classes much easier.