Enough of the "What is...?", now it's time for "What would happen if...?"
In my recent articles, I’ve been discussing the level at which “Class” should perhaps rest, and I’ve come to the conclusion that specificity is probably good at individual tables, with a flexible framework for making classes in the background. In essence, this might be something like the 4e monster construction system: a flexible chassis on which to hang innumerable specific kinds of characters. The game provides you with a litany of pre-made, specific kinds of characters, and allows you the ultimate flexibility to make your own.
So, for example, you could pick up a published book with a brand new class in it, and that class is called a “Blackhand Assassin….”
Specific
Perhaps this class is put in a book all about running a game of courtly intrigue, or all about morally ambiguous characters, but what’s important is that this new class is specific and narrow. It has an ability set suited for its actual capabilities: knowledge of poison, skill with disguises, and also knowledge of etiquette and an intimate familiarity with the habits of the dangerously wealthy. Their powers and abilities focus not on dungeons or fighting, but on dispelling suspicion and developing identities. They might have abilities to hide their intentions, even from magical detection, to be able to impress with their words as much as a bard, to conceal poisons, to predict behavior, to gather information…
This kind of class is much more useful in the story than, say, a generic “Assassin” class because it possesses a specific story, one of nobles trained to be assassins of other nobles. It speaks of a world of dangerous intrigue, where murdered lords and ladies drop along the path to the throne for anyone ruthless enough to hire these particular assassins. These assassins aren’t shadow-mages or brutal fighters, they’re subtle social manipulators, and that’s all they ever need to be. They have a story, and, presumably, an ability set that flows from this story, that allows them to be exactly what they need to be, nothing more or less.
Imagine a game where all the classes were this specific and this narrow. There is no general “Rogue” class, there’s not even a general “Thief” class, there is just one particular class, perhaps called “Grey Knife,” that represents a particular kind of member of a particular guild of thieves in a particular area, with skills relevant in that area. For instance, maybe the Grey Knives are great illusionists, and so the “Grey Knife” class weaves powers of deception and lies into powers revolving around knives and daggers. There’s another class called maybe “Guttersnipe of the Great City,” that represents a streetwise, smart-talking pickpocket of a particular type, and another class called maybe “Thrilling Acrobat” that represents an agile performer in the Thrilling Circus. None of these characters need to have any abilities or traits in common. Grey Knives turn invisible and stab with surprise invisible blades. Guttersnipes melt into the crowd, but aren’t the murdering types, so they’ll just pick pockets. Thrilling Acrobats don’t hide at all – they’re much more interested in acrobatic flips and fearlessness.
In this world, there is no class, except the very specific ones.
Efficient
So maybe you don’t want to play any of those types of characters – Blackhand Assassins and Grey Knives and Great City Guttersnipes and Acrobats of the Thrilling Circus don’t entice you, or don’t fit into your world (you don’t have a Great City or a circus, you hate the idea of Guilds, whatever). Or maybe you like 90% of a class like the Great City Guttersnipe, but there’s an ability that doesn’t work for your world for whatever reason (wealth is measured in jewelry, making it hard to pick someone’s pocket, for instance).
The first reaction is, “That’s OK.” It’s fine to think that the Blackhand Assassins are useless and pointless in your dungeon-crawl adventure and to not use them, just as it’s fine to not like a particular monster (like, say, the Executioner’s Cap) and not use it.
This means, in design, that your classes become lightweight and efficient. Perhaps we use the same idea for classes that 2e used for monsters: one page per. So, our Blackhand Assassin doesn’t suck up 15 pages, but its laser-like focus gets woven into a single page, that anyone playing the class can pick up and use to play their character.
This permits for a staggering diversity, as well. If a class only takes up a single page (or even if it takes up two!), you could hypothetically publish a class compendium with hundreds of them. They can percolate into books like monsters do, wherever the designers may think they’re useful. Okay, you don’t like the Blackhand Assassin…there can be literally thousands of classes to choose from, increasing your odds of finding something you ARE interested in vastly.
The feature of being efficient could also mean that classes have vastly different “lengths.” Taking a queue from 3e’s prestige classes, perhaps “Guttersnipe of the Great City” is only a class that lasts three levels. At the end, you can take a new class, in a method similar to 3e’s multiclassing.
