Ten basic medieval fantasy classes

[Tonguez]

...you need a day or two to let us know what those might be?


The "adventuring" is a good distinction on the PPM scholar. It implies that a character, or adventuring, has a required Physical component to it. Tomb Raider is a good choice, but is there a medieval equivalent? Also interesting to see rogues and merchants in the same category. Does the handling of large quantities of money constitute a class characteristic? Are merchants less physically oriented than rogues, or is that not a necessary distinction?

Tomb Raider is just a more heroic title for the Grave Robber, a role that did exist in Medieval times - in a Europe=based setting you've got a Tomb Raider digging in to ancient Barrow mounds to steal the crown of a buried king, in the fantasy setting that gets complicated when that King and his guards wake up and try to stop you.

For me the MMP line implies Skills + Physical ability. Thats obvious for Rogue but also works for your merchant if Social Skills are emphasized. For Medieval Merchants I was envisoning the Travelling Tinker who goes from village to village selling his wares while avoiding bandits up to the owner of a Merchant Ship, transporting his cargo to distant ports for sale, negotiating deals and also fighting off pirates

Scholar is Harry Potter-esque sans Magic but it doesnt just have to be old sage consulted for ancient history and obscure facts, Alchemist is the obvious extension as I was wondering where that role might fit.
I also once had a PC decide to play as an Architect/Civil Engineer, as DM I had him employed by the city to oversee construction of defenses on the walls and then excavate a city sewerage system (Paris Sewer was begun in 1370)- Scholar would cover Architect too.

 

[Bromjunaar]

This has me thinking that there could be three base classes - warrior, mage, thief - and each one has two varieties based on which direction it takes to differ from the base. The Skyrim standing stones might be too much of a pigeon hole though, but warrior/fighter and mage/wizard seem pretty obvious. Poet doesn't sound like a good class, but as a person who uses his mind to get what he needs, it fills the gap between warrior and mage pretty well.

The older Elder Scrolls framework (Such as Oblivion's) might be a better framework to build from than Skyrim's if you are going to use classes, since each of the classes had favored attributes and such, though Skyrim's framework would work fine for a classless style. With the Oblivion style, even with only three attributes, you could set it up with an open skill system, with a stamina attribute being related to increases in P, magic boost from S, and a number of skill points from M.

Ex: Every level, P, M, and S increase by 1 due to leveling, then each 'attribute' increases by an additional amount based on class (up to three additional increases per attribute per level), with some sort of feat system that operates independently of PMS and is only based on character level, with possible bonus feats available from total amount of each attribute. Maybe make HP either constant across all classes, or only slight bias towards P compared to Stamina (which would be used to do things in combat). And now we have stumbled the base upon which 3.5e/d20 is built upon, though we could change a lot of the minutia to get a radically (and hopefully more balanced) result. (Probably by having narrower magic focus?)

True, but I wonder if it takes on some common characteristics if you consider it another term for "leader." Charisma, inheritance, followers, good genes...do these traits show up across cultures?

Hm. Maybe we could add a fourth 'attribute' for Charisma (C) that we could use to blow this wide open with an additional 25 classes? (That or have it be randomly generated at CharCreation while still being the needed thing for leadership stuff, which is kinda how it happens IRL)