how many classes is too many?

[GM_Chris]

I don't really think it matters, as long as they are clear and easy to find.

I prefer classless RPGs like Savage Worlds or GURPs though.

 

[Fetfreak]

[MENTION=51168]MichaelSomething[/MENTION],
I would prefer the fight with options opposed to barbarian without options.

But I do prefer classless RPGs like GM_Chris.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

No hard & fast number for me- I can see justifications for everything from zero (classless RPG design) to 100 or more. I'm also cool with "subclasses" as well.


If you must have classes, my standard is this: if you can't make meaningful mechanical distinctions between any two given classes or subclasses, then at least one of them must be superfluous.

 

[Lwaxy]

The more the merrier for me as long as you can find them.

Although, classless would be my first pick.

 

[Argyle King]

Depends how much you want to strip them down. You 8could8 go all the way back to fighter, cleric, rogue, wizard, and cover a hell of a lot of bases with some theming. Heck, depending on how far you want to take it, wizard and cleric could just be themes of a spellcasting class.

On the other hand, going the other way, you could end up with a class for every possible minor permutation you can think of. At which point, they're not even classes any more - they're just thousands and thousands of ready-made pre-gens in an infinitely flexible classless system.

So - somewhere in the middle, I guess!

I liked the idea being tossed around in the early playtests that there would be fewer classes, but then the themes and specialties could have been used to cover the classes which weren't there. For example, a fighter with some stealth and nature themes could have been a ranger; likewise, a rogue with similar themes could have also represented a ranger. That creates different routes to build some of the classes, but I think that would have been a good thing for some of the classes which aren't always heavily defined such as druid and bard. Alas, it seems that early idea has been dropped in favor of other directions.

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If we're talking rpgs in general and not restricting the discussion to D&D, I prefer a game without classes.

 

[Jhaelen]

Definitely the more the merrier. Even in a 'class-less' system, having plenty of 'pre-packaged' templates, builds, archetypes, or whatever you want to call it, are useful to have.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

Too many? Eleven.

Give me 3E classes minus the monk and I'm happy with ten.

 

[kill the bard!]

Thanks for the responses, guys.

It depends on the system honestly. If wanting to play a Barbarian, would you rather be told, "Here, take the Barbarian class and rock it!" or "Take the Fighter class and take X,Y, and Z options to fight like a Barbarian."

I'm personally torn on this. The prospective game designer in me thinks fewer, well-defined classes is the way to go. While I think a fighter, a rogue, and a magic-user is too few, I think seven or eight classes gives plenty of room to make each uniquely good at something without pigeonholing them into specific roles. But then again, there are various mechanics a game designer can utilize to give the fighter and barbarian a unique play style, even if ultimately they do both do the same thing (kill stuff with weapons).

Similarly, the Game Master in me doesn't think a player's class should define how they play. If a player wants to play a barbarian or an assassin, let him choose the skills, traits, or feats available to the fighter or rogue and role play the rest. But the player in me would be heart broken if I were forced to twist a rogue, fighter, or cleric into a monk. Some classes, even though they may overlap others in mechanically, are just too thematically or stylistically too distinctive to shoehorn into another class. So I'm torn on the subject.

 

[steeldragons]

The bare minimum one could have is 2. Caster or Non-caster...since the rogue/skill monkeys would initially fall under "non-caster" types.

Designing my own game at the moment (and, picking away/tinkering off and on for the passed several decades) I'd say, for a D&D type game, you optimally want to start with the Big Four plus 1 "specialty/subclass" of each. So...Cleric, Fighter,Rogue, Magic-user (if you call it a Wizard or a Mage or a whatever, doesn't matter, the non-priestly/non-divine magic user)...and then a specialty cleric (Druid or maybe Paladin?), Ranger or Barbarian, Bard or Monk or something else Rogue-y, Sorcerer (though I personally hate the pointless mechanical distinction between 3e style "Wizard" and "Sorcerer") or Warlock or just something simple like an Illusionist/Magician or something.

So start with 8 (Big4 +1 each) or 12 Big4 +2 each).

