The additions to ability scores is now a bit like TFT.

But the freeform growth is a little too freeform for me.

In any case I'd get rid of the random hit points unless you keep track of your total HD and either

A) roll again each time you add a die, taking the higher total (as in SineNomine's games), or

B) roll all your HD periodically, as in carcosa

I think b is kind of nuts but it would be preferable to choosing 1d10 and rolling a 1.

If you wanted to go the TFT route then make the choice:

+1 HD
+1 attribute (but probably remove CON, and make sure there's a use for all the others
Gain a skill or spell

Some skills or spells have prereqs

Spells can't be used unless known. Some skills can be used at "untrained" but at a penalty such as 1/2 attribute or worse.

If you want to complicate it further then say that not all skills/spells have the same cost to learn. Give N points of "learning" instead of "learn a spell or skill".

Finally if like me you would like to preserve some class separation, then require people to pick a focus and then spells/skills outside the focus cost X*N. Or have the first prereq for some skills/spell trees be rather costly, but let anyone have a free prereq at 1st level.

Quote from: Cave Bear;837514Cool.
In the future:

https://youtu.be/sioZd3AxmnE

I thought my OP at the top of this thread says pretty much the same things.

Quote from: Larsdangly;837455Exactly. It isn't straightforward to run Tomb of Horrors with Traveller.

Decades ago for shits and giggles, either myself or another GM in our crew decided to use a D&D module when we were playing Traveller.

It was most awesome.

I can't remember which of us nutters started it, but it became a thing with our group (possibly because I'd been mixing D&D and Gamma World), but we ran several D&D classics using Traveller.

It was our proto-RIFTS!

Quote from: Matt;837501Sigh...taking rules someone else wrote 40 years ago and pretending you've authored a new game is exactly what a ripoff is. OSR often seems to stand for "Outright Stealing & Ripoffs."

Ripping off old stuff is how new stuff is created. If you rip off obscure stuff, you are called a genius. If your ripoff makes lots of money, you are called an innovator.

Maybe there is a market for classless D&D? We won't know until somebody tries!

Oh, I get it now. Literally D&D without classes, not modifications to the "engine" that made classless games like Metamorphosis Alpha or Gamma World's early editions. Man, the thread title confused me. I thought it was a more general question.

Quote from: Larsdangly;837513- 40 years worth of grognards have correctly noted that every time you add a new class you implicitly narrow the view of what every other class can do. The classic example is the thief's appropriation of being sneaky, climbing and opening stuff, but you could argue the same thing about nearly any class you want to name. So, why not just say 'fuck it' to all of them and let every character try what they want? The strong characters will be good at feats of strength; the smart ones will succeed at things that call for cleverness, and so forth.

Dissatisfied with classes and wanting a more skills-based approach, I came up with a variant on the way classes were implemented, but it turned out looking something like Tunnels and Trolls...Warriors can't cast spells, wizards can, and rogues can, but not as well. I also added a "hunter" class which is even less adept at casting, but better at fighting. So I ended up with tiers for weapons, armor, spells, and skills...somehow turning into an archetypical class system.

If you can break out of this circularity, I'd certainly like to see the end result.

As long as you have levels, you're going to go around the same circle again and again.

Levels 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.

D&D really must be level-less if it's going to be truly classless.
BAB or THACO
Saves
Skills
Special Abilities
Hit Points
All of those are bought with experience differently.  

You could mimic Rolemaster in that "classes" simply defined access and rate of skill gain, or go true level-less like RuneQuest.

Any way you look at it, one hell of a lot of work.

I 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.

Kinda sounds like the OP is seeking a OSR version of True20.

I'm not a D20 fan, but I enjoyed True20.

Quote from: Larsdangly;837364There are so (so, so, so...) many OSR systems out there now, I was wondering whether anyone has made one that is clearly core D&D (levels, HP, AC, etc.) but has no classes.

There 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.

CRKrueger has some good points.

Quote from: CRKrueger;837649D&D really must be level-less if it's going to be truly classless.

I can comment from my experience developing my own system, Explore. I wanted it to be purely skill based, but with classes as an option if you want a predetermined mix of skills, and levels if you want a predetermined rate of improvement. An attempt to be the "best of both worlds".

Quote from: CRKrueger;837649As long as you have levels, you're going to go around the same circle again and again.

Levels 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.
D&D really must be level-less if it's going to be truly classless.

In 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: CRKrueger;837649BAB or THACO
Saves
Skills
Special Abilities
Hit Points
All of those are bought with experience differently.  

I agree also that these might have to be bought differently. I don’t having to spend points on things which aren't "my character is training to be better at x" e.g. saves, so I've actually had them derived from a level purely based upon the experience points. The level is not used for anything else.

Quote from: CRKrueger;837649Any way you look at it, one hell of a lot of work.

Yes, I’d totally agree with that! There have been a lot of ideas and rules discarded along the way.
My warning is that radical changes whilst remaining compatible to D&D make it even harder, and you can end up with an over complex system. My design only truly succeeded once I jettisoned making it compatible with D&D. (It’s tricky for a system to be compatible with D&D if it hasn't got hit points!).

