The Gaming Den

Classes and Levels: What are they Good For?

OK, the world at this point has a great number of class and level-based systems, in addition to archetype and point-based systems, and class and skill-based systems, and archetype and level systems. Heck, there are class/archetype hybrids and level/point-based hybrids as well! The world really has tried out all of the variations it could think of and at this point we really ought to know what the advantages and disadvantages of each way of doing things are. And to that extent, we should make our games from the position of knowing what those are.

Classes and Archetypes: A Class is like a little set of rails from which a character cannot escape. The obvious drawback of this is that regardless of whether the tracks are narrow or wide, there is the very real chance that a potential character concept you want to play will not fit into any of the available tracks. An Archetype is a character role that players are expected to fit into that is potentially achievable by multiple different game mechanical means. It is possible for a D&D character to be in the Cleric class and fulfill the Tank or Healer Archetypes. Some games set down archetypes that are equivalent to classes, some don't.

Points and Levels: A level is a point where your character arbitrarily improves in multiple different areas simultaneously. The obvious disadvantage is that character improvement "feels" very pixelated:

"Wow! I feel as if I've passed some arbitrary experience value and gained more power!"
--Marcus

Meanwhile a point-based system is one in which character advancement is handled by purchasing individual bonuses one by one, which can potentially feel more organic.

So why Classes and Levels?
The obvious answer is "legacy", but it's actually deeper than that. Levels produce a level of balance inherently that is very difficult to achieve in point-based systems. When a character gains a level, their offense and defense both improve, while in point-system generally offense and defense will rise separately (and often one or the other won't rise at all). This means that in a Level system the power level can extend much farther before it hits the ceiling A Class system's rails make character advancement easy, you just move down the rails to the next stop every time you can advance. It also makes explaining your character into a very easy task - you can be a "Shadow Knight" rather than having to explain every skill and power you've picked up.

The Strengths of Classes and Levels:

So if you're writing game mechanics for a system that depends upon levels and classes, you should try to write towards those strengths. That means that you should embrace the inherent balancing properties of the leveling system - that means that offenses and defenses should be neither divergent nor convergent, a leveling system can extend theoretically infinitely. At the very least you should make sure it extends a long way. Now, the class system should have a lot of customization inherent at the front end. People like 3rd edition's multiclass system alot, but it really does not work all that well. More appropriate would be a system like 2nd edition AD&D's Kit system. A class should be customizable at the beginning.

People shouldn't take complex sets of different classes to get their "gish" together. They should just be able to select being a fighter/magician at first level and have that scale.

-Username17

The main "Advantage" of level system is pretty mucch that they don't have all the disadvantages of point systems.

Point systems have the problem of being way out there in terms of balance. To balance them you need all kinds of strict caps and restrictions. The idea of level systems was to essentially let people just design a character and go without having to worry about getting DM approval for his abilities. Similarly it prevents people from advancing by putting all their points in one bucket and overwhelming people. Point systems effectively let you trade combat for noncombat, numerics for options and pretty much trade whatever the hell you want to the point that a 200 point chracter isn't all that meaningful in terms of battlefield prowess.

Putting people on rails isn't necessarily a bad thing.

As for the customizeabiltiy debate, I think that the best way to handle that is to use a single class system with a bunch of chooseable abilities similar to feats at various levels. You really only need 3 classes.

Fighter
fighter/mage
Mage

Pretty much all archetypes fit in there. A fighter/mage could be used to represent a gish, a psywarrior, or a cleric, depending on what abilities you had and what flavor you used to explain them. A fighter could be a rogue, a paladin, a ranger, or a monk, and so on.

One idea that I always liked about point systems is the idea that they're on a mechanical level and not on a flavor level. Classes tend to get too bogged down in flavor most of the time. Fireball should just be an ability that people can take, whether they want to call it dragon breath, divine fire, psifire or whatever.

The main problem with point systems is that they don't inherently scale. There's only so many points you can hand out before things break down, because point systems are naturally divergent.

Basically I think abilities have to work on a tiered level for things to be infintiely extensible. Basically you have Stealth- level 1, and that's good against Spot- level 1. Then at some point you start getting level 2 abilities, and you need level 2 defenses to counter them and so on.

So basically there comes a point where things sort of start over and you need to buy up basic abilities again at the new level of power. It creates a system where people don't necessarily fall behind (because everyone keeps getting new abilities at the higher tiers), but nobody ever catches them all (because low tier abilities become obsolete against opponents using high tier attacks/defenses).

The problem with a tier based design however is fitting in true generic abilities, like flight. And thus far I'm not really sure how to fix that. One option is to give a lot of creatures an earthbind ability, that forces fliers to buy flying at a high tier to stay airborne. But I'm still trying to work out how to make the system actually workable for all abilities.

Also to note, a Class system where you select your path ahead of time does not have to be front-loaded like D&D.

Balanced class levels should mean taking class levels in different orders does not change the balance - at least in a multiclass system.

-Crissa

Crissa: Isaac is going to have his birthday party down here on Sunday. I don't actually have your post-move phone number, but I am living at Ted and Lucy's again so I'm relatively easy to find.

-Username17