From there, you can stop or you can continue to add in setting-specific or more specialized/narrowly defined permutations (i.e. "Swashbuckler" or "Bounty Hunter" rogues and "Gladiator" fighters and "Necromancer" or "Elementalist" or "Witch" magic-users) add-ons beneath each of your "Big 4" branches as much or as little as you like. But seems to me, if you can't find something you that matches what you want to play with 8-12 options (as a player), then you're just whiny...and who's got time for that?

OR...depending on how you choose to organize, you could start with a "Big 5" or a "Big 6" and even then, adding one to each "themed" (Warriors, Priests, Rogues, etc...) or 'power sourced" (Arcane, Divine, Natural, Martial, etc...) grouping, you still end up with 10 or 12. So...yeah, I'd say if you're getting up 12+ in the initial release of the game, you're getting ahead of yourself/bogging down the game/drowning the potential new player in "choices"...

And, that all said, I have some editing of my own game's "beginner" set to do! Think cutting back to 8 or 10 sounds really good. lol.

 

[Alzrius]

As this is my first post, let me start by saying hello.

Hello, and allow me to compliment you on your name; it brings to mind many enjoyable Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising jokes.

I'm a longtime fan of rpgs. My genre of choice is fantasy, though I don't have a particular favorite system. Like a lot of you, I'm following the development of D&D Next. The various articles relating to the classes are of special interest to me, but lately I've been asking myself the question, "how many classes is too many classes?"

To me, there are two approaches one can take when making classes for an rpg. You can go with fewer classes that cover the varying roles/archtypes, or you can go with many classes that overlap mechanically but offer a variety of themes.

Having played D&D for almost twenty years now, I'm starting to grow tired of the class system (but not D&D) altogether.

I think that the use of classes works great if people don't sit down to make a character with a specific theme in mind, if there's allowed to be an element of randomness involved (e.g. random ability scores), and if there are prerequisites/restrictions on what choices can be made based on those random results (e.g. ability score requirements for classes). In other words, if character creation is treated as being part of game-play, rather than preparation for playing the game, it can be a lot of fun.

If you start out with a specific character idea in mind, however, you have a very real chance of finding yourself struggling to make a class build that can emulate it adequately. That's because classes are inherently limited in what they offer, having set thematic archetypes and matching mechanical abilities. Yes, you can discard the theme of the class, and try and reflavor the abilities, but assuming that works (which is a generous assumption) it can be unsatisfying, as your "different" character isn't different in any meaningful (that is, mechanical) way from another character using the same class.

As a practical example, my current campaign is a Pathfinder one. About a year ago, I had a player ask how he could make his new character be a "fire dancer." Some questioning about what that was turned up that his concept was, indeed, for a character that could manipulate fire via dancing.

I looked through a lot of books trying to make that work. I had pretty much all of the major Paizo books at the time, and the online resources (e.g. d20PFSRD) helped. I also had a truckload of third-party supplements, to boot.

The best I could come up with was that he make a bard, take mostly fire-based spells, and put ranks into Perform (dance)...along with saying that the somatic components for his spells were dances. (I had a few more specific suggestions, but that was the gist of it.)

Needless to say, that wasn't a very satisfying answer. His character was still "just" a bard, not really any different than any other. He wanted to use fire-based effects based on dancing alone, but still had to satisfy verbal- and -material-based components for his spells. His class abilities (the ones that used dancing at all) weren't fire-based, and the entire concept wasn't one that was clearly abetted by his character's mechanics.

Ultimately, I decided that a point-buy character-builder was the way to go, since it gave me the freedom to build any character concept I wanted without changing games (and make no mistake, that part was very important - I can't "just play GURPS" since no one in my group wants to go through the process of buying and learning an entirely new system, when they like Pathfinder just fine in every other regard...as do I).

Indeed, I think that D&D has been moving towards a build-your-own-character model for quite some time. Class abilities that allow you to pick from a list of choices (e.g. rogue talents), alternate class abilities, feats (which are just a universal set of pick-your-own class features), all of these have elements of building your own character to them. Fifth Edition is already talking about, at the highest level of complexity, letting players make their own sub-classes.

Despite this, most people who enjoy D&D rebel at the thought of using a point-buy character generator, seeing it as being an irreconcilable break from the game's fundamental traditions, something I think is overstated. The game still plays the same, but now you can play it with the character you actually wanted to play.