Edit: To clarify, I mean it's a lot of work to create good rules, not that good games require writing a lot of rules!

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.

I have the newer version split into two books, and it's decent. The magic system is really neat, the other stuff not so much. Good resource for ideas, but yeah, I don't think I'd ever play it. The PDF is worth $3.45 for sure.

Quote from: CRKrueger;837649As long as you have levels, you're going to go around the same circle again and again.

Levels 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.

I can see a modified 5e D&D where each base level gives you 4HP (the extra hit points are a class feature), occasional proficiency bonuses, feat or ability increase every four levels, and damage increases in combat cantrips, and the rest is feats/class features/etc bought with the same N points per level that everyone gets. Balancing out costs would be a lot of work. Even if you do end up with de facto classes, I like that they arise naturally rather than being designed.

Classless OSR?  Easy as fuck.

You just make every character belong to one class: "adventurer".

d6 hit die (+1 hp per level after name level), magic-user attack table, cleric saving throw table, fighter experience table.  Characters are proficient in the use of all weapons and armor.

Every time you gain a level, pick a "perk", as follows:

Fighting skill: add +2 hp, +1/2 to attack rolls, and +1/4th to saving throws.  (Fractional bonuses mean nothing until they add up to a full point.)  A character who's taken this perk eight times, for example, nets a total +16 hp, +4 to attacks, and +2 to saves.  A character may reap the full benefits of this perk ten times; from the eleventh time onward that it is chosen, the core benefit drops to +1 hit point, +1/8th to attack rolls and +1/16th to saving throws.  In any event, you gain +1/2 an attack per round for every six total times this perk has been taken (3/2 the 6th time, 2 attacks per round the 12th time, 5/2 the 18th time, 3 per round the 24th time...).

Spell ability: the first time you take this perk, you gain the ability to learn and cast 1st level spells, magical and clerical alike, with one spell per day.  You keep a spell-book, which contains the "read magic" spell; any other spells that you want to learn, magical, clerical, druidic, whatever, have to be found and copied into your spell-book.  Thereafter, every time you take this perk again, your spells-per-day and access to spell levels improves according to the magic-user spell progression table.  Your caster level is still equal to your actual experience level, not the number of times you've taken the spell ability perk.

Turn undead: you can take this perk once; it grants you the ability to turn the undead as a cleric of equal level.

Expertise: Each time you take this perk, pick a skill, any skill, off the list of thief skills or from the skill chapter in the Rules Cyclopedia.  You can perform that skill with ninja-like perfection if you roll a successful ability check on 1d20 against the relevant ability.  Relevant abilities include Strength for climbing walls, Dexterity for moving silently, Wisdom for hearing noise, Intelligence for finding traps, and so forth.  (Or you can learn to backstab instead of picking up a skill.)  From 9th level onward, if desired, a character may choose to master a known skill rather than learn a new one when taking this perk.  This grants advantage on the d20 roll when checking the skill (roll two dice, take the better result).  (Improving backstab just raises the damage multiplier.)

Mysticism: The first time you take this perk, you gain the ability to cause 1d4 damage with your bare fists and to attack twice per round with fists or weapons if not wearing any armor.  Thereafter, subsequent improvements to mysticism alternate between even-numbered picks and odd-numbered picks.  On the 2nd, 4th, 6th, etc., even-numbered times you take this perk, your unarmored AC drops by 1 point and you gain a mystical ch'i power (in the order that mystics or monks normally gain such powers).  On the 3rd, 5th, 7th, etc., odd-numbered instances, your unarmed damage improves by one die-step (1d6, 1d8, 1d10...), your base speed improves by 10' (from 120' initially to 130', 140', 150'...), and you add one-forth of an unarmed attack per round (from two unarmed attacks initially to 9/4, 5/2, 11/4, 3/1...)

Quote from: John Quixote;837909Classless OSR?  Easy as fuck.

Take a 10th level Fighter-Magic User in that system with 5 levels as Fighter and 5 as Magic User and they'd be useless as a magic user. To be any good as an MU they'd need to be useless as a fighter.
Or how about a 10th level fighter who takes 1 level in Cleric and is now uber-brilliant at turning undead?

Quote from: JoeNuttall;837910Take a 10th level Fighter-Magic User in that system with 5 levels as Fighter and 5 as Magic User and they'd be useless as a magic user. To be any good as an MU they'd need to be useless as a fighter.

Hardly "useless" as either -- at least not in my campaigns. They would, of course be much less powerful in either ability as one who specialized in magic or combat for all ten levels, but they were be more versatile.

QuoteOr how about a 10th level fighter who takes 1 level in Cleric and is now uber-brilliant at turning undead?

No different than a standard cleric at 11th level. The standard cleric would have spells and could only use a few weapons. Your 10+1 fighter would not have spells but could still use all weapons -- seems okay (at least for my campaigns) to me.

Note that is is probably not the rules I'd use to do this, but I don't see these rules as so broken that wouldn't work okay at many tables.