As the person who started this thing, I will agree that one challenge of any classless game that aims at a D&D sort of game play is that characters in most classless games blur together into a blob of fighter/mage/thief sameness. You could say the same thing about versions of D&D that make multiclassing too easy and beneficial.

I think the reason these sorts of games turn out this way is that character advancement tends to let you mold any starting character to turn into something else, so everyone aims at the same spot that seems ideal under that game's rules.

I suspect if you wanted to make a classless D&D that still has a diversity of character types, the key is probably to make attributes quite important (so you will always be best at whatever set of things are covered by your highest stat), and to make sure the advancement rules don't let you fill in the gaps to smooth yourself into a pasty mush of sameness.

Quote from: Larsdangly;840150As the person who started this thing, I will agree that one challenge of any classless game that aims at a D&D sort of game play is that characters in most classless games blur together into a blob of fighter/mage/thief sameness. You could say the same thing about versions of D&D that make multiclassing too easy and beneficial.

I think the reason these sorts of games turn out this way is that character advancement tends to let you mold any starting character to turn into something else, so everyone aims at the same spot that seems ideal under that game's rules.

I've played lots of classless systems - way more than I've played class systems, in fact, especially since the majority of my game group has very strong opinions on the idea of classes as a mechanic - and that's simply not true.
Most people tend to come to the table with the idea of an archetype they want to play. In some rare cases, these are taken from D&D-like sources, like WoW. These are the only cases when they would map well to the normal class system.
In the majority of cases, though, people want to play an archetype that's simply not well represented by the usual classes.
"I want to play a wizard like Gandalf...what do you mean, I suck with swords? And talking with animals is about druids and rangers?"
"I want to play a character like Old Shatterhand, except in a fantasy variant...what do you mean I've got to be a ranger? He hasn't grown up in the wilderness, just like Old Shatterhand hasn't grown there. And I've got to be a monk to really have a chance to drop someone with one punch?"
"I want to play a barbarian like Conan." 'Nuff said.
"I want to play a samurai, except a fantasy one...so that's a fighter. What do you mean, I probably suck at detecting traps and ambushes? These guys are actually fairly well-known for not falling for that, not to mention having special precautions against sucker chopping baked into their etiquette!"
"I want to play a nobleman...what do you mean, it's an NPC class?"
"I want to play a wizard that throws fireballs! Yes, like the one I'm playing in WoW!"
Guess which character was the only one easy to accommodate within the rules:D?

For a game that's trying to make it easy to play archetypes, the actual classes of D&D are notoriously bad for accommodating the archetypes most people can think of. The one exception are archetypes derived by D&D itself.
But "play these archetypes because these are the archetypes that people had decided make for good niche protection" is how it looks when the hobby is disappearing up its own ass;)!

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

Not so sure about that. But maybe I dont have as many sacred cows as others

Quote from: AsenRG;840129You must be using some different archetypes from the ones I can think of.

There are three archetypes in Fantasy:

The Fighting Man.  He's often a knight, a swordsman or other melee expert, but archers, slingers, gunners or or bare handed types can fit in this archetype.  Woodsmen, holy warriors also fit into this.

The Expert.  This one can be many, many, many things, from thief and assassin to merchant to bard and entertainer, but his area of expertise is typically knowledge, lore, nominally noncombat abilities.  Noblemen and women, seducers.  Some of these will also know how to use weapons, but it's not their focus.

The Magic User.  This one is self-explanatory, but in case it's not, these are the master of the arcane, the manipulation of reality in ways no one but each other can understand.

D&D split the Magic User into two roles, with a Healer, but those three are the archetypes you can put any character.  Yes, yes, I know there are 'exceptions', but even then, most of those, various heroes can fit mostly into one archetype over another.  For example, Fafrd was mostly a Fighting Man, despite being a capable thief and sometime caster, and the Grey Mouser was mainly an Expert (thief), again, despite being a master swordsman and sorcerer's apprentice.

I feel it is somewhat unusual for sword-and-sorcery protagonists to be as neatly pegged into an "archetype" as D&D characters tend to be. Elric is a capable swordsman, even if dependent on the eldricht nourishment provided by a cursed blade, as well as an accomplished sorcerer. Conan is a thief, a reaver and a slayer, among others. Fafhrd is a big burly sword-swinging northerner who's also a thief, and trained as a skald. The Mouser dabbles in wizardry in addition to being a thief and a swordsman. And so on.

The saving grace of classes, to me, has little to do with Jungian smoke and mirrors and everything to do with offering new players an easy role to latch into. You're a thief, you skulk around, steal stuff, pick locks, scout ahead and stab people in the back. You're a fighter, you take point and bash things. You're a wizard, you and your pointy hat stand behind the fighter and cast spells.

