I hate class systems because they are restrictive, mechanical, and a poor substitute for giving characters abilities and jobs that fit their personalities, motivations and backstories.

Something along the lines of the P&P RPG Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay's character system might be an option.

For those who hasn't played it:

One of the rolls in the character creation determine the starting career of the character. This can be Wizards apprentice, Bounty Hunter, Militiaman, Ranger, Farmer etc. Each career has a number of skills the character must learn and attributes he must achieve before he's fully "educated" in that career. In the P&P game this is done by spending XP or by doing certain tasks, like train for a few "months". In a computer game the mechanics can be altered. After the palyer has maxed out his current career, he can choose a career advancement. For example Militia Sargeant, Wizard, etc.

One possibility in a computer game is to let the player start as a generic non-class character. He can then train various attributes (strenght, dex, etc) and skills. Once he has the needed skills and attributes he can get a job as an apprentice for a wizard, healer (apothecary), militia etc.

As an apprentice in his choosen profession he gets certain bonuses, such as more advanced skills that only people in that profession can obtain and cheaper attribute points (the mentor teaches him so he learns quicker). Once he has learned enough he can go on to more advanced careers. Like Sargeant in the militia, etc.

Some careers can have more than one career advancements. A player who's maxed out as a militiaman can be eligible as a milita captain, knight's apprentice, bounty hunter, brigand etc.

It should also be possible to come from warious backgrounds. A brigand captain could have previously been a brigand, or a milita sargeant who's changed sides.

If the player wants to diversify his skills he can try to become an apprentice in another trade. Either by having two "jobs" or quitting the other. If he has to quit a current career to start another he should no longer recieve the bonuses for the career he's departed (an ex-militiaman won't get cheaper strength increases or militiaman-specific skills). He can still train in those skills and attibutes, but they'll be harder to achieve. He'll of course get other bonuses for his new career. As a healer's apprentice he gets cheaper int increases and healing-skills.

It might be possible for some careers to be used at the same time. A militiaman can also be a healer's apprentice (unless the healer refuses to have a fighting person as an apprentice that is) - the militia needs medics as well :). Other careers must be mutually exclusive. He can't be both a militiaman and an apprentice thief.

It might also be possible to make it so that he can have two opposing jobs, but if he's found out he'll be in deep trouble. He might be a spy for the thieves guild placed in the militia for example. The Thieves Guild knows about his "duplicity" and gets info on the militias plans etc. If the Militia finds out he can either be made a double agent or arrested.

Some careers should make others impossible to achieve. If the player goes all out and becomes a thief or asassin, and especially if he gets caught, it shouldn't be possible for him to become a militaman or have other "lawful" jobs.

Some of the various jobs can also give the player various items to help him. Healer's apprentices gets access to the healers lab, militiamen are given an armor and sword (for as long as he has the job) etc.

Churches is also possible to add in this fashion. If they player decides to pray to one god, the other religions won't have anything to do with him. The various faiths can also play a role in career posibilities. A faitful servant of the God of Death and Destruction can't become a healer as an example. Changing faith should come at a very steep price. The abandoned god will try to smite him at various times for example. The God of Death and Destruction could send undead creatures to fight him, and the God of Luck could cause him to have bad luck in gambling and the like. Likewise the various gods should give the faithful player a bonus, like a stat bonus or special skill.

I imagine it would be quite hard to make all of the various jobs, especially since NPCs for the various trades needs to be made as well. I think it would make the game very interesting however, and it'll make it quite easy to come up with realistic and interesting quests.

I don't know much about Warhammer Online, but I assume they'll use something like this there. It is also somewhat similar to the system used in the "Gothic" games. In Gothic the player had to choose between various camps. Each had various benefits only available to the members of that camp.

My own personal opinion on the matter of classes versus personalization is that using classes as a means of getting people to group together is taking the easy way out. What better, or easier, way for a lazy game developer to FORCE people to group together? This of course pays no mind to people who are perfectly happy soloing or to those who like to group anyway but are stuck doing nothing for hours at a time in said game because they can't find a healer or a tank.

I think we need to come up with a better more creative way to get people to group together. I for one hate the cookie cutter characters. I hate knowing exactly what spell or skill I will get at which level, how much damage it is going to do, what items I can and cannot wear and so on and so forth.

My two cents.

Nothing says that you can't have both a class system and an open-ended design. Most games I'm aware of have a class system that front load the customization process, which is where all of the players will waste their valuable points learning the Lockpicking skill when they could save them for better things.

