The Campaign Builder's Guild

Quote from: snakefingThe character class represents a character's primary role within the society of the game world.

What happens to the concepts that don't fit a given role?  How narrow are you conceiving of these roles?  The reason that, even though I don't always hate them, I can't get into class systems is that I prefer to have the option to take care of the rare case that still manages to fall outside.

Quote from: EladrisFor example, let's say Thief exists as a class that requires X build points in several skills.  Once those requirements have been met, a player gains a certain benefit, say the ability to reroll a stealth once per day.  Player A allocates X build points towards these skills.  Player A now receives the bonuses of the Thief class, but is no longer required allocate skills into that role.  He can focus his attention next on the Wizard class, or continue putting points into sneak-related skills to reach another, higher requirement class like Assassin or Master Thief.

This sounds like a very interesting idea.  One of the big things I hate about class systems is that picking a class tells you what your role is going to be beforehand, rather than building that out of character choices.  I like to let my characters develop as I'm playing, rather than get stuck in my original vision.

Ishmayl, in regards to a more free-form magic system, you should at least take a look at Tunnel Quest, which is available as a free PDF at http://web.me.com/hogwrite/Site/Game_Play/Entries/2008/8/23_Tunnel_Quest_1.1.html

One of the things that made me nutso was that we wanted to have real necromancers and real pyromancers and real artificers, not just the same mechanisms with different spell lists.
I'm not just speaking about the fluff.

So we made it so there were different power sources that could could be accessed, and that how good a caster was at each of these sources was a skill that could be gained and improved.

We also made each power source like an ingredient.
Low power spells only take one or two 'ingredients', but even mid level spells have three or four different ingredients.  So a flaming sword type of spell might take fire and artificer ability, while creating a deck of cards that may be synched to a user may take order, maentalist, and artifice.  PLayers can also create their own spells and post them to the GM.  having 11 types of these forces the players to really think of the skills they want to develop.

Recharge was also set up to make the players think.  Spell points used return at a rate of 2.5% per hour, unless they learn a spell point reclamation ability.  So it generally takes 40 hours to fully recharge after casting.  This rate is set up so that PC's can recharge during an adventure, but so that a caster has to think twice before wasting spell points.  

Automatic success in spells also stuck in my craw.  Spells take concentration in my book, and so we have a spell success % rule, and the harder the spell, the higher the chance of error (unless the caster pours extra points into it).

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawWhat happens to the concepts that don't fit a given role?  How narrow are you conceiving of these roles?  The reason that, even though I don't always hate them, I can't get into class systems is that I prefer to have the option to take care of the rare case that still manages to fall outside.

That's a very important question, and I'm not sure I have an altogether satisfactory answer.

To answer the second question first, I hope to make it easy enough to make character classes so the GM can create classes based on as narrow or broad a role as he/she desires. I'll have some core classes that are quite broadly conceived, to serve as templates and examples. But in my own setting, I'd tend toward roles defined as narrowly as, "Priestess of Artemis in her role as the Huntress."

But you have to understand that even though that is a very narrow role, it only defines part of would be available to such a character. Certain skills would be core skills, meaning they can be purchased at reduced cost. Certain abilities would be designated as class abilities, meaning you can choose them or advance them with your class-restricted feat picks. But an individual character would also have the ability to choose at least one additional skill as a core skill, depending on personal preference. And 2/3 of your feat picks are not class-restricted. So being in such a class isn't as restrictive as a D&D class.

When you talk about a character that is outside the given roles, there are several related concepts and I'm not sure exactly what you are getting at. Every character comes from somewhere, and relates in some way to the people around him or her. If the character concept fits in with the setting, there is a role there. I'm trying to make it easy to create or tweak classes, and give flexibility within the classes for individuality. So if your character almost fits one of the GM-defined classes, but not quite, you have several options:

Work with one of the given classes, pick just the class abilities that fit the concept, and use your general abilities and cross-class picks to pick up anything that is missing.
*Work with the GM to tweak the best-fit class to represent your character's unique background and opportunities.
*Multi-class.
*Make a Frankenstein's monster class from bits and pieces of the existing classes.

The main point is that the character class should reasonably well represent the kinds of opportunities and expectations that are laid on the character, by virtue of his or her background and place in society.

If you want a "raised by wolves" type of character, you have a different problem. Lacking any connection to the society around him, this character will have a lack of social structure, and corresponding lack of restraints and opportunities. It might be possible to just create an individualized "class" with a unique set of core skills and class abilities that represent what such a character might need to survive and would have the opportunity to learn. The use the general character class template to guide that character's acquisition of skills and feats.

There's quite a range of possible characters, and any fixed set of classes is not going to handle them all well. The best I've been able to do is to provide a toolkit (hopefully a good one) to handle the exceptions as well as possible, without doing away with some of the advantages of character classes entirely.

Quote from: snakefingWhen you talk about a character that is outside the given roles, there are several related concepts and I'm not sure exactly what you are getting at. Every character comes from somewhere, and relates in some way to the people around him or her. If the character concept fits in with the setting, there is a role there.

