Quote from: Premier;838203All the ideas and proposals we've seen in this thread so far attempt to do this, and they all run into the problems you've laid out in your previous two posts or so.

Not true. I suggested approaches based on Talislanta, TFT, and (implicitly) Dragonquest, but none of them got any traction. Yet I don't think they have these issues. The only real issue is that they all could be accused of reintroducing classes by encouraging specialization.

Quote from: Premier;838203JoeNuttall, you make interesting points. I think the main issue is that when we talk about 'classless classes' in D&D, everyone assumes a generic class that, through some sort of specialisation system, can do a full-on Fighter, AND a full-Thief, AND a full-on Magic User, AND a full-on Cleric, AND any blend of these, AND all of this with equal efficiency. All the ideas and proposals we've seen in this thread so far attempt to do this, and they all run into the problems you've laid out in your previous two posts or so.

I was actually only saying that (1) it's tricky, and (2) the approach suggested seemed able to model D&D3E multiclassing, not OD&D/BX/AD&D multiclassing and thus made magic users a bit underpowered in comparison.

In particular, if I said what you think I was saying, then I'd be criticising my own system!

Quote from: Premier;838203If a player wants to expand a bit outside the basic options (say, dabbling with magic, or becoming a sort of wrestler/strangler, or a martial arts monk), then they can get extra options if they 'earn' them in-game.

That's a very interesting idea, I like it.

Quote from: Larsdangly;837406Maybe! Though, honestly, I don't have such a grandiose view of my little house rules. A close reading of OD&D and various osr pastiches will show you nearly everything has been tried on for size; sometimes 'officially' and sometimes unofficially. I would say the notion of stat based rolls is a lot less radical than the 'alternate combat system' added part way through OD&D. And going from 2 classes in chainmail to 1 class in my fantasy hearbreaker is less of a big deal than the expansion from 2 to dozens of classes that happened in the 70's. Whenever a game looks and smells like D&D at the table, I call it D&D with a few house rules. That's what I think my little rules set is.

Does it matter whether it's "D&D with house rules", or "D&D variant" or "a system that's specially constructed to allow classless play and using the classic adventures, by feeding on and inputting roughly the same numbers"? And is there a meaningful difference?
Who cares, as long as at least some people think it would be a good idea and would help them?
In short, I'd find it useful. Other people might not. That is, it would share the same fate as absolutely any other system out there, from D&D 5e to Traveller 5 and Polaris.

Quote from: nezach;837408Mutant Future (and by extension Gamma World 1st) is classless unless you consider "mutant," "pure strain human," "Android," etc. classes.

If "Elf" and "Dwarf" can be classes, why not:D?

Quote from: David Johansen;837456sigh...hostile much?

Matt? Hostile?
Perish the thought:p!

Quote from: Larsdangly;837500How about this for boiled down: there are no abilities, beyond supernatural things like spell casting and turn undead. Every level you choose one of the following:

• +1d4 HP and one level worth of one type of spell using ability (Turn Undead is a unique power that can be taken once instead)
• +1d6 HP and +1 to any stat
• +1d10 HP

Everything other than spell casting is just a roll vs. a stat, thus you will get better at whatever you sink your stat points into.

Quote from: Larsdangly;837729I don't think it is as difficult as all that. Just imagine: all skills, gone. All abilities other than spell casting and turning undead, gone. All of the things one normally rolls dice to resolve - attacks, climbing, save vs. spells, picking locks, etc - are handled by a d20, roll under mechanic, vs. a stat/2. A couple of things need modifiers to yield close to the same odds we're used to, but otherwise it will be quite similar to the standard system.

Most people will choose to take 1d6 HP plus a stat point when they level up - as this is the only way to improve at your success chances. e.g, people who like knocking heads will mostly sink this into ST. Those who really like getting into every fight will drop in a d10 HP level now and then to jack up their HP total.

Balanced types who want to track, fight, sneak, etc. will end up distributing points among several stats.

Magicians will take 1d4 HP and a level of spell casting most of the time, occasionally taking 1d6 and a point of INT or WIS when they need to get access to the highest level spells.

It sounds weird, but in nearly every instance you will end up with characters with HP totals that look pretty familiar, and chances of succeeding at various things that look pretty familiar.