One idea is to just have the player pick from the classes just to set up his initial stats, skills, and look, and then leave no other means for front-end customization. Rigid class system, right? No. When they make their first level up, award the customization points and give them access to every skill and stat bonus, so that as they play the game, they go from a stereotype to their own specifically detailed character.

If a group plays together long enough, they'll acquire the skills that are neccessary and wont overlap, as it'd be a waste of time.

(edit: spelling)

I've been designing a simple RPG for some time (I have notes written down but I lack the programming skill to really create it)

The way I see it, freeform characters would probably be more satisfying to play because not only are they "leveled up" but their abilities are also acquired and chosen by the player.

For example, assume that all the base stats (strength, intelligence, magical ability, speed etc.) are determined by a number between 1 and 10 (like in the Sims or some pen and paper RPGs)

the player starts out with just 1 in each area and can build on that by training or through combat.

The skills, abilities, spells and equipment a player can use depend on the stat in a particular area. For example, anyone with at least 1 strength can use a dagger but they need at least 2 to handle a short sword and 7 to lift boulders.

Then, if you really want classes... you could have buildings set up in the game world where your character can attend to train as a particular class (Royal Academy of Black Magery?) and only characters with the skills and stats to meet the requirements can attend and be officially declared a given class.



So basically, anyone can do anything they want to as long as they can take the time to build up their strengths in that particular area. If you want, then you could add limiters like the exercising your magical powers drain on your strength stat or robbing innocent bystanders degrades your Charisma score (which ruins your chances to get into Paladin College)

I came up with the idea for a system that (though mildly complex) would actually mix the best of both worlds free form AND class systems.

The system is essentially free form, your character starts out as a non-classed PC. and is able to purchase all skills at a preset price. (in this example i'll say 10 skill points) To include flavor of races, certain races will have cheaper skills in some areas and more expensive skills in others,(8 and 12 points respectively) while all the other skills remain at the base cost. Now during a players life in the game they may be able to choose to join a profession (class) and this profession changes the way they play the game all together, you can have your basic professions fighter, thief, cleric, etc. and you can have more exotic classes in there that would spice things up. The way that professions work is basically they change the cost of about 70% of the skills in the game. Class skills drop to 1/2 the normal cost (5 points) while a very few skills remain at base (10) a few non-class but semi related skills would go up to 15 points, and the most non-traditional skills for that profession would double (20).
For racial characters those costs go 4(class), 8(base), 12(non-class semi-related), and 24 (non-traditional).

Players do not ever have to join a profession, instead choosing to try to stay reletively balanced in what they want to do.

Please note that the numbers are tossed out as examples but do not need to be followed. I think this is a way of building a system that follows both a class and free form system and (hopefully) manages to avoid creating the dreaded "Tank Mage"

The main benefit of a class system, as I see it, is to simplify things for the player. For example, It is a lot easier to look at a character and see "level X Archer" than to look at his weapons, see he has a crossbow in his inventory, then look at his stats and see he has a high dexterity stat, and then look at his skills and see he has quite a few skills an archer could use.

Take FFT for example, where you could tell if an enemy was going to shoot you form a distance or charge at you with a giant sword just by looking at the sprite. Imagine how difficult it would be if you had to look at all 5-10 enemies and figure out exactly what they are capable of. This would also be a lot more difficult if those enemies could do multiple things, like a white mage that had a huge defensive stats or a slow knight that also had a crossbow.

I think that free-form is better for the player because it gives the player more options in developing a character he truly wants. However, when it comes to enemies, I think that a static and straightforward class system is more appropriate.

The main problem, then, is what to do in a multiplayer game where the enemies are also PC's. In that case I think that a class system is the best choice. It makes things much easier and faster for the character when he need only take a quick glance at an opponent or ally to understand their capabilities than to look through each stat and skill.

I've been playing around with a mixed class/freeform system built upon zero sum advancement...no levels or anything like that, its more or less skills basied with modifyers for player chosen race and class helping to improve character rateings.
The core process of improveing the rateings is action basied...meaning that each specific action from casting spells to varaious combat forms, to lockpicking is basied on a number of skills and core attributes. if a critical sucsess is rolled then that action in turn helps increase the effected skills and attributes (while decreseing some others)...conversely a critical falure decreases those rateings while increaseing some others..these increases/decreases are modified by the chosen race and class...classes themselves work off branching refinement...at first the classes are quite general, but as characters improve new refined classes become available...these offer even more specialised modifyers for advancement.

