The Campaign Builder's Guild

So... summat like 3+con mod per buy?

Geez, leave for work and by the time you come home, thereâ,¬,,¢s like 50 posts. I donâ,¬,,¢t have time to keep up with it all, but it seems to me some people are confused about what is or is not entailed by having a system with classes, with levels, or both.

no classes, no levels: The GM periodically awards development points (call them character points, experience points, whatever. The players can immediately spend these points to improve their character. There are no class-like restrictions on what they might buy. However, there still could be some differences from character to character. For example, each character might be allowed to choose specialties â,¬' skills or abilities that they buy at a discount compared to others. Or there might be racial or cultural benefits of a similar nature. Or certain races might get N number of free points to spend on some package of cultural goodies. You get the idea.

classes, no levels: The GM periodically awards development points as above. But in this case a character must choose a class when they start, and this might give them some discounts, benefits, or freebies; rather similar to above but with specific professional skill/ability packages or the like. These wouldnâ,¬,,¢t even have to be rigid packages, they could be pick one from column A and two from column B kind of thing. You can also have the case where some abilities might not be available at all unless your class allows it, or the cost might be much higher.

no classes, with levels: The GM awards experience points, and when the experience reaches a given threshold, the character â,¬Å"levels up.â,¬Â At this point, they gain a batch of development points to spend. In addition, they might or might not gain some automatic (free) benefits, like save increases, hit points, etc. There are no class-like restrictions on the way points are spent, nor any particular automatic benefits. However, you could still let starting characters choose from a menu of options that might give them freebies specific to their character.

classes, with levels: The GM awards experience points, and eventually characters â,¬Å"level upâ,¬Â as above. But now, characters must choose class(es). The classes might or might not provide automatic benefits with leveling. The classes might or might not provide some discounts, special abilities, etc. Some benefits might be automatic; others might cost points.

For an example of the latter, give characters N skill points each level. They also get 2 improvements per level (BAB or any save, their choice), 2 minor class ability picks every level, and one major class ability pick every two levels. Different classes would differ in what is available on their minor and major ability lists. In addition, you could add some extra bennies to some classes to balance them out, like extra skill points or better hit dice.

A classless version of the same is accomplished by letting players choose their own minor and major ability lists.

Iâ,¬,,¢m not saying this is a great system. Iâ,¬,,¢m just pointing out that whether you use classes and levels or not, thereâ,¬,,¢s still a lot of design space out there for how exactly that is implemented. Whatever you choose, thereâ,¬,,¢s still a lot of freedom to design.

BTW, for my vote, Iâ,¬,,¢d say that if you want to stay within the d20 framework, use some variant of classes and levels. But one that leaves plenty of freedom for customization, and makes it easy for GMâ,¬,,¢s to create their own classes.

@Snake
The last would be the easiest.
The earlier ones would be the most "our own".
And publishable.
There should ALWAYS be upper and lower limits. Seriously.

My vote: classless, levelless.

Quoteno classes, no levels: The GM periodically awards development points (call them character points, experience points, whatever. The players can immediately spend these points to improve their character. There are no class-like restrictions on what they might buy. However, there still could be some differences from character to character. For example, each character might be allowed to choose specialties â,¬' skills or abilities that they buy at a discount compared to others. Or there might be racial or cultural benefits of a similar nature. Or certain races might get N number of free points to spend on some package of cultural goodies. You get the idea.

Very sooccinctly poot.
The specialties aspect might come as a result of synergies.  Buy X and Y, then Z is available at a discount.

Race is another biggie that should be discussed.
What about races?

Races should cost a certain amount of points to buy. Perhaps we could have some base ones that equal 0 or a very low number, while more advanced races cost more points at startup to buy. If we do this, I think elves should probably cost extra points for sure, and they can be given some abilities they have in certain worlds that they aren't given in the D&D game. There may be some other races like this as well.

Quote from: beejazzThere should ALWAYS be upper and lower limits. Seriously.

That's why I like the Mutants & Masterminds system: the Power Level sets how high a bonus to a roll can go, no matter what you do.  No pumping up you BAB with feats, magic items, and class abilities, because it can't get higher than X.

What I don't like is restrictions on what I can and cannot improve as I gain points.

I've already had some thoughts about our version of 'epic' levels. Perhaps you can buy from a near-limitless list of talents and abilities for a very long time, but there is an upper cap that could be broken by expending a certain amount of points just to be able to buy above. There could be multiple 'buyable levels' that improve the maximum potential for your abilities.

Alternatively, talents higher and higher up the tech trees could start costing more points faster than monsters give them, slowly leveling out the power of all characters. I like the sound of both.

As far as races go, I'm a big fan of treating races and cultures on an equal footing. So if a particular race is not widely dispersed in your world, they might only have a single culture and one set of stats. But if they vary greatly in culture, like humans in most settings, you may have multiple cultural packages to pick from.