The only thing that looks strange on the character sheet is high level characters can have very high stats (a la T&T or Pendragon). But the effect of those stats is on scale with the way D&D is always played, so it doesn't really matter.

This set of D&D house rules makes the game look like some kind of funny T&T/TFT/D&D hybrid. But the retention of AC, HP and levels, plus all the meat of D&D (spells, monsters, items), means it is essentially D&D at the table.

That's close to my preferred version of the rules (admittedly, right now my preferred version of the rules is Dragon Age RPG, but that's besides the point)! Just add some "skill focuses" as an optional rule. The first removes the -3 penalty on whatever it is you're attempting, the second focus gives you +2 to the roll, you get the same number of those no matter what:).
If you also go to the Chainmail rules and make it d6 based, you'd be golden and I might promise to post bi-weekly reports for a while (assuming no emergency prevent the sessions)!

Quote from: Turanil;837767There is this game based on D&D, but without classes.

Wayfarers-RPG

I got it a long time ago, but it was not to my RPG tastes, and I found it rather complicated to use.

How close is it to D&D? I mean, does it use the same 6 stats, same level progression and so on?

Quote from: JoeNuttall;837770In Explore you can opt to add an extra skill instead of increasing one of them, so it is possible, but I expect anyone who does would prefer to switch to the pure skills version. So most of the time, when you have levels, you do indeed just have custom-designed classes like you say.

If you think of anyone who can cast a spell and has above average skill with a sword as a "gish", sure.
But the point is, getting just the right combo of skills for your fighter-magic user can take several splatbooks full of classes. I know, I've tried (though it was a roguish fighter).
Isn't it better to just have those rules and let people custom-design whatever classes they're going to want anyway?
Does the game gain anything from me having to play a ranger who gets priest spells that I don't want, and only some of the skills I want, just because the DM is new and isn't sure how to adapt the ranger class;)?

Quote from: Larsdangly;838054Gah! Why does this seem so hard? Perhaps the ideas I've suggested are not clear. In any event, it seems trivial to me:

Fighter/MU or Elf: I would suggest a sub-equal mix of taking [1d4 HP+spell level], [1d6 HP+stat point] and [1d10 HP] level ups, such that a 6th level character would have something on the order of 23 HP (on average), be capable of casting 2nd level magic user spells, and have increased a favored stat or stats by +2, with attendant improvements to-hit, etc. That's not so different from an average 1E Fighter/MU with an equivalent experience point total.

Spell slots are the one thing that demands its own sub system equivalent to RAW D&D. I would suggest one table that applies to anyone who has one or more spell casting levels. If you have spell casting levels in two or more different types of magic (MU, Clerical, Druid, etc.), just treat them as separate pools of respective spells.

That makes lots of sense to me, FWIW;).

Quote from: Arminius;838228Not true. I suggested approaches based on Talislanta, TFT, and (implicitly) Dragonquest, but none of them got any traction. Yet I don't think they have these issues. The only real issue is that they all could be accused of reintroducing classes by encouraging specialization.

Shouldn't lifepaths be an easy solution to that?

CRKrueger posted

Quote from: CRKrueger;837649Levels where you get X whatevers per level mean you are capped at how far you can gain per level, so the template of what you want to be good at is going to have certain things that are going to "need" to be taken, leaving very little for non-core role advancement, and you end up with de facto classes again, even if they are custom-designed.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;837770In Explore you can opt to add an extra skill instead of increasing one of them, so it is possible, but I expect anyone who does would prefer to switch to the pure skills version. So most of the time, when you have levels, you do indeed just have custom-designed classes like you say.

Quote from: AsenRG;838373If you think of anyone who can cast a spell and has above average skill with a sword as a "gish", sure.
But the point is, getting just the right combo of skills for your fighter-magic user can take several splatbooks full of classes. I know, I've tried (though it was a roguish fighter).
Isn't it better to just have those rules and let people custom-design whatever classes they're going to want anyway?
Does the game gain anything from me having to play a ranger who gets priest spells that I don't want, and only some of the skills I want, just because the DM is new and isn't sure how to adapt the ranger class;)?

Sorry I don't follow you. What did you think I was saying that you disagreed with?

Quote from: JoeNuttall;838449Sorry I don't follow you. What did you think I was saying that you disagreed with?

