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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Four Classes

There's a forum thread out there called "What Is Your Fifth Class?" The idea was that, if you were starting over and designing OD&D yourself, and you were going to do it with the basic four plus one other, what would be your "one other"?

Naturally, I'm not going to play that game. I'm going to question why we'd need more than four classes, and how I'd change it so that four classes would seem like enough.

You start with two classes: Fighter and Magic-User. These seem like two extremes: the mundane and the supernatural. However, I'd argue that "Fighter" is actually the middle path, the jack of all (mundane) trades who also has access to magic, but only through magic items. The Fighter has the fastest hit die progression; the Magic-User essentially halves the rate of gaining hit points in exchange for supernatural powers. Fighters can be recast as barbarians, gladiators, knights, and many other "classes", but it's really just a matter of changing the equipment and maybe adding some regional expertise or situational familiarity. Likewise, the Magic-User can be recast as a psychic, alchemist, druid, or many other "classes" just by changing the focus of the spell list and maybe the process of preparing and casting spells, without changing any of the class abilities.

The third class, the Thief, represents a shift in the opposite direction from the Magic-User. The Thief halves the rate of gaining hit points for excellence in a specific mundane area: thievery. There should, theoretically, be other mundane specialties, but these could all be expressed as Thieves with the thief skills re-purposed as other mundane skills -- technically the same class, even though they'd receive other names, like my Leech class, Miner class, Smith class, and Tinkerer class. This is why I rename the Thief as the Talent, to make it broader.

In theory, all you need is three classes, if they are arranged as two extremes and a middle path as described above. But the Cleric represents another option, mixing two of the other three classes, in this case Fighter and Magic-User. Again, there should be other hybrids possible -- three total, in fact, each of which can be tweaked to fit different concepts. I proposed actually changing the name of the class to "Hybrid" to help shake the oddly-specific nature of the class as presented.

For any given area, I'd limit the populace to exactly four classes, one variety of each of the Talent, the Fighter, the Magic-User, and the Hybrid. If "Thief" is the variety of Talent available in the area, that doesn't mean there aren't professional healers or tinkerers or smiths in the area, but it does mean that only Thieves are seen as a field where a person could become a legend. If a player wants to be a heroic Smith, it's possible, but that character will stand out as *the* heroic Smith; all others in that culture will be purely mundane professionals, or Fighters, Thieves, Magic-Users, or Hybrids with ordinary smith skills as an add-on. All henchmen hired will be from one of the four classes specified for that region.

However, the region next door will also have four classes, but the varieties may be different. In the deep woodland realm, there may be no scholarly Magic-Users, only Druids. I've talked about this before, but I wanted to address it again in a clearer manner: restricting a region to just one instance of each of the four classes keeps things simple and zeroes in on what distinguishes one culture from another.

7 comments:

  1. I must admit I"m partial to a woodsman of some sort as option 5. You do have an excelllent point however in that a region with Beastmen, Pyromancers, Shamen, Bushwackers would be a different place from one with Ritters, Hexers, Cloisters, and Bandits.

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  2. I really like how Realms of Renown handled it (it's a MicroLite20flavor).

    Where are Character Classes?
    There are no set classes but you are welcome to a title or trade that you could refer to your character as having. This will make it easier for other players to get an idea of who you are. The table below shows some examples of different types of character titles, or trades, separated by groups into what a character of a strong certain stat may pursue.


    Characters of Strength
    Adventurer
    Barbarian
    Brigand
    Cavalier
    Cavalrymen
    Crusader
    Explorer
    Footman
    Gladiator
    Guard
    Holy Warrior
    Knight
    Man/Woman-at-Arms
    Martyr
    Mercenary
    Militiaman
    Nomad
    Paladin
    Patron
    Raider
    Rebel
    Renegade
    Ronin
    Samurai
    Seaman
    Soldier
    Squire
    Warmonger

    Characters of Mind
    Abbot
    Acolyte
    Archmage
    Chronicler
    Cleric
    Conjurer
    Crone
    Curate
    Druid
    Enchanter/Enchantress
    Hag
    Hedge Wizard
    Heretic
    Illusionist
    Mage
    Missionary
    Necromancer
    Pilgrim
    Priest/Priestess
    Seer
    Shaman
    Sorcerer
    Spellbinder
    Thaumaturge
    Theurgist
    Warlock
    Witch

    Characters of Dexterity
    Assassin
    Bandit
    Bard
    Blackguard
    Friar
    Guide
    Hermit/Hermitess
    Initiate
    Journeyman
    Knave
    Longbowman
    Minstrel
    Monk
    Ninja
    Outlaw
    Pathfinder
    Pirate
    Ranger/Rangeress
    Robber
    Rogue
    Scout
    Smuggler
    Spy
    Thief
    Traveler
    Troubadour
    Wayfarer

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  3. I think "class" can describe three different things, what someone does, what someone has and how someone acts. The problem I have with putting fighter and magic-user together is that they overlap. A fighter does, he fights. A magic-user has, he has spells. A magic-user can fight, often does. But a fighter can't have spells, though as you point out magic items are kinda close.

    I actually did a post myself about classes and would love your opinion (plus, I can't put all that in this comments box ;)
    http://www.thehomelessnerd.blogspot.com/2013/08/why-i-hate-classes-and-how-id-improve.html

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    Replies
    1. I'll address the class issues in a full post. But I'd like to comment on one statement in your blog post: "This kind of cross-genera role-playing is impossible with D&D in any of its versions." I can't speak for other editions, but for OD&D this is completely true... if, by "impossible" you mean "standard practice". People were travelling from a Conan/Middle Earth world to Barsoom, WWII Europe, and the Wild West since before D&D was even published.

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    2. First, thank you for reading my comment and my post, I appreciate the feedback :)

      Second, judging from your comments I might not have said what I wanted to in the way I wanted to, I'll have to pause my current project and try to get back to the topic in the next few days.

      Third, I tend to be very literally-minded, surprisingly so for a fairly creative person, so I usually judge rules by how they are written. I'll admit the great joy of an RPG is how people can get creative and go outside the box, even with regards to rules, but I believe that is a bonus and not a feature. Relying on the creativity of your players is necessary, but I also feel something to be avoided as much as possible in a way - that the rules should still provide a solid core of possibilities and interactions and consequences. I think of playing the mage in a pen and paper D&D verses a computer game (say, Neverwinter Nights). A computer game mage almost never works exactly as written because being able to do one significant thing a day sucks. Which suggests that maybe easing or modifying the rules for how that class works would be better than having to 'fix' it by player/outside-the-rules modification.

      That turned into something of a long ramble, I apologize, that may or may not be clear. I'll concede that the "standard but can be modified" caveat should be added to my statement.

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    3. There are a number of competing definitions of "new school" vs. "old school" floating around, but perhaps one pair could be "thinks going outside the box is a bonus" vs. "thinks going outside the box is a feature". Or maybe "focuses on the defined abilities and role of the character" vs. "focuses on options outside the defined abilities and role of the character". What you describe about Neverwinter Nights is exactly why I and some others don't like Neverwinter Nights very much; it's mostly about learning the rules and tactics written into the game.

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    4. I will give a hearty "amen" to that :)

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