D&D General How would YOU do "classless D&D"?

[Yaarel]

That's probably what convinced Skynet humanity was a write-off.

That is the thing about AI. It can model the best human qualities − or the worst human qualities.

Lets hope for more compassion and less cruelty − especially in an era of AI.

 

[Rogerd1]

Something akin to Mutants & Masterminds, so if you want your character to have powers you purchase them, but this will mean sacrificing other things like skills, or various edges / feats, all of which is point buy.

Or Savage Worlds, all of which again would be point buy. So you could have a Arcane Background: Training which would encompass various martial abilities, akin to Gurps Martial Arts. This would also cover any other things like weird Archery, Rogue, or Ranger lower level powers. Then have another one Arcane Background: Heroic Abilities to cover Paladins and any abilities from other existing DnD classes that are spell-like. Then anyone that wants magic would choose Arcane Background: Magic, and also add a shaping mechanic like from Runequest, to reduce the number of spells, but also allow them to slightly altered.

Fairly easy really.

 

[Yaarel]

For a D&D classless class, all character features can organize into units of feats, half-feats, and skills.

A feat is worth roughly 8 skills, a half-feat 4 skills, albeit some skills are better than others ranging from Perception (two skills) to an extra language (0 skills but gated thematically). A martial weapon proficiency is worth about 1 skill, being proficient with all martial weapons is 3 skills. A simple weapon is worth about a ½ skill. A cantrip is like a proficiency, ranging in value from Eldritch Blast (2½ skills) to Friends (1 skill).

While advancing, every new level gains an amount of features worth a feat. Albeit, level prereqs allow more powerful feats to become available to choose from at higher levels. Epic boons become available at level 20.

 

[Buzzqw]

In a nutshell my classless system (based on 5e/pf1/pf2/OSR) works like this:

1) at each level the character gets 1 point to increase magical ability or skill with weapons (BaB)
2) every 2 levels takes a feat that somehow resembles class ability
3) many feats can be taken more time to improve the feat or gain new correlated ability
4) depending on the type of feat (more combat, magical, spiritual ..) the related saving throws increase
5) hit points are equal to 4 + Constitution bonus , + 3 if you have increased combat capacity
6) the points on combat competence can be given to homogeneous lists of weapons and more points you have dedicated to the same list the greater capabilities this grants you
7) depending on your magical ability you have access to more spell points and higher spell levels

and much more... but in italian... TUS/OBSS.pdf at master · buzzqw/TUS

BHH

 

[Stormonu]

Looking good, please share when your finished. I've wanted to do something like this for a long time, but never wanted to invest the time.

FYI, some pages are being cropped off in the PDF. See the right side below. It starts on this page, and the next 3 pages, then goes back to normal.

View attachment 251152

@dave2008 - make sure you are using Chrome. Homebrewery tends to reflow poorly with other browsers.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I like my D&D with class and levels, but I've played several RPGs that lack classes.

Basically making everything feats would be the way I go, though I'd also kill leveling too. Your character could still get good at things at different rates, but if I were to go classless, I'd go levelless too.

I think I’d keep levels, and I’d also make a sort of point buy for chargen where HP and defenses and save proficiencies etc are all part of the point buy.

And then feats and proficiencies would be what is used to customize, but you’d gain more HP and higher proficiency bonus as you level. Definitely bounded accuracy, but with tighter HP and damage growth than 5e. Much tighter. Like you’d gain less than 5 HP per level unless you invest heavily in being tanky.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

In a nutshell my classless system (based on 5e/pf1/pf2/OSR) works like this:

1) at each level the character gets 1 point to increase magical ability or skill with weapons (BaB)
2) every 2 levels takes a feat that somehow resembles class ability
3) many feats can be taken more time to improve the feat or gain new correlated ability
4) depending on the type of feat (more combat, magical, spiritual ..) the related saving throws increase
5) hit points are equal to 4 + Constitution bonus , + 3 if you have increased combat capacity
6) the points on combat competence can be given to homogeneous lists of weapons and more points you have dedicated to the same list the greater capabilities this grants you
7) depending on your magical ability you have access to more spell points and higher spell levels

and much more... but in italian... TUS/OBSS.pdf at master · buzzqw/TUS

BHH

I like the idea of saving throws getting better if you take a specific feat.

 

[dave2008]

@dave2008 - make sure you are using Chrome. Homebrewery tends to reflow poorly with other browsers.

I'm using Chrome.

 

[GMforPowergamers]

I'd probably end up recreating classes in a much more convoluted manner to try to preserve the "feel" of D&D to be honest. I'd end going back to the 4e idea of power sources (Martial/Arcane/Divine) and then building feat chains and templates that gave powers and abilities from those sources in such a way that you can create templates that end up basically being the traditional classes of D&D.

I think 4e would be easier to start with... create a pt buy for HD prof and then be able to take ANY power for your AEDU

 

[Jay Murphy1]

I like the design solutions Chaosium hit on to create a class-less DnD not shortly after DnD was released into the world. For me this is best served by their rules reference tome Magic World and Elric!