An End to the Classes System?

[howandwhy99]

It does sound like you'd prefer a different system. In any case, here's my pitch on why level systems work.

1. It's the original D&D method. As I understand it, levels work as wargaming training levels and signify combat roles. So untrained militia were the standard 0-level warriors. Veterans or Ftr1 was the elite fighter who did nothing else but practice fighting all day. Higher levels came to signify levels of improvement from Veteran to Hero to Superhero. You could become the best in the land and it had wargaming relevance.

2. Back in college a friend told me levels were more reflective of actual ability. I'm not sure all will agree, but I do see how practice can go from uneffective to degrees of effectiveness. For example, a gymnast learns certain tricks until they become competent to perform them in competition. Further proficiency in more difficult tricks shows greater ability. Partial learning does not count as a partial flip dismount still results in landing prone. Only true proficiency can be trusted (a new level).

3. Having levels sets goals for the characters. One of the players' metagame goals is to gain in power. If it power were simple to gain by receiving points to spend on abilities after every session, the goal becomes too easy to achieve. Success is relegated to happening every session regardless. By putting off rewards now for larger rewards later the success is sweeter. Having to work for this success focuses players' goals to achieve success (exp. pts.) ASAP.

4. The big reason: The Payoff. Working hard to gain that level means you get a payoff with greater abilities. I believe this was one of the main incentives that really drove D&D's early success. By learning how to kill very powerful creatures while still at low level, greater exp. pts. and higher levels could be achieved more quickly. It's a mark of very experienced players to be able to achieve the character level they are proficient at quickly instead of languishing at the early levels again.

 

[bento]

I've got something that "cleaves" this issue down the middle:

True20.

In it's rules it recognizes three classes - Adept (magic), Expert (skills) and Warrior (combat). Each one of these has a special ability tied to its class as well as a small group of feats that it, and it alone, can take. There's a big pool of general feats, such as Armor Training, Connected, Improved Initiative, which any one can choose from. Specialized lists for each class consist of: Adept has powers (i.e. spells) and meta-magic feats; Expert has rogue-like feats like sneak attack, hide in plain sight, or skill-focused feats like Inspire or Jack-of-All-Trade; Warrior's exclusive feats emphazise combat (cleave) and physical toughness (diehard). You also get one feat at every new level!

When I first tried True20 on my players they were hesitant because they thought they were giving up all those fun classes and PrCs in the 3.5 books. I told them it's just the opposite - a 3.5 class restricts you to a pre-defined class feat tree. With True20, you can pick the feat that best suits your character. Using the three base classes and various "Complete" books I was able to spec out general "class trees" for my Oriental Adventure campaign. My players could chose to follow the tree, or build their own. It solved the problem of what kind of ninja to play (master of disguise, assassin, shadow sneak, Naruto, etc.) because the player could build a "ninja" the way they wanted to play it.

So the bonus for True20 is the ability of players to build their character the way they want to while keeping many of the D20 rules. The bonus for the DM is a streamlined set of rules which emphasize story-driven playing.

 

[Umbran]

Shadowrun, especially the new 4ed, has a very good non-class system.

Not familiar with 4th edition, but while earlier editiosn were technically classless, the reality of specific roles is there. If you're a shaman, you're a shaman. When you're a decker, you're a decker. A street sam's a street sam. Classlessness be darned.

 

[GreatLemur]

I've got something that "cleaves" this issue down the middle:

True20.

Absolutely. True20's "generic classes" take honestly seems like an ideal compromise between the flexibility of a purely point-based system, and the convenient and logical bundling of associated properties that a class-based system provides (i.e., the character with a lot of combat abilities also has a high BAB, etc.). There are definitely changes I would make to it, and I feel it's really hurting from simply not having enough feats, but it's a great, great innovation in the whole d20-derived breed of systems. I strongly hope that D&D 4E looks a lot like it.

 

[GlassJaw]

Not familiar with 4th edition, but while earlier editiosn were technically classless, the reality of specific roles is there. If you're a shaman, you're a shaman. When you're a decker, you're a decker. A street sam's a street sam. Classlessness be darned.

But you can say that about any "classless" system. At the end of the day, you are going to build a certain archetype. I just prefer the system not to define the archetypes for me.

Same goes with the warrior/caster/skill-monkey system or even Mutants & Masterminds. Classless systems just allow a wider range of archetypes. In MnM, you can be the tank/powerhouse but maybe one player will build their character with Flight and another might have an energy blast. In Shadowrun, one player's decker might be a combat decker and the other might have stealth/infiltration skills (SR4 allows for much more customization).

Every chargen system, classless or not, has assumed archetypes. What changes is how much variance within those archetypes the system allows.

 

[dcas]

Lejendary Adventure allows one to choose skills to be part of a class-like "Order", or one can choose any skills and stay "Unordered." It's the best of both worlds.

 

[D'karr]

Not familiar with 4th edition, but while earlier editiosn were technically classless, the reality of specific roles is there. If you're a shaman, you're a shaman. When you're a decker, you're a decker. A street sam's a street sam. Classlessness be darned.

But you could spend you skill points in anything you wanted. You could have a shaman that was a pretty darn good sniper, if you wanted. Or a decker with lots of skill in unarmed combat, etc.

Your archetype was not limited.

 

[Desdichado]

That's why I really like the Grim Tales/d20 Modern system. It's a little more varied than just warrior/caster/skill monkey but doesn't force into set archetypes.

I'm a big fan of that too.

Although I do waffle on whether I prefer that, or actual archetyical classes, but ones that are flexible enough to allow for different visions of the archetype. Or if there's enough that I can pick exactly what I want from a menu of... I dunno, lots of classes.

It's a bit cumbersome that way, but I like having exactly the class I want that does a minimum of thinking for me in terms of how to advance my character, but does give me a framework to build on.

I think the d20 Modern/Grim Tales alternative is certainly more efficient than that, though.

 

[Mercule]

D&D is class/level based. Always will be.

Sometimes, I actually think the current classes are too customizable. At least, some of them are by the time you add in the variant levels, etc.

 

[GlassJaw]

D&D is class/level based. Always will be.

Sometimes, I actually think the current classes are too customizable. At least, some of them are by the time you add in the variant levels, etc.

Too customizable? No way, not if you stick to core only.

And that's one of my main problems with core D&D. The base classes are very specific. Sure, you can do some tweaking but by and large, they are going to end up being more similar than not. If you want more options, it requires more purchases. It's a good business model but certainly not an open-ended design.

Again, I refer to Grim Tales: 6 generic classes, no multiclass restrictions, no prestige classes, unlimited possibilities all in a single book.

Unless it's a "pure" D&D game, I pull out Grim Tales for any other d20 game. Because it's so open-ended and customizable, you can create whatever characters you need for a wide-range of styles and settings. The last thing I want is to start a new game or introduce a new ruleset that requires the players to have access to a lot of books.