It is tough to balance out the "monstrous" races, because they tend to be so different. It does make sense to have them cost some extra, but really that is the equivalent of packaging a bunch of modifiers and abilities together and pricing them accordingly. That is hard to balance.

For example, if you have a package (+1 STR, -1 DEX), what would that cost? The bonuses and penalties balance each other, but normally this package will be chosen only by players whose character concept requires strength and not dexterity. Thus, they gain more from the +1 than they suffer from the -1. So it should cost something...but how much?

I normally prefer to set things like that on a campaign. Restrict choices to a small number of options that make sense for that campaign, then hand out some setting-specific goodies that help to balance out the choices. I mean, the question of cost doesn't even come up if *everyone* has to take the same set of modifiers.

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpaw

Quote from: beejazzThere should ALWAYS be upper and lower limits. Seriously.

That's why I like the Mutants & Masterminds system: the Power Level sets how high a bonus to a roll can go, no matter what you do.  No pumping up you BAB with feats, magic items, and class abilities, because it can't get higher than X.

What I don't like is restrictions on what I can and cannot improve as I gain points.

Yeah... I know what you mean. I would say that (for example) any character could learn spellcasting, fighting, sneaking, or whatever else they wanted to get... but they couldn't buy (for example) high-level fighting until they had learned their basics or high-level spellslinging until they had learned their basics. Likewise, they shouldn't be able to spend *all* their points for a disproportionately high-powered ability and then have no skills, feats, vitality, or weapons. Like it says in the DMG, making a wizard worse at fighting won't balance with better spellcasting because he probably didn't intend to fight to begin anyway. After a certain point, the sacrifice is inconsequencial and the gain is overpowered.

Let's start with the "basic class".
The basic class has everything teh suck.
After that, you can allocate a fixed percent of your xp to different "progressive" abilities.
No good saves=0% of your pool.
One good save=5% of your pool.
Two good saves=10% of your pool.
Three good saves=15% of your pool.
Worst AC prog column=0% of your pool.
Next AC prog column=5% of your pool.
Next AC prog column=10% of your pool.
Best AC prog column=15% of your pool.
Skills as fighter=0%
Skills as druid=5%
Skills as bard=10%
Skills as rogue=15%
Worst BAB=0%
Med BAB=10%
Best BAB=20%
Worst SCP=0%
Med SCP=10%
Best SCP=20%
d4HD=0%
d6HD=5%
d8HD=10%
d10HD=15%
d12HD=20%
Basic Weapons (insert fixed xp cost)
Weapon Group (insert fixed xp cost)
Exotic Weapons (insert fixed xp cost)
Exotic Double Weapons (insert fixed xp cost)
Light Armor (insert fixed xp cost)
Medium Armor (insert fixed xp cost)
Heavy Armor (insert fixed xp cost)

and so on and so forth. Most class features would have a fixed xp cost and some prerequisites. Players would not be able to spend more than 20 or 30 percent of their xp on one ability.

I hope the above list is just an example. With all the changes it seems more appropriate to make our own system. And really, all we have to do is determine the mechanics of combat, magic, XP gain, living, etc. before we can start slapping point costs on everything. NPCs, gods and monsters can all be built using points, and items could potentially be done the same way. Is there anything I'm forgetting?

I still don't like the idea of buying progressions rather than straight buying of the statistic.  I should be able to increase HD, BAB, save, and AC whenever I want.  What I'm saying is that it would be okay to have a max upper limit, like they do skill points in D&D now: if you get a lot of skill points at some level in the future, you can suddenly buy up a class skill that you haven't put anything into.  Saves, BAB, etc. should be allowed to do the same thing.

I think that's what I'm trying to say.. instant purchase into anything you don't already have, or a sudden major power jump in something you do have.

You are correct, Golem, you did, I misread.  My apologies.

I also believe there should not be an arcane/divine divide written into the rules.  I'm not a fan of that for most settings.

I'll look at the rest later.

Quote from: WitchHuntI've already had some thoughts about our version of 'epic' levels. Perhaps you can buy from a near-limitless list of talents and abilities for a very long time, but there is an upper cap that could be broken by expending a certain amount of points just to be able to buy above. There could be multiple 'buyable levels' that improve the maximum potential for your abilities.

You could extend the same concept further down the tree. I've come up with an idea for this that I'm kicking around. I'll post it when I can get my arms around it better.

Quote from: WitchHuntAlternatively, talents higher and higher up the tech trees could start costing more points faster than monsters give them, slowly leveling out the power of all characters. I like the sound of both.

Be careful about escalating costs. This might just encourage players to top off at some point, and use all their points to buy up lots of cheaper, lower level abilities. Or it might just encourage GM's to inflate experience awards. Or both.

Also, I'd prefer that we didn't get too hung up on "killing monsters" as the source of experience awards. My best experiences have been when experience was gained at more or less constant rate - there's less incentive for characters to do OOC stuff. YMMV