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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Xetheral" data-source="post: 8258538" data-attributes="member: 6802765">Personally, I think the main purpose of having classes is to make character creation a conceptually different exercise than it would be if abilities could be picked al a carte.By combining abilities into thematically linked packages, players taking levels in a class to get a certain ability that they want to mechanically model their character concept get other, thematically similar abilities at no additional opportunity cost. This makes those abilities much more attractive to rely on in comparison to taking levels in a different class that has a substitute ability. Ergo, acquiring any one ability in a class-based system dynamically changes the comparative opportunity cost of acquiring other abilities. By contrast, in an al a carte system, abilities are picked in isolation from each other, and the opportunity cost of taking each ability is fixed.To use a generic example, in a class-based system, taking levels to acquire a desired offensive ability often comes with a defensive ability for "free". The player has an incentive to rely on that defensive ability even if it isn't the most powerful or (ostensibly) most efficient ability, because the marginal difference in effectiveness between the already-possesed ability and the better abilities isn't worth the cost of taking levels in another class. Accordingly, a diverse range of defensive abilities see play.In an al a carte system, however, there is rarely any mechanical incentive to take a core ability that isn't either the strongest of its type, or the most efficient of its type. Either the character wants to emphasize (e.g.) defense, and so spends the character points to buy the best defense, or wants to emphasize some other aspect of their character and so wants the cheapest "good enough" defense. Accordingly, it is common in such systems to see the same abilities repeated from character to character for core elements like offense and defense.This perspective doesn't only apply to powergamers either--the opportunity cost of taking thematic and/or idiosyncratic abilities can be quite high in any system. Freeing up the points/levels/etc. to make "non-optimal" choices incentivizes going with the most efficient options for core capabilities. As above, in a class-based system, the most efficient options are going to vary more from character to character than they do in an al a carte system, so more variety is the likely result.</blockquote>

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