Let's Talk About Defining Player Characters

[Tigris]

My preference is classes (with only a little multiclassing (hybrids at most)) for the following reasons:

• Its easy to communicate "I am a chaosmage" is a lot easier than having to describe a list of skills etc. one has.
• It is also relatively easy to select. Choosing 1 "bucket" of abilities is a lot easier than creating one like in The Dark Eye with 1400 points point buy in the beginning...
• It makes game balancing easier, because one does not need to balance every possible combination with each other but you have different buckets separated from one another.
• In addition the above also allows to have a bigger variety of abilities / more extreme abilities, because you can balance them within a class. Like 1 character can have a huge crit chance, and another character can get a strong extra attack on a crit. And since thats separate abilities, these can be really strong because you cant combine them.

Of course these is for games which have tactical combat / big separation of mechanics. If its a "simple" game where there is not too much differences in mechanics between different characters, then something less strict, like Cortex Prime, is perfectly fine.

 

[Fenris-77]

I like a lot of different character advancement schemes. For fantasy and some flavours of Sci-fi the idea of levels and that big dopamine hit from getting a lot better all at once is cool. For other games the slower grind of skill advancement like BRP or more piecemeal advancement (like Trophy) suits better. I'll admit that I find the skill advancement in BRP pretty anti-climactic overall, but it's fine.

I really don't care about diegetic stuff when it comes to character advancement. Some people do, which is fine, but I don't. I'm in favour of whatever suits the genre at the table.

I also don't think that one is inherently more balanced than the other. I think imbalance creeps in in any system where the player gets to choose from many different discrete skills and abilities and can thus massage synergies and whatnot. This is less of a problem when those skills and abilities are all pretty balanced, but I can't actually think of a game where that's the case. I'm sure there are examples though.

 

[Reynard]

In general, I don't mind "classes" (archetypes, whatever) especially if there is some room to customise. I am not a huge fan of the way 5E does it because you have essentially made your last choice by 3rd level, but systems that offer continued choices within classes are okay.

I also like point buy, especially for supers games, so that folks can really create the character in their head. this comes at a cost, of course, in both complexity and the difficulty of character generation.

But the place where I think most RPGs (at least ones that need mechanical heft in PC capability) could benefit is a more "talent tree" model. This lets the player decide how focused or broad they want to be, without necessarily requiring them to go full "point buy." You don't see this option in TTRPGs, though, despite how common they are in CRPGs.

More broadly, I do think it is important to limit the scope of defining the characters mechanically to what the characters are meant to be doing in the game in question. Too many games let players "waste" points on stuff that isn't really useful in play, simply by having a bunch of options that are just ribbons. If being able to drive a car or be a chef isn't important IN PLAY, don't make the player spend character resources on that stuff. It should be there, but make it free or use some other pool of character generation resources.

 

[payn]

In general, I don't mind "classes" (archetypes, whatever) especially if there is some room to customise. I am not a huge fan of the way 5E does it because you have essentially made your last choice by 3rd level, but systems that offer continued choices within classes are okay.

Right! When folks say things like "5E is evolved 3E" I think they completely miss this point. 5E is streamlined to the point that leveling up takes 2 min tops and it shows. For some thats a feature though as they want a fast moving process.

But the place where I think most RPGs (at least ones that need mechanical heft in PC capability) could benefit is a more "talent tree" model. This lets the player decide how focused or broad they want to be, without necessarily requiring them to go full "point buy." You don't see this option in TTRPGs, though, despite how common they are in CRPGs.

I felt like archetypes did this pretty well in PF1. Feats, I think, were supposed to do it, but did it in a rather unsatisfying way.

More broadly, I do think it is important to limit the scope of defining the characters mechanically to what the characters are meant to be doing in the game in question. Too many games let players "waste" points on stuff that isn't really useful in play, simply by having a bunch of options that are just ribbons. If being able to drive a car or be a chef isn't important IN PLAY, don't make the player spend character resources on that stuff. It should be there, but make it free or use some other pool of character generation resources.

Yeap, feats have been plagued with the choices not really being comparable. One is awesome...once a campaign, another is great once a session, and the final pick is useful every encounter. The useful but not really cool always seems to win out.

