From Hellgatewiki.com

Pre Launch Article
This article contains information that is old, or outdated, but saved for future reference, and a historical overview of Hellgate: London through the course of development of the game. These articles are NOT meant to be updated any further. You can find more articles from before launch here.

Subclasses are specialized Templars, focused in a narrower variety of skills and abilities. All Templar characters must choose a subclass early in their development. There will be two Templar subclasses available when Hellgate: London launches; the Blademaster and the Guardian. Additional subclasses may be added in future expansions.

Additional Templar Information

• Templar Overview
• Templar Skills
• Templar Classes
  • Blademaster
  • Guardian
• Templar Screenshots
  • Blademaster Screenshots
  • Guardian Screenshots
• Templar Concept Art
• Flagship's Official Templar Page

Templar Classes

The two Templar classes are Blademaster and Guardian. Each is profiled in the 2007 GDC cinematic. See their individual pages for more details.

• Blademasters specialize in melee weapons and possess skills to boost their attack abilities and swordsmanship. They can dual wield swords, but can not use any guns heavier than pistols.
• Guardians specialize in defensive skills and wear heavy armor and shields. They possess skills to boost their defense and powerful offensive and defensive auras.

A clever innovation in HGL is a sort of character preview option. Upon character creation players will be shown some examples (it's not clear if these are movies or still shots) of what that character class will look like and can do at higher levels. The skills for the Blademaster and Guardian are also thematically-linked, and should all work together nicely.

When you create a templar in the game, you'll be given a choice between the two up front, and Flagship hopes that by doing that, it'll avoid a lot of the frustration found in role-playing games. For instance, often in an RPG you'll create a character and select a lot of cool-sounding skills, but when you get halfway through the game, you realize that you chose the wrong skills for your preferred style of play.
--IGN @ GDC, March, 2007

Classes Information

The concept of classes (initially called "subclasses") came to the front in mid-2006, fairly late in Hellgate: London's development cycle. At first we assumed it was just a form of nomenclature, like giving names to characters based on their play style in Diablo II. Paladins who mostly used Zeal were called Zealots. Others who used Blessed Hammer were called Hammerdins. And so on.

As was soon made clear though, classes in Hellgate: London were much more than that. Classes divide each faction into numerous subtypes, (two each upon game release; at least a third is expected to be added post-release). When creating a character in Hellgate: London, you select a faction, and then a class. Your character is forever in that class, and will develop a play style to fit that class' skills.

For example, while a character may be a Templar, he could also specialize in certain ways and be an Exemplar, or a Defender, and so forth. Basically, it is like saying someone is a writer, and their sub-class is a journalist or a script-writer. These sub-classes may have other specific skills, abilities or statistical upgrades to help distinguish them - it's something we've just starting playing with so I'm afraid I can't give you much in the way of detail.
--Bill Roper, June 2006

From this early concept, the idea solidified into a way to turn HGL's three factions into something more like six or more factions. Initially Flagship said the subclasses in each faction would share some common skills, while possessing their own higher level skills. It wasn't long until that changed and the class selection was made at the start, and the shared skills were removed.

Templar Skill Sets

It was believed that there would be three Templar subclasses, each roughly matching up with the three previously-announced skill trees. With the March 2007 announcement of the Blademaster and the Guardian, that notion was smashed. The three skill tree concept is obsolete, and instead of skill trees, each class will have a sort of skill menu with around 26 skills to utilize. See the Templar Skills page for a full listing of Templar skills.

The following are the three original Templar skill trees, now obsolete.

Assault 

These skills allow a Templar to increase his or her damage, improve his or her chances at landing critical blows, or even strike multiple targets at once. Some Templars can focus their will and righteous vengeance to add holy damage to their attacks.

Invocation 

These are ancient rites that greatly augment the offensive or defensive capabilities of the Templar for short periods of time. These often affect the physical abilities of the Templar, endowing a knight with supernormal strength, speed, defenses or fighting agility.

Auras 

These radiant auras have a wide variety of effects, from damaging demons to providing greater defense to the Templar and his or her companions to flowing healing powers and so on. These auras are not active abilities in that once initiated they continue to emit their benefits until the Templar wills them to stop.

[[category:Factions]] [[category:Classes]] [[category:Templar]]