I've been thinking a lot lately about classes and how rigid or flexible they should be and how they should break-down or be divided so as to satisfy every play-style and I think I hit on a decent idea that I'd like to share.
It was while considering having three 'base' classes, ie. warrior, mage & rogue, that I realised that this really isn't enough of a defining characteristic to differentiate between play-styles let alone diversity of thematic applications within those three. Then I started thinking about how better to define each basic class and I went through the usual suspects until I hit on a radical idea: all classes essentially work around one core ability.
I know, I know, this isn't exactly news, but it's also something that has been considered a secondary aspect of class building whereas I believe it should be the primary aspect.
Think of choosing a class based on your primary ability score. Instead of choosing 'fighter', you choose "Strength-based", or instead of 'rogue', you go "Dexterity-based", Intellect for wizards and Wisdom for clerics, etc.
THEN you choose your class. So now class is a secondary aspect to your character based on what he's good at rather than the other way around. The class would give you your powers and skills but they would all be based on the ability score you chose to focus on instead of having to focus on an ability score because your class tells you to.
So you could have Power Attack as a class feature of the fighter, for instance, but because you chose Dexterity as your primary ability before choosing fighter as your class, Power Attack is based on Dexterity, not Strength.
It may seem like a simple change, and one that you could implement already in any system just by choice, but it's really quite a drastic difference in character creation logic that would only work if represented within the mechanics of the system because it would dictate how class features would work rather than the other way around.
It was while considering having three 'base' classes, ie. warrior, mage & rogue, that I realised that this really isn't enough of a defining characteristic to differentiate between play-styles let alone diversity of thematic applications within those three. Then I started thinking about how better to define each basic class and I went through the usual suspects until I hit on a radical idea: all classes essentially work around one core ability.
I know, I know, this isn't exactly news, but it's also something that has been considered a secondary aspect of class building whereas I believe it should be the primary aspect.
Think of choosing a class based on your primary ability score. Instead of choosing 'fighter', you choose "Strength-based", or instead of 'rogue', you go "Dexterity-based", Intellect for wizards and Wisdom for clerics, etc.
THEN you choose your class. So now class is a secondary aspect to your character based on what he's good at rather than the other way around. The class would give you your powers and skills but they would all be based on the ability score you chose to focus on instead of having to focus on an ability score because your class tells you to.
So you could have Power Attack as a class feature of the fighter, for instance, but because you chose Dexterity as your primary ability before choosing fighter as your class, Power Attack is based on Dexterity, not Strength.
It may seem like a simple change, and one that you could implement already in any system just by choice, but it's really quite a drastic difference in character creation logic that would only work if represented within the mechanics of the system because it would dictate how class features would work rather than the other way around.