Course this wouldn't work to the favor of power gamers, as the more specialised characters become, the more weaknesses are exposed...but the more sucsseful they become in the pursuit of thier specialties.

What is the purpose of character classes? Character classes have implications on both the player of the character and the character itself, and if you fear that by removing classes you remove some important implications, you might have to duplicate these implications in some other way. Here are a few thoughts on that.

Character classes guide the player. As Wutalife37 already stated, it is easier to be told that you are an archer instead of figuring that out yourself, or more importantly, tell what kind of enemies are you facing. I'd say that having to classify the enemies by their appearance is a part of the game. However, you could still have a system that gives you the approximate class of the character when given the skills and attributes. It really depends whether you want the player or the player character to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of the enemies. In the latter (player character) case it should be a skill, which can give a wrong classification if the character is not skilled enough. In the former (player) case it is a question of representation. Of course, you could e.g. have the text "WIZARD" floating on every wizard creature in the game world, but that would be silly, so you might want to consider other alternatives.

Character classes restrict the player, if the player character can't be the expert in everything. Classes can prevent the character from learning spells, fighting with specific weapons etc. While this can be beneficial, there should be a better reason for this than just stating it in the manual. It could be done without character classes as well: just have different guilds, cults, or similar factions that teach those spells/whatever. Joining such a faction would have all sorts of requirements. For instance, joining one faction might prevent you from joining another. It is not really all that different from a class based system, but it is in-game, and not really forced in the game mechanics. Learning the actual skills might have requirements as well.

Character classes allows for specialization of the character. While this is really a dual of the previous paragraph, it is an important point to note. Choosing a necromancer class could mean that you want to be a certain kind of wizard. At certain levels you get all sorts of spells for summoning spirits or whatever. This specialization could be built in the skill system; for instance, you could have a basic skill Spellcraft. Every skill level here would increase (say) the success of casting a spell 10%. Once you reach spell level (say) 10, you have the possibility to specialize to for instance Necromancy and Elemental Magic. Each skill level in these would increase the success possibility of the corresponding spells by 20%. Note that you still could choose to take the Spellcraft skill for its generic bonus if you wanted to. This hierarchal partition of the spells would continue until you reached single spells, where taking a skill level could increase spell success by (say) 50%. Similarly you could have "Fighting -> Melee or Ranged", "Melee -> Sword Mastery or Axe Mastery" etc. Each level of specialization will require some generic knowledge of the previous level.

Character classes describe and define the character. The class will define the character's personality, history, and current situation (such as profession). Professions can be handled with the factions (see above), personalities and histories should be attributes (if you really want to model them in-game rather than leaving that to the player's imagination, in the case of player character and not an npc). Much of this could really be left for the player's imagination.

Quote: Original post by sunandshadow
I hate class systems because they are restrictive, mechanical, and a poor substitute for giving characters abilities and jobs that fit their personalities, motivations and backstories.

I don't think that's entirely fair, classes aren't a substitute for those things at all, nor are they intended to be. Furthermore, classless systems are no guarantee that any more effort will be put into those things anyway, and allows careless players to build characters which make no sense within the game world.

With a class based system, you tend to pick a general role you want to play, and develop the character from there. This works very well with team play, as it makes it very easy to configure your character to the needs of the group as a whole. It's also a very quick way of getting a playable character, as you can flesh out the details as you go. Of course, if you're lazy you can play every barbarian exactly like Conan, or every wizard like Gandalf or whatever, but with a bit of imagination it is possible to come up with a huge number of different characters within each class, without resorting to stereotypes.

With a freeform system, you think of a general character and then try to work out skills and abilities he should have, given the game world. You have to flesh out the character first, as well as have a decent understanding of the game world, which takes a bit longer. It's also a bit harder to see where you fit in to the party as a whole, because everyone's abilities are weakly specified. It does however, give you more freedom and a greater ability to create jack-of-all-trades type characters which, to some extent, are necessary if there are only one or two player characters in the party.

I agree that some class systems are overly rigid - although in PnP this isn't really a problem - if the DM is half decent he'll happily let you bend or break the rules in the book given a decent rationale. In a CRPG you might want a bit more flexibility.

It should be noted though, that one of the common complaints levelled against CRPGs is that character creation is already too complex. Consider a player who knows nothing about the world your game is set in, and nothing about your game rules, suddenly being presented with a whole bunch of stats and skills to choose from. Even with a manual and suitable tooltip help, it will be rather daunting to a great deal of players. I think even with a freeform system, having some pre-designed character 'classes' is probably a good idea to help alleviate this problem.