But, of course, no matter how many different flavors of hero appear, none will ever be quite as unique and special as the flavor that you determine you need. Blackhand Assassins are nice, but if you could make an assassin unique to your world, unique to your nobles, unique to your cities and your guilds….that’d be ace…
Translatable
So maybe you have a band of assassins in your world that use necromancy and kill with a special kung-fu-style quivering palm. It’s specific to your game and your world, so there’s pretty much ZERO chance of it popping up in a purchasable product.
But if this world made classes like 4e makes monsters…with a quick chart (or series of them!) to show you how to build a balanced class...
Imagine something like the 4e “Page 42,” slightly expanded and applied to various levels of character powers. So if you say a Fireball is a Level 3 spell that a Wizard of the Eternal Flame can get at level 5, you essentially say that any effect substantially similar to Fireball is something that someone can get at level 5.
Or, even better, you say that Fireball is an ability that, hypothetically, any character can pick up at level 5. So if you’re making your kung-fu necromancer-assassins, and you want them to be able to speak with the dead, and that’s an ability that exists in the game as speak with dead as a level 5 ability. Your assassins can use it then, and so can any other class who has any reason to be able to do that.
This essentially gives you, as the DM, infinite ways to customize your own classes, using abilities that already exist, or even making new abilities using the benchmarks in the charts.
Now, you can have an entire Player’s Handbook, specific to your world, consisting only of classes you personally have specifically linked to your world in some way, if you don’t like any of the pre-existing options.
Like this, but for rangers and barbarians...and with possibly less felt...
Actually Any Good?
So, how does this proposal sound? Do you think this would be viable? Interesting? Something you’d like to see? Any major problems with it? Any pitfalls? Let me know down in the comments!
Attached below is an example of what such a class might look like -- nine levels, one page, very focused.
View attachment 58929
In my recent articles, I’ve been discussing the level at which “Class” should perhaps rest, and I’ve come to the conclusion that specificity is probably good at individual tables, with a flexible framework for making classes in the background. In essence, this might be something like the 4e monster construction system: a flexible chassis on which to hang innumerable specific kinds of characters. The game provides you with a litany of pre-made, specific kinds of characters, and allows you the ultimate flexibility to make your own.
So, for example, you could pick up a published book with a brand new class in it, and that class is called a “Blackhand Assassin….”
Specific
The Blackhand Assassins are a guild of noble-born assassins made for a life of erudition, luxury, and brutal, unrepentant murder. They work with subtlety and grace to get near their often-wealthy targets, to study their habits, to find out where their security is lax, or where they take unnecessary risks…and then they see to it that these times of peace are exploited ruthlessly. Their work is known by its calling card – the hand of the victim is often stained a dark black, the work of a poison introduced into the victim’s food or drink at least one day in advance. The poison itself is not deadly – its only purpose is to turn the hand of the target black upon the victim’s demise, as proof of the involvement of the Blackhands…
Perhaps this class is put in a book all about running a game of courtly intrigue, or all about morally ambiguous characters, but what’s important is that this new class is specific and narrow. It has an ability set suited for its actual capabilities: knowledge of poison, skill with disguises, and also knowledge of etiquette and an intimate familiarity with the habits of the dangerously wealthy. Their powers and abilities focus not on dungeons or fighting, but on dispelling suspicion and developing identities. They might have abilities to hide their intentions, even from magical detection, to be able to impress with their words as much as a bard, to conceal poisons, to predict behavior, to gather information…
This kind of class is much more useful in the story than, say, a generic “Assassin” class because it possesses a specific story, one of nobles trained to be assassins of other nobles. It speaks of a world of dangerous intrigue, where murdered lords and ladies drop along the path to the throne for anyone ruthless enough to hire these particular assassins. These assassins aren’t shadow-mages or brutal fighters, they’re subtle social manipulators, and that’s all they ever need to be. They have a story, and, presumably, an ability set that flows from this story, that allows them to be exactly what they need to be, nothing more or less.
