The Campaign Builder's System?

[Higgs Boson]

Alright. So, why don't we start with compiling all the classes and templates we can think of.
 For classes, I think we should have Warrior, Magi, Priest, and Rogue. Cause with those four and the templates Ra-Tiel posted, I think we can get virtually all types.

[Atlantis]

what is the difference between holy and divine?

also, now that we know what we are doing with classes, we might want to work on magic system. Are we doing skill based? Or will it basically be DnD with a twist on the classes and magic?

[Higgs Boson]

I think we should finish the class system before we move on to magic, because once we define what we want our spell-access classes to be able to do, we can work out the magic system better. Also, I think our class templates should differ somewhat from what Ra-Tiel said. IMO there should be:

Civilized, wild, holy, vile, skillful, focused, arcane, divine, psionic.

[Stargate525]

Civilized, wild, holy, vile, skillful, focused, arcane, divine, psionic.

I vote for the following for templates:
Skilled
Learned
Dedicated
Jack of All Trades (I'm open for a more flowing synonym)
Civilized
Barbaric
Holy
Vile
Warrior
Negotiator

[Atlantis]

i second that

[Higgs Boson]

Yes. Those would work. Now, we need descriptions and the base class names.
For class names, I vote for:
Fighter
Magi
Priest
Rogue

[Stargate525]

Yes. Those would work. Now, we need descriptions and the base class names.
For class names, I vote for:
Fighter
Magi
Priest
Rogue

we can get more than four! That's only forty different options! We could break each of those into a pair of opposing classes, methinks, getting something like the following;

Brawler
Warrior
Sorceror
Wizard
Clergy
Crusader
Diplomat
Thief

Eighty combinations FTW!

[Higgs Boson]

So now we have:
1.)Class-Template class system

Some ideas:
1.)Major/Minor skills, increase based on usage, level up from certain amount of increase?
2.)Skill-based casting
3.)Skills governed by a certain attribute start at a minimum equal to a fraction of that ability score

[Stargate525]

3.)Skills governed by a certain attribute start at a minimum equal to a fraction of that ability score

Where was this? That feature's already built in; it's called the ability modifier. ;)

[Higgs Boson]

Well, we don't have to call it the ability modifier, for one.

[Atlantis]

atrribute modifier :D

[Ra-Tiel]

To chime in again, my thoughts on some comments here:

1) We should keep classes to a minimum, preventing a flood of unneccesary classes. Generally speaking, the five classical archetypes cover most of our needs:
* Warrior: can be melee or ranged specialist, unarmed & unarmored combatent, bodyguard, commando, etc.
* Scout: can be a classical thief, a swashbuckler, a diplomat, an assassin, etc.
* Priest: can be a paladin type, a classic theurg, a crusader style warrior, etc.
* Magus: can be a learned wizard, a being with wild magical talent, someone who stole magical abilies or made pacts with demons for it, etc.
* Psion: can be a meditative psion, a mystical jogi, a focused monk, an untamed wilder, etc.

The exact details on how and what a class can do should be left to [template-specific] class abilities and talents and feats. I really can see no reason to have a seperate class for unarmed/unarmored combat, when all you need are some different feats and class abilities.

2) Something similar goes for the class templates. For example, I really cannot see any difference between "learned" and "skillful". Also, the templates should somewhat play towards the background of the character, and to the specific role he plays in the worlds. As we don't have any special classes for the "niche classes" (paladin, barbarian, etc), that should be covered by the templates.