The cleric is admittedly an odd one, equal parts Knight Templar, combat medic and Abrahamic miracle-worker. But it's become ubiquitous enough in modern pop culture and fantasy that most newbs can grok it. You heal, buff and emergency-tank, to put it in MMO terms.

Quote from: NathanIW;840085The 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.

You might want to take that as a hint...

Quote from: RPGPundit;840608You might want to take that as a hint...

This may not be the hint that you meant, but what I take away from it is that a flexible or classless game is fine as long as the elements are there to produce the archetypes people want.  People don't have to be locked into a preset configuration of class features to still embody the archetypes they are interested in.  For example, the rogue like character in my current doesn't have any sort of back stab/sneak attack mechanic but is still very much The Expert at skulduggery.

I always thought the special role of classes in D&D stems from the structure and purpose of the game, which is problem solving. Managing your resources is a major kind of problem solving in D&D, and so is composing a party so its collective ability is greater than what any one character type could do alone. This is why it isn't a 'problem' that D&D lacks nuanced, realistic combat or other sorts of fiddly bits that seem necessary in other rpg's: It is a game that wants to be a game, and wants to make you try to play skillfully under constraints.

That doesn't mean I don't think classless D&D could be a cool game. Its just that I 'get' the value of doing it the normal way. The only thing that drives me ape shit about classes is their pointless proliferation in most editions.

Quote from: AsenRG;840159In the majority of cases, though, people want to play an archetype that's simply not well represented by the usual classes.
"I want to play a wizard like Gandalf...what do you mean, I suck with swords? And talking with animals is about druids and rangers?"
"I want to play a character like Old Shatterhand, except in a fantasy variant...what do you mean I've got to be a ranger? He hasn't grown up in the wilderness, just like Old Shatterhand hasn't grown there. And I've got to be a monk to really have a chance to drop someone with one punch?"
"I want to play a barbarian like Conan." 'Nuff said.
"I want to play a samurai, except a fantasy one...so that's a fighter. What do you mean, I probably suck at detecting traps and ambushes? These guys are actually fairly well-known for not falling for that, not to mention having special precautions against sucker chopping baked into their etiquette!"
"I want to play a nobleman...what do you mean, it's an NPC class?"
"I want to play a wizard that throws fireballs! Yes, like the one I'm playing in WoW!"
Guess which character was the only one easy to accommodate within the rules:D?

For a game that's trying to make it easy to play archetypes, the actual classes of D&D are notoriously bad for accommodating the archetypes most people can think of.

Depending on how picky a player is, none of these is very hard in D&D 5e.

Wizard like Gandalf? Choose elf as race (proficiency with longsword), or take the weapon master feat, or a single level in Fighter at some point. (When did Gandalf talk to animals, other than Shadowfax? But you could take a feat to get Speak with Animals, or use the Sending spell once you're high enough level.)

Old Shatterhand? Rangers don't have to have grown up in the wilderness; survival skill might be enough anyway. 16, 18 or 20 strength gives enough damage bonus to an unarmed strike to drop a commoner, even without the Tavern Brawler feat. (I don't know enough about the character to say more.)

Barbarian like Conan? Um... Barbarian?

Samurai who detects traps and ambushes: good Wisdom for perception, backed up with Alert or Observant feats (or both).

Nobleman? It's a background.

If you don't have very specific mechanics in mind, it doesn't seem too hard to match a lot of fantasy archetypes. I think I might prefer a near-classless system--feats give you some indication of the relative value of various features, although some of the more significant class features would be tricky. So, a basic flavorless class with extra points to buy feats or more hit points or more spell casting or whatever. I think you'd end up with some of the same classes: wizards who put every point into a race to the highest level spells; fighters who put every point into combat effectiveness; roguebards who put lots of points into skills. But you'd lose some of the less focused classes as just a point on the continuum of characters with some combat and some magic or whatever.

Quote from: NathanIW;840616This may not be the hint that you meant, but what I take away from it is that a flexible or classless game is fine as long as the elements are there to produce the archetypes people want.  People don't have to be locked into a preset configuration of class features to still embody the archetypes they are interested in.  For example, the rogue like character in my current doesn't have any sort of back stab/sneak attack mechanic but is still very much The Expert at skulduggery.

I meant it as a hint that your particular gaming group might actually like working with the archetypes classes provides.

Absolutely.  Though not having class features prebundled has let them concentrate on the elements that interest them without being saddled with elements other people have associated with the archetypes.  Like not having to be about backstabbing/sneak attacking as a rogue or turning undead as a priest.  And the cleric in question is all about wielding a trident rather than the usual blunt weapons only thing.