Well, maybe it was me misunderstanding you, so let's try to clear it out.

Basically, CRKrueger posted that due to the fact that we have limited "point values", you end up with de facto classes again, just custom-designed.
You basically agreed that it happens most of the time, if I'm getting you right.
I pointed out that it's the "custom" part that matters. I might have 3 supplements with classes and not find the kind of fighter-rogue I want, which is exactly what happened the first time I was playing. Or I might have a system that allows me to custom-design my "class", and avoid all the hassle.

Quote from: AsenRG;838472Well, maybe it was me misunderstanding you, so let's try to clear it out.

Basically, CRKrueger posted that due to the fact that we have limited "point values", you end up with de facto classes again, just custom-designed.
You basically agreed that it happens most of the time, if I'm getting you right.
I pointed out that it's the "custom" part that matters. I might have 3 supplements with classes and not find the kind of fighter-rogue I want, which is exactly what happened the first time I was playing. Or I might have a system that allows me to custom-design my "class", and avoid all the hassle.

CRKreuger said that with level-based skill systems you get custom-designed classes, and I agreed that this was often the case. I wasn't complaining about custom-designed classes - I think they're cool and I hate splat books. My system has either freeform skills or custom designed classes.

Quote from: JoeNuttall;838490CRKreuger said that with level-based skill systems you get custom-designed classes, and I agreed that this was often the case. I wasn't complaining about custom-designed classes - I think they're cool and I hate splat books. My system has either freeform skills or custom designed classes.

Yes, but he pointed them as a problem. Or rather, as a "what's the point then", unless I've misunderstood him:).
Hence me pointing out that the point is in the "custom" part;).

Several years ago on teh TLG forums, Serleran broke down all the classes in C&C and made a point buy system for making your own character.  It was pretty nifty and I thought I had it saved, but alas, I cannot find it.  You can ask him over on Dragonsfoot.

Quote from: AsenRG;838542Yes, but he pointed them as a problem. Or rather, as a "what's the point then", unless I've misunderstood him:).
Hence me pointing out that the point is in the "custom" part;).

Aha - I see :-)

It would be tremendously easy to do a classless OSR game; but classes are one of the best things about D&D!

Quote from: RPGPundit;839310It would be tremendously easy to do a classless OSR game; but classes are one of the best things about D&D!

As far as I'm concerned, they aren't even close to the top:). Close to the bottom is a more apt descriptor of my feelings, in fact.
Of course, even if the OP creates such a game, there would be enough games and clones for those that share your feelings;).

Quote from: RPGPundit;839310It would be tremendously easy to do a classless OSR game; but classes are one of the best things about D&D!

I think that is true unless the options were very minimal.  It lets the designer try and balance classes against each other, often in subtle ways, without creating a single best option.  

Some games can do it (Savage Worlds seems to have several optima rather than one) without being excessively complex.  

Otherwise I would almost rather do the R&PL Alice approach, where everyone is different by chance.  But we already have that with ability scores.

Embodying archetypes is one of the things that makes D&D feel like D&D.

Quote from: RPGPundit;840065Embodying archetypes is one of the things that makes D&D feel like D&D.

The game I just started is a quasi-classless OSR kind of thing sort of based on Microlite20/74ex and I basically broke down the class features of the various classes into a surprisingly short list and then when we had conversations about what the characters were like, we ended up giving each character two of them.

The end result:  Everyone embodies archetypes anyway.  The process produced those type of characters anyway.

I'm note sure what direction to go with in terms of an D&D type OSR game that has a classless system that still has class feature like elements that wouldn't simply produce the normal D&D archetypes (and some variants) depending on how you combined them.

The only real abnormal thing would be if someone ended up with a character with both wizardry and priestly magic.  They wouldn't have any more spell points and armour makes wizardry cost more, but they'd have more options when it comes to spellcasting.  It'd probably still feel pretty archetypal in terms of being the magic man.

Quote from: RPGPundit;840065Embodying archetypes is one of the things that makes D&D feel like D&D.

You must be using some different archetypes from the ones I can think of.

IME, classes tend to prevent embodying archetypes from happening. That's usually because of niche protection, and because each new class skills require either doing something extraordinary, or restricting other classes from doing something everyone could attempt before the new class was devised.