I think the issue is getting more confusing: Are you saying that every character can be categorized because fitting into a category is the natural state of being in a world, or are you saying that settings have expected categories that every character should fall into?  The former suggests that any character concept can be justified no matter the convoluted logic necessary so long as the concept started within the rules of the setting, while the latter pre-defines boundaries within which both the logic to get their and the end result must fall.

My point in commenting about outside cases is that too often I have been seduced by the idea that a class-based game I was playing could support my character concept only to find out at some later point (often in-game) that I'd been fooled by flavor while the mechanics did not back up the vision I'd been given.  Point-based systems don't give me this same problem, I think because in having to build my character myself I am much more likely to notice their mechanical flaws early and revamp my concept before play.  I don't feel that class-based systems need to cater to every concept a person can come up with, but I do wish they could somehow be much better at pointing out what flaws they have that are going to render a given concept difficult or impossible.

As for customizing classes I have to ask: Isn't there a certain point of customization after which you'd be better served by a point-based game?  Small changes I think are fine, larger one leave me wondering why anyone bothers.

Quote from: SilvercatMoonpawI think the issue is getting more confusing: Are you saying that every character can be categorized because fitting into a category is the natural state of being in a world, or are you saying that settings have expected categories that every character should fall into?

As for customizing classes I have to ask: Isn't there a certain point of customization after which you'd be better served by a point-based game?  Small changes I think are fine, larger one leave me wondering why anyone bothers.
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At some point, sure. When do you reach that point? When most of the characters require major class overhauls.

The point of the classes is to communicate between the players how their characters fit into the overall campaign picture. Customizing classes by the GM for the setting fulfills this purpose. Customizing classes for individual players (beyond small tweaks) should only happen in the rare cases. I personally am more interested in supporting a kind of campaign where those really are the rare cases; so I think this sort of approach will be valuable. (It is more hope, really, since the system is still under construction.) In a different type of campaign, a looser point-based approach might work better. Or Vreeg's approach, which is neither point-based nor class-based in the traditional senses.

Quote from: snakefingI think that the natural state of being in any culture is that the society creates categories for understanding itself, and (most) people naturally tend to align themselves up with one or more of the categories. There's a lot of variations, and always some people who don't really fit in to their society's categories very well.

It certainly stresses the categorized nature of the society being portrayed.

Quote from: snakefingThe point of the classes is to communicate between the players how their characters fit into the overall campaign picture.

Yeah, that's how I see class systems.  That and saving you the time in making your own character.

I had this weird magic system going for 3.5, its to bad that I lost the file for it, it worked great. It was like a different skill system, where there was a skill for each different thing, like one for necromancy, one for evocation, one for illusion, and so on and so on. But I got tired of homebrewing stuff so I bought complete arcana. Which I must say is the all around best D&D supplement ever.

Alright, everyone is tossing about ideas for different systems, adapting this and that. Has anyone looked into adapting some of the newer Final Fantasy game systems? I'm thinking FFX or FFXII here, the Orb-tree-board thing or the License board.

The License board for those who don't know are 2 board. One with every skill/ability/spell and misc bonuses on it, and one with every piece of armor and weapon. You spend Ability Points (AP) to unlock the ability to wear armor or use a weapon/skill/ability/spell. However you have to unlock new tiles by uncovering them, when you buy a tile, it uncovers (makes them purchasable) all adjacent tiles. While kinda shoe-horning you a bit, it makes sense in my opinion (no just buying ultimate of everything, you have to work your way up to it, like your character growing).

 So basically your character can be whatever he wants, buying the ability to wear heavy armor (high def bonus melee dmg), a 2h weapon and buffing skills/spells/abilities. Or basically whatever. Your character is customizable however you want, and you can plug whatever mechanics you want into the board, custom magic systeme, tiered magic system, vancien w/e, and any kind of skill or w/e.

Also these Ability Points are independent of level (in FFXII anyway) so you can use levels for stats or other things.

Personally a system me and my friend kicked around was a grid of interconnected nodes. Each node represented a "class" with unique abilities, you could move from one node to another if you had reached a certain milestone (X str or HP w/e). Each node had its own skills/spells/powers/abilities/bonuses  or w/e and you could purchase these things when on a node, or upgrade them to higher tiers of a skill/spell/power/ability/bonus (ex Sneak attack 1 to Sneak attack 2). There would be some overlap of skills/spells/powers/abilities/bonuses between nodes so you don't have to go back to a node just to get a new tier. Changing Nodes would have a cost, maybe only once per level (if you bought things ala AP like in FFXII) or every level you get a move point that lets you change nodes or something.

I could probably come up with another system/change one of these systems if anyone had a suggestion or input.

Also, this is my first post here, so I want to say you guys pwn and the site is amazing :D

Finally sorry if these ideas aren't really table-top based, I've never played a table top game before, so I have real experience to gather from sorry.

No offense to you... but I kinda found final fantasy to be a all around dumb game