Quote from: NathanIW;841059Absolutely.  Though not having class features prebundled has let them concentrate on the elements that interest them without being saddled with elements other people have associated with the archetypes.  Like not having to be about backstabbing/sneak attacking as a rogue or turning undead as a priest.  And the cleric in question is all about wielding a trident rather than the usual blunt weapons only thing.

Yeah, but you can still have the above without getting rid of the class system.  You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

Well, except for the baby hasn't been thrown out.  The players did end up getting archetypes after all.  It's not truly classless though.  It's more like build you own class.

I'm not doing anything crazy here.  It's basically an adventurer class with d6 HP, choose 2 class features from fighting, skulduggery, lore, interaction, athletics, back stab, turn undead/demons, arcane talent, divine blessing or folk magic.  At level 5 get another.  At name level get another.

The skill sounding ones are like secondary skills.  Sort of a "this character is truly good at this" reminder for adjudication.

So far:
A cleric with Fighting, divine blessing
A rogue with Skulduggery, and athletics
A mage with arcane talent and lore
A noble warrior with fighting and interaction
A savage warrior with fighting and athletics
A ranger with fighting and folk magic
A hedge wizard with arcane talent and folk magic

At first I thought taking a secondary skill in place of something like spellcasting would never be as good, but the player who took two of them is doing just fine.  We've had some character deaths and a bit of consideration for being great at hiding can go along way when you're a level 1 character in a game with no "appropriate encounter level" safety rails.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;840288There are three archetypes in Fantasy:

The Fighting Man.  He's often a knight, a swordsman or other melee expert, but archers, slingers, gunners or or bare handed types can fit in this archetype.  Woodsmen, holy warriors also fit into this.

The Expert.  This one can be many, many, many things, from thief and assassin to merchant to bard and entertainer, but his area of expertise is typically knowledge, lore, nominally noncombat abilities.  Noblemen and women, seducers.  Some of these will also know how to use weapons, but it's not their focus.

The Magic User.  This one is self-explanatory, but in case it's not, these are the master of the arcane, the manipulation of reality in ways no one but each other can understand.

D&D split the Magic User into two roles, with a Healer, but those three are the archetypes you can put any character.  Yes, yes, I know there are 'exceptions', but even then, most of those, various heroes can fit mostly into one archetype over another.  For example, Fafrd was mostly a Fighting Man, despite being a capable thief and sometime caster, and the Grey Mouser was mainly an Expert (thief), again, despite being a master swordsman and sorcerer's apprentice.

Oh please... If that's your list, you really, really want a system with only three classes that don't include cleric, or a classless system.
And all of your examples support a classless system.

Quote from: The Butcher;840321I feel it is somewhat unusual for sword-and-sorcery protagonists to be as neatly pegged into an "archetype" as D&D characters tend to be. Elric is a capable swordsman, even if dependent on the eldricht nourishment provided by a cursed blade, as well as an accomplished sorcerer. Conan is a thief, a reaver and a slayer, among others. Fafhrd is a big burly sword-swinging northerner who's also a thief, and trained as a skald. The Mouser dabbles in wizardry in addition to being a thief and a swordsman. And so on.

The saving grace of classes, to me, has little to do with Jungian smoke and mirrors and everything to do with offering new players an easy role to latch into. You're a thief, you skulk around, steal stuff, pick locks, scout ahead and stab people in the back. You're a fighter, you take point and bash things. You're a wizard, you and your pointy hat stand behind the fighter and cast spells.

The cleric is admittedly an odd one, equal parts Knight Templar, combat medic and Abrahamic miracle-worker. But it's become ubiquitous enough in modern pop culture and fantasy that most newbs can grok it. You heal, buff and emergency-tank, to put in MMO terms.

And let's not forget, Conan reads ancient scripts and performs a ritual that chases away an ensorcelled pursuer...
When the big three (Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser and Conan) examples of genre characters are outside the limits of a class system, it's time for a classless one.

Quote from: NathanIW;840616This may not be the hint that you meant, but what I take away from it is that a flexible or classless game is fine as long as the elements are there to produce the archetypes people want.  People don't have to be locked into a preset configuration of class features to still embody the archetypes they are interested in.  For example, the rogue like character in my current doesn't have any sort of back stab/sneak attack mechanic but is still very much The Expert at skulduggery.

Bingo:D!

Quote from: Larsdangly;840641I always thought the special role of classes in D&D stems from the structure and purpose of the game, which is problem solving. Managing your resources is a major kind of problem solving in D&D, and so is composing a party so its collective ability is greater than what any one character type could do alone. This is why it isn't a 'problem' that D&D lacks nuanced, realistic combat or other sorts of fiddly bits that seem necessary in other rpg's: It is a game that wants to be a game, and wants to make you try to play skillfully under constraints.

