Crushed Earth© classless system

[MrazTorn]

All of the weapon-based Feats (IE: Exotic Weapon Proficiency, Weapon Focus, but not things such as Power Strike) would be thrown out to use a skill ONLY when attacking. This would include Strength bonus. This game does use an HP system (with an optional hit-location HP system).

Block can only be used against hand-to-hand attacks. You must have Brawling/Martial Arts (not sure what to call it yet) to be able to Block. Parry can only be used against all melee weapons but fist/foot. You may only Parry with a weapon which you have skill in. Dodge would apply to missile weapons. All of these would add directly to your AC. Since those are added directly to your AC, Dex is only added once.

Weapon size does not affect Parry. However, your opponents Str mod is subracted from your Parry.

You can still have a simple +1 weapon. It would also add a bonus to Parry along with the normal attack bonus, though I am much more of a fan of Elementally enchanted items.

In Example:
Jo has a Great Sword skill of 10.
Jim has a Parry of 10 and is wearing no armour, giving him an effective AC of 20
Jo rolls a 10 on a d20 and adds his skill of 10 and his Str mod of +2. His total is 22, narrowly hitting Jim.

Bonus attacks are calculated from Weapon Speed (WS) and Character Speed. A Sword has a WS of 10. Character Speed (CS)is the average of Con and Dex. An average person has a CS of 10. They move 3xCS. But they can attack CS/WS times per action. Their weapon skill is divided evenly between the attacks. So an average person can attack with a Sword once per action. The minimum is 1 attack per action.

I can't remember what Masterworks do off the top of my head (yeah, I haven't played 3E that much...) but I'll think about that one.

THANK you for all the questions. It's helping me really figure this all out!

 

[Flying Monkey Style]

I once made a classless system much like this. Only I had the AC automatically tied in with the skill with the weapon i.e.: for every 2 ranks in the weopon, +1 to AC. Also, to get rid of the problem of being able to only use specific weapons, you could rule that GM-approved similar weapons (approved on the fly) count at half (or less) the rank of the trained weapon.
In my setting spells and abilities were based on skills, as well. Any skill aquired was not set, only asked for by the player and approved by me. This added a sense of infinite possibilities to the game. Of course, NPCs and monsters also had unpredictable, abilities. To keep abstract skills like magic balanced, simply put heavy restrictions on them, or side-effects are always nice- it's hard to concentrate on reading someone's thoughts if the voice in your head feels like it's scraping your skull...

 

[MrazTorn]

The idea behind the magic system is to have a limitlessly flexible system that still has boundaries. The more powerful the spell, the greater chance of it sucking your life-force (temporarily). Think Dragonlance 5th Age meets Shadowrun...