Imagine a game where all the classes were this specific and this narrow. There is no general “Rogue” class, there’s not even a general “Thief” class, there is just one particular class, perhaps called “Grey Knife,” that represents a particular kind of member of a particular guild of thieves in a particular area, with skills relevant in that area. For instance, maybe the Grey Knives are great illusionists, and so the “Grey Knife” class weaves powers of deception and lies into powers revolving around knives and daggers. There’s another class called maybe “Guttersnipe of the Great City,” that represents a streetwise, smart-talking pickpocket of a particular type, and another class called maybe “Thrilling Acrobat” that represents an agile performer in the Thrilling Circus. None of these characters need to have any abilities or traits in common. Grey Knives turn invisible and stab with surprise invisible blades. Guttersnipes melt into the crowd, but aren’t the murdering types, so they’ll just pick pockets. Thrilling Acrobats don’t hide at all – they’re much more interested in acrobatic flips and fearlessness.
In this world, there is no class, except the very specific ones.
Efficient
So maybe you don’t want to play any of those types of characters – Blackhand Assassins and Grey Knives and Great City Guttersnipes and Acrobats of the Thrilling Circus don’t entice you, or don’t fit into your world (you don’t have a Great City or a circus, you hate the idea of Guilds, whatever). Or maybe you like 90% of a class like the Great City Guttersnipe, but there’s an ability that doesn’t work for your world for whatever reason (wealth is measured in jewelry, making it hard to pick someone’s pocket, for instance).
The first reaction is, “That’s OK.” It’s fine to think that the Blackhand Assassins are useless and pointless in your dungeon-crawl adventure and to not use them, just as it’s fine to not like a particular monster (like, say, the Executioner’s Cap) and not use it.
This means, in design, that your classes become lightweight and efficient. Perhaps we use the same idea for classes that 2e used for monsters: one page per. So, our Blackhand Assassin doesn’t suck up 15 pages, but its laser-like focus gets woven into a single page, that anyone playing the class can pick up and use to play their character.
This permits for a staggering diversity, as well. If a class only takes up a single page (or even if it takes up two!), you could hypothetically publish a class compendium with hundreds of them. They can percolate into books like monsters do, wherever the designers may think they’re useful. Okay, you don’t like the Blackhand Assassin…there can be literally thousands of classes to choose from, increasing your odds of finding something you ARE interested in vastly.
The feature of being efficient could also mean that classes have vastly different “lengths.” Taking a queue from 3e’s prestige classes, perhaps “Guttersnipe of the Great City” is only a class that lasts three levels. At the end, you can take a new class, in a method similar to 3e’s multiclassing.
But, of course, no matter how many different flavors of hero appear, none will ever be quite as unique and special as the flavor that you determine you need. Blackhand Assassins are nice, but if you could make an assassin unique to your world, unique to your nobles, unique to your cities and your guilds….that’d be ace…
Translatable
So maybe you have a band of assassins in your world that use necromancy and kill with a special kung-fu-style quivering palm. It’s specific to your game and your world, so there’s pretty much ZERO chance of it popping up in a purchasable product.
But if this world made classes like 4e makes monsters…with a quick chart (or series of them!) to show you how to build a balanced class...
Imagine something like the 4e “Page 42,” slightly expanded and applied to various levels of character powers. So if you say a Fireball is a Level 3 spell that a Wizard of the Eternal Flame can get at level 5, you essentially say that any effect substantially similar to Fireball is something that someone can get at level 5.
Or, even better, you say that Fireball is an ability that, hypothetically, any character can pick up at level 5. So if you’re making your kung-fu necromancer-assassins, and you want them to be able to speak with the dead, and that’s an ability that exists in the game as speak with dead as a level 5 ability. Your assassins can use it then, and so can any other class who has any reason to be able to do that.
This essentially gives you, as the DM, infinite ways to customize your own classes, using abilities that already exist, or even making new abilities using the benchmarks in the charts.
Now, you can have an entire Player’s Handbook, specific to your world, consisting only of classes you personally have specifically linked to your world in some way, if you don’t like any of the pre-existing options.
Like this, but for rangers and barbarians...and with possibly less felt...
Actually Any Good?
So, how does this proposal sound? Do you think this would be viable? Interesting? Something you’d like to see? Any major problems with it? Any pitfalls? Let me know down in the comments!
Attached below is an example of what such a class might look like -- nine levels, one page, very focused.
View attachment 58929