Therefore, my vote goes for the following templates:
* wild: makes the character a member of an "uncivilized" culture; barbarians, shamans, skalds, etc fall under this category; this template also makes the character's ability "wild", eg rage or random caster level, and grants abilities that make survival in the wilderness more easy.
* civilized: makes the character a member of an socially advanced culture; knights, theurgs, wizards, troubadours, etc fall under this category; this template makes getting along in metropolitan areas easier, giving more social abilities like leadership, bonuses to sense motive and bluff, or better connections to organizations.
* divine: makes the character a member of a highly religious society and encompasses both good and evil types; paladins, blackguards, clerics, priestly councelors etc fall under this category; this template grants all characters additional (in power limited) divine abilities, like for example a limited healing ability, or a "warding touch" with the effects of protection from evil or something.
* arcane: makes the character a member of a highly magical society; spellswords, duskblades, generally speaking all gish type characters, as well as arcane thiefs and such fall under this category; this template gives all characters limited magical abilities, like reduced arcane spell failure or something like mage hand or levitate as (sp) ability.
* psionic: makes the character a member of a psionically advanced society; monks, psions, meditants, jogi, and so on fall under this category; this template grants all characters minor psionic abilities, eg know direction and location as (ps) ability.
* skilled: makes the character a member of a society placing great value in personal [mundane] abilities and knowledge; sages, bards, crafting experts, councelors, herolds, all fall under this category; this template gives all characters abilities increasing their mundane and knowledge skills, for example free skill focuses, or some sort of limited "bardic knowledge" ability.

3) Regarding the mechanics, as said, we don't need to use the d20 framework for this project. We could also develope a custom system, tailored and designed just right for our purposes. An idea that's been going on in my mind recently was a system like this: you have attributes and skills (nothing new so far). If you make a check, the attribute determines how many dice you roll, while the skill represents the bonus you get on your roll. You must meet a certain target number to succeed, and one success is enough to make the check.

Regards, Ra-Tiel.

--------- Edit ---------
I really like the idea of being able to multiclass with the same class, but a different template. This would allow for cool character development, showing the path the character came along. Eg if you have a character wild warrior 3/civilized warrior 7, you can tell that he started out as a "barbarian" and then came to the "great city" and learned the customs and behaviours of citydwellers. On the other hand, a civilized wizard 2/wild wizard 10 would show the development of a character that was born and raised in a city, but then somehow got stuck in the wilderness (perhaps abducted - or stranded and liked it, deciding to stay in the "wilderness" with her new friends or something).

--------- Edit2 ---------
The only problem with the idea from above would be how to prevent "double dipping", especially with special abilities and bonus feats. We'd have to make sure that going "template A class X level 1/template B class X level 1" was in no way better than just being "template A class X level 2". Perhaps we could use some "signature abilities" like they did with the SpyCraft classes; that everything stacks, but certain abilities marked with a special keyword can only be acquired once, no matter what.

Another idea I had for the classes would be as to the progression of class abilities. My idea would be to make everything conform with each other, read all classes gaining special abilities at fixed levels across the board. This would also make creating the class templates much more easy, as we wouldn't have to work out an insane amount of "at level X you gain Y" cases.

As an example what I mean, how about the following.
* BAB, saves, and HD follow a fixed, class specific progression
* all classes gain class abilities at level 1, 5, 10, 15, and 20
* all classes gain bonus feats at level 4, 8, 12, 16, and 20
* all classes gain talents at level 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18.

The "loadedness" at level 15+ (2 class abilities, 2 bonus feats, and 2 talents), would also encourage players to stay in one class until level 20 and not dip into various classes to gain some small bonuses (aka the "swashbuckler phenomenon").

[Higgs Boson]

[blockquote Ra-Tiel]I really like the idea of being able to multiclass with the same class, but a different template. This would allow for cool character development, showing the path the character came along. Eg if you have a character wild warrior 3/civilized warrior 7, you can tell that he started out as a "barbarian" and then came to the "great city" and learned the customs and behaviours of citydwellers. On the other hand, a civilized wizard 2/wild wizard 10 would show the development of a character that was born and raised in a city, but then somehow got stuck in the wilderness (perhaps abducted - or stranded and liked it, deciding to stay in the "wilderness" with her new friends or something).[/blockquote]

Well, all we have to do is make it so each template grants certain abilities to the class, but when you multi-class out to a different template, you gain the abilities of that template while the class levels stack, so your class progression continues.