That doesn't mean I don't think classless D&D could be a cool game. Its just that I 'get' the value of doing it the normal way. The only thing that drives me ape shit about classes is their pointless proliferation in most editions.

IMO, there's only one class of characters. It's the PCs class.
The rest of them are NPCs, or should be. And the system should reflect that.

Quote from: rawma;840716Depending on how picky a player is, none of these is very hard in D&D 5e.

Wizard like Gandalf? Choose elf as race (proficiency with longsword), or take the weapon master feat, or a single level in Fighter at some point. (When did Gandalf talk to animals, other than Shadowfax? But you could take a feat to get Speak with Animals, or use the Sending spell once you're high enough level.)

Gandalf is consistently described as a human, so elf is right out.
The other option requires two feats. Can I even afford it as a starting PC?

Let's skip the next, because you said you don't know him well.

QuoteBarbarian like Conan? Um... Barbarian?

With barbarian rages, Read ancient script, Perform Rituals with impromptu tools and being sneakier than a thief, and able to kill a major enemy with a knife, as long as you can get surprise, which suggests a sneak attack mechanic?
You honestly think the Barbarian class covers that?

QuoteSamurai who detects traps and ambushes: good Wisdom for perception, backed up with Alert or Observant feats (or both).

Good. And he gets more observant with experience, right? That's a major part.
If so, good on that account. I kinda doubt the 5e combat reminds of kenjutsu duels, but that's not the fault of the classes.

QuoteNobleman? It's a background.

Do you really mean said background makes me richer, better trained at least in social skills, lore and possibly in occult matters, and gives me a cadre of bodyguards? If not, that's not a nobleman.

QuoteIf you don't have very specific mechanics in mind, it doesn't seem too hard to match a lot of fantasy archetypes.

I don't think in mechanics, I think in character abilities. Way too often, you can't get those with a starting character, because the designer had a different idea about the class. So you need a variant class, thus, class proliferation.
Not a problem with classless systems for obvious reasons.
But I get it, 5e is obviously better at it. I reserve judgement about whether it's good enough until after I finish reading it (I stopped in order to switch to reading something else, I think it was 13th Age, and didn't come back, so I only remember the combat system left me just as uninspired as the previous edition's combat). Still, I'd like an OSR classless system. Because it's a different kind of system, and sometimes I want the more freeform approach of OSR.

QuoteI think I might prefer a near-classless system--feats give you some indication of the relative value of various features, although some of the more significant class features would be tricky. So, a basic flavorless class with extra points to buy feats or more hit points or more spell casting or whatever. I think you'd end up with some of the same classes: wizards who put every point into a race to the highest level spells; fighters who put every point into combat effectiveness; roguebards who put lots of points into skills. But you'd lose some of the less focused classes as just a point on the continuum of characters with some combat and some magic or whatever.

And I'd prefer a classless system where you buy the extra HP or the spellcasting.
Maybe I should switch to working on my hack for a classless AGE system.

Quote from: RPGPundit;841334Yeah, but you can still have the above without getting rid of the class system.  You're throwing out the baby with the bathwater.

What's the bonus of classes we're throwing out? If people are still playing archetypal characters, it's not that!

Quote from: AsenRG;841407And let's not forget, Conan reads ancient scripts and performs a ritual that chases away an ensorcelled pursuer...
When the big three (Fafhrd, the Grey Mouser and Conan) examples of genre characters are outside the limits of a class system, it's time for a classless one.


(...)

With barbarian rages, Read ancient script, Perform Rituals with impromptu tools and being sneakier than a thief, and able to kill a major enemy with a knife, as long as you can get surprise, which suggests a sneak attack mechanic?
You honestly think the Barbarian class covers that?

I'll play devil's advocate, since I guess my position is obvious from the post you've quoted.

Conan does pick locks and read scrolls, like a thief. He does not necessarily does these things well. Or, at any rate, as skillfully as a "classed" thief or wizard.

So I wouldn't necessarily assume that a proper a Conan-emulating Barbarian class need specific class abilities to cover these things.

Nevertheless, like I said, I think the "genericness" of D&D classes is a cool trade-off as it offers players, particularly new ones, an immediate "hook" on which to hang their gameplay; an obvious role to fill.

When I want to bypass the restrictions of D&D's archetypal classes, or just about any fantasy game that doesn't quite hew to the universe D&D implies, I default to a skill-based system; Runequest 6 for a bells-and-whistles deal, Openquest or Savage Worlds for a no-frills thing.