D&D General 6 Ability Scores but 4 Classic Classes?

[Krachek]

Power
Quickness, subtlety
Resilience
Wisdom, Awareness
Charisma, leadership
Intellect, smartness


and then we have six aspects that can applied to any class, be a barbarian or a wizard.

 

[Undrave]

I'm gonna do the easy ones:

STR - Fighter
DEX - Rogue (or maybe 'Skirmisher?')
INT - Wizard
WIS - Cleric
CHA - Bard

But for CON... I'm gonna go with an odd pick: Warlock.

The Warlock is all about using foreign powers, I think that should actually be very taxing on the body and a good Warlock needs to be able to handle the strain.

 

[TwoSix]

Imma go combo breaker here because I absolutely hate the idea of SAD design.

Stick with 4 class templates, but Instead the abilities are not tied to a specific class, but can customize that class instead. This was done to various degrees of success in 3E/PF1. Mostly it was borked though, but I hope somebody runs with it someday.

Agreed. I'd love to see a system with only a few classes, but where a Str fighter, an Int fighter, and a Cha fighter are all equally viable.

 

[LordEntrails]

Space?

Strength: Martial
Dexterity: Rogue
Constitution: Brute
Intelligence: Technician
Wisdom: Mentalist
Charisma: Face

 

[jmartkdr2]

Strength: the Heavy. Combines fighter and barbarian. Fighting Styles are the main feature.
Dexterity: the Swashbuckler. Uses maneuvers, superiority dice, and precision damage. Combines rogue, dex fighter and nonmagical ranger. Ideally can use any skill to gain Combat Advantage (tm), or to pull iff stunts to recharge superiority dice.
Constitution: the Binder. Makes pacts with beings that grant (specific) magical abilities - basically invocations. Tougher binders can make more/stronger pacts. Some invocations are stronger when you have higher Con, others reduce con. Mostly warlock-like, the EB is only one primary attack option. Each invocation has its own usage limit.
Intelligence: the Spellcrafter. Basically a wizard-artificer hybrid. Uses spell slots, though they work more like13th Age where the number of castings per slot depends on the spell/item.
Wisdom: the Attuned. Mix of druid, monk, and pf2 kineticist. Their resource is focus: you aren’t limited by spells per day, just the amount of magic you can have ready at any given time.
Charisma: the Mesmer. Mostly bard with some psion. Uses power points.

Obviously multiclassing is encouraged.

I’m back and forth on setting up a class or two to work with all-crap stats or add a seventh faith-themed class that doesn’t rely on the character’s abilities (because faith isn’t a skill) and only keys to level.

 

[le Redoutable]

Str - Jumping, climbing, prying, grappling, weapon use, etc...
Dex - Dodging, balancing, speed, weapon use, etc...
Con - Fortitude, endurance, physical resistance, etc...
Int - Tactics, technical application, etc...
Wis - Perception, internal will, etc...
Cha - Influence, leadership, etc...

if I follow your sayings,
Fighter = Str x Dex;
cool for me!

 

[John Quixote]

My brain immediately goes to Final Fantasy for this question. It is my core reference point for what a class system ought to look like. And if we map FF1's original six classes onto the D&D ability scores, it looks like this:

Strength — Fighter
Dexterity — Thief
Constitution — Black Belt
Intelligence — Black Mage
Wisdom — White Mage
Charisma — Red Mage

Or, in D&D terms: Fighter, Thief, Monk, Magic-user, Cleric, and Bard. And it does, quite naturally I think, stand to reason that the monk and the bard ought to be considered "the" iconic Con and Cha classes respectively. (At the very least, they're the only two classes which are not sub-classes of the F/MU/C/T quartet in AD&D 1st edition! Pre-cavalier, anyhow.)

When I choose to depart from D&D orthodoxy, however, it mostly centers around spellcasters and their ability scores for me. In some cases, I like for mages to be the Charisma class; in others, I prefer clerics to be the Charisma class (which makes a great deal of sense to me if only for the etymology of "Charisma").