[Higgs Boson]

[blockquote Ra-Tiel]I really like the idea of being able to multiclass with the same class, but a different template. This would allow for cool character development, showing the path the character came along. Eg if you have a character wild warrior 3/civilized warrior 7, you can tell that he started out as a "barbarian" and then came to the "great city" and learned the customs and behaviours of citydwellers. On the other hand, a civilized wizard 2/wild wizard 10 would show the development of a character that was born and raised in a city, but then somehow got stuck in the wilderness (perhaps abducted - or stranded and liked it, deciding to stay in the "wilderness" with her new friends or something).[/blockquote]

1.) Having 5 levels where you gain abilities seems too limiting, unless the tmeplates add in more abilities?

2.)What about attribute increases?

Now, I think the templates should:

Modify the BAB/HD/saves
Increase the class abilities(A holy warrior has a completely different set than a wild warrior)

See, I think we should have it so that the classes by themselves would be weak, but when the templates are added they become a full class.

Also, I think the alignment should be handled thusly:
A graph that represents each alignment. Positive y-axis would be good, negative y-axis would be evil(hey! I just realized vile is spelled with thesame letters as evil), positive x-axis would be lawful, negative x-axis would be chaotic. When someone does a deed, they gain/lose an alignment point. Each quadrant represents an alignment. Neutral would be on the axis. This alignment is used to track your characters decisions. All would start out at Neutral(0, 0)

[Ra-Tiel]

1.) Having 5 levels where you gain abilities seems too limiting, unless the tmeplates add in more abilities?

Why that? Remember, class abilities are not the only thing the class gets, but are just the "extra crunchy with whipped cream and a cherry on top" things. You also get talents and bonus feats. If you follow the d20 Modern convention of alternating talents and bonus feats, with the template-dependent class features thrown in every 5th level, the fighter would look like the following:
[class=Fighter]
[bab=fighter]
[fort=good]
[ref=average]
[special=Special]
[1]Class ability[/1]
[2]Bonus feat[/2]
[3]Talent[/3]
[4]Bonus feat[/4]
[5]Class ability[/5]
[6]Bonus feat[/6]
[7]Talent[/7]
[8]Bonus feat[/8]
[9]Talent[/9]
[10]Class ability[/10]
[11]Talent[/11]
[12]Bonus feat[/12]
[13]Talent[/13]
[14]Bonus feat[/14]
[15]Class ability[/15]
[16]Bonus feat[/16]
[17]Talent[/17]
[18]Bonus feat[/18]
[19]Talent[/19]
[20]Class ability[/20]
[/special]
[/class]
Still "too few" features for you? ;) Bonus feats would be very general, giving access to combat maneuvers or metamagic or skill focuses or whatever, similar to normal DnD. Talents would be more specific, following special trees as they do in d20 Modern, allowing perhaps a fighter to ignore some points of hardness, or a caster to make some special use of his spells, other than merely casting them. And finally, class features would be very narrow in focus, giving access to abilities like rage, or turn undead, or certain spelllists.

2.)What about attribute increases?

What do you mean? As it stands right now, we'd be using the d20 system, so it would be one increase per 3 or 4 levels, depending on power level of the setting.

Now, I think the templates should:

Modify the BAB/HD/saves

I tried that once (perhaps some remember my thread on the WotC forums, "Manifest Soul"). It didn't work out too well, because in the end I was writing up three completely different classes already.

Increase the class abilities(A holy warrior has a completely different set than a wild warrior)

That was what my goal was. ;) Each template would give a new set of options for the "class features" gained every 5th level. It would not, however, change the whole writeup of the class.

See, I think we should have it so that the classes by themselves would be weak, but when the templates are added they become a full class.

Not necessarily. Why should it? My suggestion was merely to use templates to differ classes based on their cultural origin. I don't think it's necessary to build everything on the templates.

Also, I think the alignment should be handled thusly:
A graph that represents each alignment. Positive y-axis would be good, negative y-axis would be evil(hey! I just realized vile is spelled with thesame letters as evil), positive x-axis would be lawful, negative x-axis would be chaotic. When someone does a deed, they gain/lose an alignment point. Each quadrant represents an alignment. Neutral would be on the axis. This alignment is used to track your characters decisions. All would start out at Neutral(0, 0)

And I am chided for too much bookkeeping! :D :P