thought on possible variant game system format

[the humanity]

as an avid 3.5 player, I always wish I could have a character that fought like X but cast spells like Y, or some other such thing. gestalt of course, pulls this off kind of well, but if somebody just wants a straight simple fighter, they have a severe disadvantage. new base classes were introduced, such as rogue/fighters (swashbuckler) rogue/sorcerers (beguilers) and fighter wizards (duskblades). but, the big problem here is they really aren't the same. a beguiler cannot dish out damage like a rogue or a sorcerer, a swashbuckler can neither sneak effectively nor pull of a cool run of feat chains, and after 3 rounds in combat your duskblade is over in the corner with 7 hit points using a wand of magic missile and hoping the dragon forgets he's there.

prestige classes pull this off, and very effectively, but, you can't keep going with your current class, making your fighter lose out on feats, your wizard lose spell levels, your beguiler have to wait until epic levels to overcome SR with his invisibility spells. so I was thinking making a sort of semi gestalt type game-

X- provides you with your BAB(usually), skills, and HD. you gain one single growing aspect from it, like sneak attack, spells, so forth.
Y- provides you with your saves. sometimes, it will also provide you a boost to your BAB. this provides you with bonus things, like paladin auras and lay on hands.
Z- a set of bonus features you may tack on at a certain level. this would be like ranger spells, wild shape, and will often have a prerequisite. as seen-
XY
XY
XY
XY
XY
XYZ
XYZ
XYZ
XYZ
XYZ
XYZZ
XYZZ

and so forth.

do you think a system like this could work? do you think it would be able to achieve my goal?

[the humanity]

anyone have any ideas? is there a system that already does this?

[TheLonelyScribe]

I'm really just commenting out of sympathy here - I know how it feels when nobody responds to something you worked hard on - but I have a few things to say:

Your system sounds interesting, however, there are a few things out there that already do this kind of thing. One option you could take is to allow characters to do gestalt where they can double the bonuses of their existing characters, double favoured enemies for the ranger, double spells for the sorcerer, double feats for the fighter etc. You could also use a system that someone came up with called 'uber generics'. Just search for it in the homebrew forum, it should come up.

[the humanity]

...

that's so much easier than my plan.

hahahaha.

duh.

I might mess with my idea a little more, with enough changes it could be the basis for a new game system in the distant future, but I'm glad to know if we do go gestalt I have something to have my less... creative friends.

and a wild shaping barbarian was no doubt liable to be broken anyway.

thank you very much lonely scribe.

[rrkkskrrk]

To add to TheLonelyScribe's comments: Generics are your friend here. A lot of gestalting systems become quickly very complicated (the actual Gestalt system for 3.5e DnD is relatively simple, but also represents a power increase that you may not want to have), but a generic system allows a lot of combinations. Of course, the UA Generic classes are missing a lot of class features, and don't allow that many of them on one character, but they're a start. True20 does a similar thing with a great deal more options, but it involves a lot of other changes as well. Baron Corm's generic class is more complicated, but allows for different types of abilities quite nicely.
The idea remains the same, though: have a backbone for stuff like BAB and save progressions, then add class features on top of that.

[erikun]

What you're discussing sounds a lot like the systems from Gurps, World of Darkness, Shadowrun, etc. where rather than leveling, you simply spend XP to increase your skills and abilities. That is, if you want to be good at fighting, you increase your fighting capabilities. If you want to be good as spellcasting, you increase your spellcasting capabilities. If you want to be good at both, then you end up needing to spend points on both.

The system Mutants and Masterminds might be similar to what you're thinking. It is like the above, but uses levels as the upper bound to how powerful you can increase the character's abilities. There is also the Uber-Generic system already mentioned, which is more of a "build your own class" rather than choosing what abilities to take each level.