D&Don't Part 3: Class Is Dismissed.

I fucking hate class based systems.

There, I said it. If there's one thing I've learnt from my experiences playing D&D in it's various forms it's that classes as a gaming concept need to be lined up, stabbed, beaten, shot, set on fire and then pissed on by an elephant. Not necessarily in that order.


In any genre there will of course be certain archetypes, and it's perfectly natural to want to theme your character around such an archetype. But the problem with classes is they lock everyone down into someone elses idea of what should be happening, rather than allowing you to actually come up with something that suits you. All the choices are pre-made for you. All that the player gets to do is trawl through umpteen different books going through all the levels of all the classes to see if any of them actually might play kinda like what they want. The vast proliferation of classes is itself a symptom of the problem at the heart of the class system.  Say you wanna play a spellcaster, okay, be a wizard, fine. But what if you wanna be a wizard who can actually use a sword? Well then it's a whole new book and a whole new class as you have to look up what the hell a Spellsword is. Classes, much like cockroaches, breed in the gaps.

Hi, how are ya?

The very reason that there's so many of the damn things (aside from the obvious need to sell more books) is that without any actual freedom in creating characters there HAS to be.

Let's look at an example. Let's say you want to play a spellcaster of some description (as some of us are wont to do) so you look at the wizard stuff and all seems fun enough. Then you realise there isn't really much in the way of healing or support in your party. No big thing, I'll just pick up some healing magics you think to your oh so naive self.

NO BE A CLERIC.

Why do only the religious get healing spells? Because I said so. In 1973.

And if you don't particularly want to play a goddamn missionary then you're shit out of luck. This is a problem that I myself have come up against. Now, your various clerical classes have some cool stuff and all, but I personally am not particularly interested in having to roleplay a character that is so inherently religious (At least in D&D anyway, I'd rather save all that blind faith and maniacal zeal for when we finally get around to playing Star Wars and I finally get to bust out my Yuuzhan Vong paladin). All I really want out of a game is to have some undead minions and play pokemon with the spell lists. But you can't really do that because everything carved up between the different classes (although the magic system is whole other chapter or two, and we really don't have time to get into that here). There's a whole bunch of classes that have one or two interesting aspects to them, but hardly any that include everything I'd like.

This of course naturally leads us to multiclassing, which again is not a solution I find particularly satisfying. Sure, my Archivist COULD multiclass into Necromancer, but that actually takes me one step further away from animate dead, not any closer. The problem with multiclassing is that the previous class stops dead whilst you improve the new class. Which is fair enough in many ways, except the point is that you can't concentrate on the things you particularly like from any of the classes. It's all or nothing. You can't, for example, say "Ooh, I'd like to work on the Archivist Dark Knowledge skills". That will get better when you're TOLD it'll get better, and not a moment sooner. You don't improve based on what you as a player would like to do, or even in terms of what your character has actually been doing. It's all tightly controlled by the table in the book.


Of course, there are also some classes which I would find interesting were it not for some distasteful element or other. A good example of this, as well as just how ridiculously restrictive a class based system can get is found in the prestige class Pale Master, which contains this little gem of a class "feature"

At 6th level, a pale master gives in to terrible necrophiliac urges. He cuts off his arm and replaces it with an undead prosthetic

Are we all getting this? Leaving aside for one moment the obvious fact that sex with corpses and self mutilation are not actually the same thing, the thing that really annoys me here is the mandatory nature of this act, no matter how at odds it may be with the actual character. You don't get much say in the matter, and there's no particularly compelling reason given for why it would even happen. It's not like you're joining some  crazy secret society, or proving your undying allegiance to the eternal gods of night or anything. Apparently you just wake up one morning and think "LOL, meat cleaver".


Put simply I do not find this particularly engaging.

For me, when you level up it should be a meaningful event. It's the point where you've finally drunk enough murder to get smarter and learn some cool new shit. It's time to browse the options available to you and find interesting new things to do. It is both an achievement and a reward.

Unless of course you're playing D&D. Because then NOTHING HAPPENS.

You could say I was somewhat incredulous once I found out how leveling up actually works. I'd seen the various lists of various feats and stuff, all looked fun enough. Then I find out that you don't actually GET feats except once every umpteen levels. Nor indeed do your base stats increase except in umpteen levels plus. And since it takes two increases to actually make a difference to the modifiers derived from the base stats this means you'll only ever manage to get stronger for example about twice in between levels one and godhood.

Exciting is is not.

So what do you get? A handful of skill points. What do they do? Well, make your skill scores slightly higher, obviously. Many would point out that something is better than nothing. However I would point out that since the difficulty of whatever challenges you'll be facing is also going to be increasing this basically leaves you breaking even at best.

