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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Meatboy" data-source="post: 5833491" data-attributes="member: 40857">OK so to get the ball rolling I will dive into Classes and some of the big changes I am tossing around in my head atm.  Classes in DnD, or any classed based system for that matter, are the most important aspect for players. Because they determine how PCs are going to fundamentally interact with the game world. Now in the interest of keeping things simple I am going back to basics and saying that from a DnD perspective their are 3 main ways of dealing with issues; Fighting, Skill and Magic. So given these 3 methods of problem solving it appears that 3 classes should be sufficient for covering most character play styles. This leaves us with FIGHTERs, ROGUES and  WIZARDS, but DnD has gone and made a split between magic sources so in interest of keeping it a bit old school I'll keep CLERICS. (oh and rogues are now THIEVES) Add in dual classing and this should allow for a broad range of character archetypes to be made.Limited Leveling, Class Powers/Feats and Character Differentiation Because I want to keep things simple I want to make it so a Character build is possible right out of the gates. The way I am doing this is to rework how feats and class abilities are handled. Instead of all characters having access to a hodgepodge selection of feats and then gaining arbitrary abilities as they gain levels I am giving each class its own exclusive set of abilities. So each class will get access to things which will help them better do their thing. Feats as they are in 3.x are mostly gone or will be respected into powers for each class. Players can then choose from some  of the class powers to customize the class to suit their play style. As for feats they will still exsist but this is where the idea of limited leveling comes in. Right now when a PC levels up they gain a broad range of things (hp, skills, BAB, spells etc.) Because I want to keep things simple leveling will only give a small bump to HP. Anything else will be placed into a feat and players can choose one when the level up to increase their character. Basically this leads to flat math, something I am a big fan of. Hopefully these changes will let players make very different characters, even if they are the same class.Some Big ChangesFlat math and a general lack of leveling provide some challenges to game design, chiefly "how do first level characters fight powerful monsters?" For me the answer is PCs are special. PCs are not normal people they will be inherently more powerful than 99% of the people in the world. I am shooting for PCs to start in the "sweet spot" meaning they will be about as tough as normal 5 level characters. On the flip side most every NPC will be what could be considered a "minion" that is a non classed filler type character. Magic is something else that takes up a ton of space in the books. So I am going ahead and getting rid of spell levels. Magic is still of the Vancian variety so casters will still have spell slots but each spell only takes up a single slot. Spells will be grouped into two types however. There will be cantrips and spells. Cantrips, while they still take up a spell slot are not "unmemorized" when cast. So they can be cast round after round, so they act something like reserve feats that never get used up but can be swapped out. Cantrips represent the "low level" spells. Just "normal" spells will work the way they always have taking up a slot and getting used up when cast. All "normal" spells will fiddled with until they are all roughly equal in power, if not utility. So between no spell levels and a reduced spell list  this should help keep my page count low.Up next the FIGHTER...</blockquote>

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