Celebrim
Legend
Well, what you are describing is in many ways my answer, but I doubt it is the answer because there is probably more than one way to do it.
While I'm not purist for system, the basic idea is that a class is defined by the collections of bonus feats available to them and the rate at which they progress in the acquisition of these feats. Some feats are so archetypal that they are restricted to the class, but most feats could be chosen by any class only not at the rate which another class could acquire them.
This is not that different from having a 4e style 'powers' system, only that comparitively few powers are siloed to a particular class. Instead, there is a large pool of general powers available to everyone, and subpools of the general powers that are class defining. While pretty much everyone could dip into a subpool, they can't dip as often as the class whose schtick is defined by that subpool. And on top of that, you have a few class specific powers that aren't shared save by multiclassing.
The idea behind my design was to avoid the massive proliferation of classes that was seen in 3e. In particular, I saw all PrC's as essentially being a particular collection of feats which you could only take in a predefined order and only if you adopted a particular flavor and in some cases even personality for your character. Additionally, I saw all PrC's - at least all PrC's likely to be taken - as being essentially a class that got more feats per level than the base class. Finally, most PrC's had the problem of being front loaded so that entry into the class immediately allowed you fulfil that classes 'schtick'. I didn't see the PrC as increasing player choice, but restricting it, and indeed not only restricting choice but also encouraging a rigid mechanical design rather than designing to a novel character concept. If you wanted to design to concept, it required cludging together PrC's in ways that required excessive system mastery. I wanted to avoid all of that, so I transformed powers into feats, increased the accessibility of feats, reduced front loading, and dropped all PrC's. My alternate system has been described by one of my players as, "You don't take a PrC in [Celebrim's] game; you become one."
One of the things I learned over time is that I didn't have to confine feats to simple number modifiers that added one static bonus or enhancement. Nor did I have to have feats that merely allowed you to take some combat action. In fact, I disliked the later in particular, preferring to define a wide range of combat manuevers and then have feats that made you better in them. Simple number modifiers could be fine, but they tended to pale for higher end feats. The solution IMO was to combine several weak number modifiers into a feat that encompassed a defining schtick. The 3.5 era 'Tactical' feats were great in concept, but tended to suck in implmentation. The other thing you could do was have number modifiers that scaled in level. 'Toughness' is a great example of a feat that ought to have been scaling from the beginning. Pretty much anything that a class ability can do can be turned into a feat, and indeed even a entire class can be defined as a feat. For example, I have one feat that substatially alters your hit points gained per level, BAB, base saving throws, and even skill points gained. You take the feat, and you basically are taking one class and substituting it for a rather different one. Granted, that's an unusual case, but it shows how extensively a feat can rewrite the nature of your character.
Now, you could get a lot more purist in the system than I have. You could make every single class ability optional and configurable. I've only gone part of that way because I think that as it approaches pure point buy you are likely to see too much min-maxing with narrowly defined characters instead of the broadly capable ones you want out of a class system, but I've seen reasonable attempts at it.
While I'm not purist for system, the basic idea is that a class is defined by the collections of bonus feats available to them and the rate at which they progress in the acquisition of these feats. Some feats are so archetypal that they are restricted to the class, but most feats could be chosen by any class only not at the rate which another class could acquire them.
This is not that different from having a 4e style 'powers' system, only that comparitively few powers are siloed to a particular class. Instead, there is a large pool of general powers available to everyone, and subpools of the general powers that are class defining. While pretty much everyone could dip into a subpool, they can't dip as often as the class whose schtick is defined by that subpool. And on top of that, you have a few class specific powers that aren't shared save by multiclassing.
The idea behind my design was to avoid the massive proliferation of classes that was seen in 3e. In particular, I saw all PrC's as essentially being a particular collection of feats which you could only take in a predefined order and only if you adopted a particular flavor and in some cases even personality for your character. Additionally, I saw all PrC's - at least all PrC's likely to be taken - as being essentially a class that got more feats per level than the base class. Finally, most PrC's had the problem of being front loaded so that entry into the class immediately allowed you fulfil that classes 'schtick'. I didn't see the PrC as increasing player choice, but restricting it, and indeed not only restricting choice but also encouraging a rigid mechanical design rather than designing to a novel character concept. If you wanted to design to concept, it required cludging together PrC's in ways that required excessive system mastery. I wanted to avoid all of that, so I transformed powers into feats, increased the accessibility of feats, reduced front loading, and dropped all PrC's. My alternate system has been described by one of my players as, "You don't take a PrC in [Celebrim's] game; you become one."
One of the things I learned over time is that I didn't have to confine feats to simple number modifiers that added one static bonus or enhancement. Nor did I have to have feats that merely allowed you to take some combat action. In fact, I disliked the later in particular, preferring to define a wide range of combat manuevers and then have feats that made you better in them. Simple number modifiers could be fine, but they tended to pale for higher end feats. The solution IMO was to combine several weak number modifiers into a feat that encompassed a defining schtick. The 3.5 era 'Tactical' feats were great in concept, but tended to suck in implmentation. The other thing you could do was have number modifiers that scaled in level. 'Toughness' is a great example of a feat that ought to have been scaling from the beginning. Pretty much anything that a class ability can do can be turned into a feat, and indeed even a entire class can be defined as a feat. For example, I have one feat that substatially alters your hit points gained per level, BAB, base saving throws, and even skill points gained. You take the feat, and you basically are taking one class and substituting it for a rather different one. Granted, that's an unusual case, but it shows how extensively a feat can rewrite the nature of your character.
Now, you could get a lot more purist in the system than I have. You could make every single class ability optional and configurable. I've only gone part of that way because I think that as it approaches pure point buy you are likely to see too much min-maxing with narrowly defined characters instead of the broadly capable ones you want out of a class system, but I've seen reasonable attempts at it.
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