The feats you do occasionally manage to get are, it has to be said, wildly variable at best. Ranging from the few that are actually quite good, to the many that are actually quite rubbish, as well all the ones that might have been cool if they hadn't had some shitty addendum or clause tacked on the end to stop them. The most glaring examples of these of course being the crafting feats. Take Scribe Scroll for an example. With the utter abortion of a magic system D&D for some reason decided to inflict upon itself, scrolls would be pretty to handy to have around. So, how does one make a scroll. Costs some daft amount of gold or other, fair enough. I guess we can assume that special materials are required to hold the power or whatever, although to be fair maybe you could mention these rather than just assuming the gold evaporates out of my wallet, but whatever. And of course it takes time to scribe the arcane whatnots. So I have to take a few days off whilst the kingdom is being overrun with ancient evil, but at the end of it I'll have enough scrolls put by to keep the party alive for about an hour, maybe even two! And then it also costs experience.

Wait, what?

That's right. If you make magic scrolls you actually GET STUPIDER whilst you do it. Until you finally run out brain altogether and have to run off and drink more murder juice out of hapless innocent Kobolds. Thus, with a single line they've rendered the entire feat useless. Now, I get that whilst you're squirreled away in your room writing out Cure Light Wounds fifty times you wouldn't GAIN any experience. But how exactly would you LOSE it? Rather than actually aiding you in your quest against evil, every scroll you write takes you a bit further away from ever being able to do anything about it. I'm pleased to say that this is one of the things that Pathfinder fixed. But it baffles me as to how anyone ever thought this might be a good idea.

Outside of the feats of course you have your class features, but since you have no input into these they don't really count. They just happen, there is no input from the player at all. They're just kinda... there. Oh, and I suppose there's the extra hit points, though as previously mentioned this is just the numbers you have keeping with the number your facing and not really anything to get excited about.

So, in summary I find classes overly restrictive and the leveling scheme a boring exercise in disappointment. But what's the alternative? The whole point of having a woefully restrictive class system is to ensure game balance after all.

Well, first of all, screw balance. Screw it right in the ear. This isn't a computer game, where you need to ensure everyone has an equal chance in pvp. This is a goddamn roleplaying game, where the GM decides all and the only concern is whether everyone's having fun. All systems are open to a degree of abuse by rules lawyers and min maxers. Those guys will always munchkin out to the maximum possible extent, that's their thing. And really if what someone likes is trying to make the most powerful character possible then good for them, go for it, have fun. But the thing about the open format of a proper roleplaying game is, should the players push the system to far, the system can always push back. If the party is overcoming the monsters to easily then you can just put harder monsters in the encounters. If one persons munchkin character is dominating the game and spoiling it for everyone else then BAD THINGS CAN HAPPEN. Powerful nutters can take notice, the forces of evil can hire new help more suited to the problem at hand, armour can burn down...

Thus I'm not really overly worried about abuse when I say to ditch the class thing entirely. Just take all the class features and turn them into feats. Even out the feats a little and give the players more of them, and let them build the characters that way. Spellcasters can use their feats to buy spells and arcane talents, whilst warriors can buy special moves and stat boosts (That right there solves half your so called balance issues). Make the levels harder to get to if you have to, but give us something to look forward to when we get there. There should be something shiny and new at each level. Not necessarily powerful, but something. And the player should get to choose. Give us feats with prerequisites based on roleplaying and character history as well raw statistic and skill requirements. Give us feats that improve as we go up levels, give us background feats that we can take at character generation and then kick in later or require a heavy price. Stuff that the character has to achieve things in game to activate. In short, give us TOYS. Indeed, I'd go even further. Rather than going through the whole business of rolling stats (and then weeping softly at the statistically improbable amount of ones) the stats themselves should start at a base level for everyone, and then get modified through applying an amount of starting feats. So you have to decide between beefing stats and special abilities. Some feats could grant higher bonuses at the detriment of others. For example, you could have a "Brainy" feat that ups INT or whatever, but you could also have a "Scholarly Studies" feat that provides a greater bonus at the expense of STR. This plug and play style of character generation could also be of great help when trying to determine the actual character of the character, as it provides a series of handy descriptors. If you want to play a weasely deceitful spellcasting hobo you can just look for those traits or something similar in the feat list.

This could also, in my opinion, improve the issue of too many fucking books. Rather than selling us great lumbering hardback tomes concentrating on particular suites of classes you could have smaller books, magazine sized even, published regularly on varying themes. So you could have a pamphlet on say the archtypical Ranger, containing a bunch of feats related to using a bow, having a pet and smelling badly. Add in some equipment, magic items and maybe a few statblocks for suggested minions and you've got a fairly self contained primer for people who like like those sort of things. And since you're putting out a small and cheap guides rather than huge books it doesn't matter if there's a degree of duplication between books. The whole point after all is to provide a handy summary. Not that such thing need be consigned to merely classes. You could do one for city dwellers, one for barbarians. Ones for the GM, ones for the players. Ones focusing on particular locations or elements of the settings backstory. One for the gun nuts and one dedicated entirely to Sword-chucks. And if someone doesn't want or need anything like that they don't need to get the book. If they need just a bit of whats in it then, even assuming it doesn't get reprinted somewhere else since the books are small and cheap they can afford to pick it up anyway if they really want.

That sounds pretty damn good to me anyway.

The key point is to allow the people who are playing to focus on the things they enjoy.