Guilds

Bards, Blademasters, Druids, Lycanthropes, Monks, Priests, Sorcerers.

(alphabetical order, so dont get any ideas)

Primary stats:

Brief descriptions:

Bards:

Party oriented, have abilities that enhance party combat. Have different domains: Music, Song, and Showmanship. They need to be drunk to perform any abilities and sober at an incredible rate, so playing a bard can be an ironically expensive endeavor. Ideally the rate that they increase a parties abilities should balance out the increased cost. Guild levels are also bought with exorbitant amounts of money. Their party ability seems to be what was hit the hardest by the downgrade that hit them after their height of popularity. Playing a solo bard is still a very viable (and interesting) experience.

Blademasters:

Combat experts with an edged weapon. Subguilds of True Blademaster and Dark Blademaster. Not good vs evil, rather law vs chaos. For the most part the only type of weapon that can be used efficiently is a sword of some sort. The guild is fiercely opposed to magic, to the point where buff spells from another player will actually harm instead of help you. Aside from the many active skills, the main foundation of the blademaster power is from the "styles". Each style gives a different combination of bonuses and penalties to damage, speed, and defense, as well as other special abilities.

Druids:

Nature magic. Plant, Animal, and Spirit domains. The more you cast spells from a domain, the stronger you become in it, while becoming weaker in the other domains. It balances out so that you can have 2 domains raised efficiently. Keeping a neutral alignment is best, and almost required. If you stray too far from neutral most of your spells will cease to work.

Lycanthropes:

Were-beasts. As you advance you gain the ability to transform into newer forms, generally each more powerful than the last, but varying in some aspects such as speed, damage, and defense. From weakest to strongest: werebat, wereboar, werejaguar, werebear, weretiger, werecrocodile, wererhinoceros, werewolf, werewarrior, weredragon. Beyond that lies the Nachtkinder form. Rather than using equipment in the standard way, lycanthropes sacrifice weapons and armours to Gaia, and in exchange for removing the unnatural objects from the world, the power of their claws/teeth/hides/scales/whatever is enhanced.

Monks:

Martial artists. For the most part, a cleverly disguised spell-casting guild. Rather than the passive bonus monks you're probably used to seeing elsewhere, these monks are very active. Most of your combat time will be spent cranking out active punch/kick attacks. Requires a positive alignment to use most of your abilities, some more than others, but you wont get booted out if you go evil like in priests.

Priests:

Holy dudes. Now features branches of various dieties you can specialize into, each with unique specialties and strong points. You must maintain a positive alignment to be in this guild.

Sorcerers:

Magic... yeah. Subguilds of Archmage and Swordmage. Also, you could choose to not join a subguild and remain a generic sorcerer with a little of both. Archmages are the extreme in magical annihilation, but they still have a healthy amount of buffs/debuffs to keep themselves safe. Swordmages have essentially no blast spells and get the job done with combat oriented buffs and various indirect enemy-hindering spells.