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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Henry" data-source="post: 60649" data-attributes="member: 158">I'm going to play Devil's Advocate for a minute, here...The ultimate and most perfect classless RPG system would incorporate a learning system similar to the way we learn in the real world. Each skill would have a separate learning curve, and would impact on about a half-dozen other skills related to it. Learning to drive an automatic transmission car would allow you to learn some of the basics of driving a stick-shift, but still give you a chance to badly damage the transmission of your car. It might even give you the rudiments of driving a semi-tractor-trailer, though driving it with any competence is right out.It would also give you experience only through training and real-world experience, rather than an arbitrary pool of points. The disadvantage of a class-based and level-based game is the "power up" syndrome - you get all your benefits at one time, rather than gradually as one would in the real world.Think of military boot camp. At the end of boot camp in a level-based system, all recruits would come out with one level of soldier, and would look more or less identical in most respects - there is room for some variation, but everyone will come out knowing how to use a rifle identically as well as hand-to-hand combat. In a skill-based system, each person would emerge being good in some things, poor in others, but would have a minimal level of skill in each, and a wide variation in between.A class-based system presents you with a "base package" and some customization - All wizards cast the same amount of spells, etc. But the best skill-based system would give you a hundred shades of gray to distinguish what you knew compared to the other guy.Finally, the ultimate skill-based system would not be prone to rules abuse.Here is an example, taken to the extreme - in a system such as GURPS, a person with a naturally phenomenal DEX can fake knowledge with almost every physical skill known to man. A 100-point GURPS character with a 17 DEX and 1/2 a point of skill can can shoot, drive, fence, run, tumble, tightrope walk, play piano, and play hockey with the same competance as someone with a 10 DEX who took several years (and many skill points) to gain the same level of skill. I don't care what your natural Dexterity is, you are not going to out-shoot a champion marksman, out-drive a professional stunt driver, and out-shoot Wayne Gretsky in hockey - all with one week of training in each skill.A skill-based system is going to have some natural advantages over a class-based one, verisimilitude being one of them. Even Ryan Dancey, one of the biggest proponents of the d20 system, has publically stated that he doesn't believe d20 can or should simulate every genre out there (on his forum in <a href="http://www.gamingreport.com" target="_blank">www.gamingreport.com</a>) - but it has its strengths and can cater to huge sections of the market.</blockquote>

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