For example, my current Basic D&D house rules use the following six classes: Fighter, Mage, Cleric, Thief, Adept (a psionic monk), and Ranger (which I portray as much more gishy and loremastery than the traditional warrior-hunter-tracker — my rangers are basically also bards flavor-wise, though their primary function in my games is to replace the B/X elf fighter/magic-user class with a less obviously overpowered fighter/mage/cleric mix). Things don't quite map one-to-one (because I intentionally burden Adepts with a dependency on two key ability scores and Rangers with four), but this is what my current setup looks like —

Fighter — Strength
Mage — Intelligence
Cleric — Charisma
Thief — Dexterity
Adept — Wisdom (secondary dependency on Con)
Ranger — Constitution (secondary dependencies on Str, Int, and Cha)

I like this, because it makes Intelligence the key score for arcane magic, Wisdom the key score for psionics (but you can't be an effective psionicist unless you have both a healthy mind and a healthy body), and Xάρισμα the key ability score for divine magic.

When I set games in more modern-day or futuristic milieux, meanwhile, I tend to shuffle things around so that Intelligence is the key ability score associated with artifice, science, and technology. For example: in the next edition of my steampunk OSR game, Engines & Empires, I plan to have the game's six classes map to the ability scores as follows:

Fighter — Strength
Thief — Dexterity
Ranger — Constitution
Engineer — Intelligence
Scholar — Wisdom
Mage — Charisma

In this game, the fighter, thief, and engineer are all fairly straightforward and self-explanatory. The core operation of the mage class involves a lot of in-universe ritual magic and spirit-binding, so it makes sense to me that Charisma would suit as the class's prime requisite (every time a mage does something magical, they're either bargaining with a spirit or bending a supernatural force to their will; and anyway, if we take Gandalf to be the iconic fantasy Wizard, it just makes sense for sheer presence to be the key quality of a good mage). The ranger and the scholar, meanwhile, are the game's hybrid classes, with the scholar serving as a kind of cleric- or bard-flavored fighter/mage (it essentially replaces the cleric, but with an occultist/Van Helsing vibe — and if there's a point to Van Helsing in the original Dracula, it's his wisdom, the fact that he's both on the cutting edge of modern science and philosophy and has a healthy respect for older, less rationalistic worldviews); and the ranger being an outdoorsy explorer/pioneer type who serves as a fighter/thief/engineer mix (with a focus on crafting potions, drugs, and chemicals, Witcher style). In a milieu like this, Constitution makes sense as the key ability score for a class that gets flavored as a rough-and-tough "fantasy cowboy" archetype.

 

[payn]

if I follow your sayings,
Fighter = Str x Dex;
cool for me!

I imagine a Str x Dex fighter build being a skirmisher. Perhaps a character that uses a bow until the enemy closes in and then goes to a blade. The combination gives them that versatility. Where as a Str x Int fighter might be one that uses great sword/axe in both a damage delivering and controlling the battlefield ways.

 

[le Redoutable]

Strength — Fighter
Dexterity — Thief
Constitution — Black Belt
Intelligence — Black Mage
Wisdom — White Mage
Charisma — Red Mage

Or, in D&D terms: Fighter, Thief, Monk, Magic-user, Cleric, and Bard. And it does, quite naturally I think, stand to reason that the monk and the bard ought to be considered "the" iconic Con and Cha classes respectively.

I dream you're closing to Shaolin Monk ( look at my face lol )

 

[le Redoutable]

I imagine a Str x Dex fighter build being a skirmisher. Perhaps a character that uses a bow until the enemy closes in and then goes to a blade. The combination gives them that versatility. Where as a Str x Int fighter might be one that uses great sword/axe in both a damage delivering and controlling the battlefield ways.

well, of course you have six stats to occupy
( my works tend to implement multiclasses, compatible ones , that is using classes that don't overlap ones with the others )
for instance you could have ( well, perhaps ) a Fighter/Ruler/??
with Fighter =Str x Dex
and
Ruler = Cha x Wis
the third class would be
Con x Int
...
etc