I think the specificity will come out in the intent of the system. Is it a game about becoming a Four Star Chef? Or is it a game about the entire food business, from being a critic to operating a business? The latter is gonna allow for a wider variety of character types.

 

[Fenris-77]

An interesting outlier in this conversation is a game called Vagabonds of Dyfed. It uses a PbtA base, adapted for S&S play (not precisely OSR play mind, but in that vicinity). There are no classes at all, just a list of skills and backgrounds. Reading it again makes me want to deconstruct Shadowdark into a similar set of skill trees just to see what that looks like.

 

[Reynard]

An interesting outlier in this conversation is a game called Vagabonds of Dyfed. It uses a PbtA base, adapted for S&S play (not precisely OSR play mind, but in that vicinity). There are no classes at all, just a list of skills and backgrounds. Reading it again makes me want to deconstruct Shadowdark into a similar set of skill trees just to see what that looks like.

As an aside, my next project is going to be to try and create a "career tree" system for Shadowdark somewhat inspired by the old WHFRP one. Your level 1 is a scrub, levels 2-4 is somewhat better, levels 5-7 a real pro and levels 8-10 the pinnacle of the line. All using prereqs and stuff so there are choices in a range.

 

[Koloth]

Prefer pure point buy like GURPS. Lets me design the character I think I want rather then having to plow through piles of books trying to find the magic combo of class/sub-class/archtype + traits + feats + ??? to get something close to concept. Often still missing something that makes perfect sense for the character concept but just isn't part of the class+feat setup.

If the game has basic stats, prefer point buy or a pre determined pool that every player uses. Played in enough games where someone showed up with a character with 18/00, 18, 16, 14, 12, 10 ("I rolled these this morning, Honest!")... Or watched as someone rolled such character in front of all of us while the best the rest of us managed was along the lines of 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 4.
I really want my recreational gaming to be an escape from reality, not a harsh reminder that life often isn't fair.

I like the training aspect of Traveller. No matter what your past is, you can learn that skill. Assuming you survive character creation...

 

[Fenris-77]

As an aside, my next project is going to be to try and create a "career tree" system for Shadowdark somewhat inspired by the old WHFRP one. Your level 1 is a scrub, levels 2-4 is somewhat better, levels 5-7 a real pro and levels 8-10 the pinnacle of the line. All using prereqs and stuff so there are choices in a range.

Hmm. Careers are an interesting way to go there. I'm not sure that SD really has the granular detail to make that work, but I'd love to see what you manage. Maybe if you took all the class traits and whatnot and then added a bunch of other stuff you might get something that works. There really just aren't that many traits to work wioth though.

An idea I had was to take the base classes and break them down into progression. If you take all your choices in one class at level one you get the class as written. The big stuff, like spell casting or the fighters combat skill would be gated behind the lesser class abilities, so it would take a while to multiclass and get to the good stuff. You could label each silo of skills by class to determine 'level' for the abilities that does stuff like add half you level to X or whatever. So, for example, you need to take Hauler and Grit before you get to take Weapon Mastery or roll on the fighter table.

 

[Reynard]

Hmm. Careers are an interesting way to go there. I'm not sure that SD really has the granular detail to make that work, but I'd love to see what you manage. Maybe if you took all the class traits and whatnot and then added a bunch of other stuff you might get something that works. There really just aren't that many traits to work wioth though.

it will take a little rework of what classes atually ARE in SD, but that's okay.

An idea I had was to take the base classes and break them down into progression. If you take all your choices in one class at level one you get the class as written. The big stuff, like spell casting or the fighters combat skill would be gated behind the lesser class abilities, so it would take a while to multiclass and get to the good stuff. You could label each silo of skills by class to determine 'level' for the abilities that does stuff like add half you level to X or whatever. So, for example, you need to take Hauler and Grit before you get to take Weapon Mastery or roll on the fighter table.

I have often considered trying to break all the 5E class and subclass abilties into talent trees to make that game classless (but with levels still) and I decided ultimately that the juice probably isn't worth the squeeze.

 

[Fenris-77]

There's some noise to sort out in terms of equipment and languages, but I think the basic idea is solid.