Do you like the older RPG systems better than the newer ones?

[Max_Killjoy]

What I have grown to dislike is having to plan out builds. 3e D&D is the big offender in this where you really want to plan out your skills, feats, class abilities, etc so that you can later pick up the things you really want. If you want a certain prestige class (even a fluffy roleplaying one) you will need to make sure you pick up the certain skills, feats and abilities needed to pick up that class. That just gets so tiresome (and sadly for me in many cases the most fun thing in 3e is building characters rather than playing them as I find 3e to be less fun in actual play). Other versions you may have builds but the amount of work required is much different and you do not really have to plan them out ahead so much (though you can).

Based on reading the 5e subforum, I'd say that "planned build" approach is alive and well -- whether the system itself still "encourages" as much as earlier editions or not. Take a look at how often build advice comes in the form of "when you hit X level in <Class>, you'll do such and such..."

I think it's just inherent in a system that reserves significant parts of the "signature ability" list for well into the progression.

And yeah, for me personally, it's one of the turnoffs of the system.

I really hate to keep grinding this axe... but those are all functions of the 3.X multiclassing system. It's always been bad.

The ease of multiclassing makes it a much less definitive character decision, so you get class-dipping.

And because it's trivial to snag the first two levels in any given class, the iconic class features of every class have to be spread out further than most games run.

Prestige Classes replaced Kits... but you can't get into your "main class" until 6th level and then only if you planned your build from 1st. This often exacerbates both of the previous problems, robbing classes of any narrative identity and turning them into nothing more than components of the world's most deliberately obtuse point-buy system.

And a bit ironically, that serves to reinforce the "planned build" approach by encouraging players to plan way ahead for when they finally get those abilities that were pushed up to higher levels.

[Anonymouswizard]

Anybody else here not a massive fan of classes? Just me?

(In all honesty, if I must have classes I'd much rather have them be archetypal and for multiclassing to be practically impossible. But give me skill-based any day.)

[Max_Killjoy]

Anybody else here not a massive fan of classes? Just me?

(In all honesty, if I must have classes I'd much rather have them be archetypal and for multiclassing to be practically impossible. But give me skill-based any day.)

I don't think it's a secret that I dislike Classes... and really anything that tries to bake archetypes/stereotypes/cliches into a system.

If the system doesn't bake the archetypes in, a player can still use the character building rules to create a character who fits an archetype if they so choose. They're free to do so.

If the system does bake the archetypes in, a player cannot then use the character building rules to create a character who isn't "of a type".

[Morty]

Anybody else here not a massive fan of classes? Just me?

(In all honesty, if I must have classes I'd much rather have them be archetypal and for multiclassing to be practically impossible. But give me skill-based any day.)

There's classes and then there's classes. When people talk about "class-based vs. classless systems" it tends to end up being D&D versus everything else sooner or later, because few other systems have anything that locks in your character's progression quite so heavily.

[Man_Over_Game]

Anybody else here not a massive fan of classes? Just me?

(In all honesty, if I must have classes I'd much rather have them be archetypal and for multiclassing to be practically impossible. But give me skill-based any day.)

While I would prefer a classless system, one thing that does work out well with class-based systems is that the abilities are a lot more explosive. Since mechanics are generally self-contained, the developers can keep things relatively balanced while keeping things interesting and streamlined.

GURPS, for example, is classless, but it doesn't do well on combining explosiveness with balance and simplification.

So how do you make a system that's not:

• Overcomplicated? (By having streamlined rules that require little tracking/lookup)
• Generic? (By having unique ways for each player to influence the narrative)
• Unbalanced? (By having a solid grasp on mechanical value and how exceptions play out in the system)
• Repetitive/Oversimplified? (By adding tactical choices)
• Restrictive (By making it Classless)

The gut answer is...you don't. Most systems sacrifice something to make everything else work. Mutants and Masterminds sacrifices balance for explosiveness, and tactical combat for a fulfilling narrative. The game basically requires everyone to be all on the same page when it comes to not breaking the game. Or, in other words, "balance" isn't something that you trust the system to do, but you trust everyone else to do.

5th edition DnD sacrifices that versatility of a classless system in order to tack on a lot of build restrictions, and this control means that everything is balanced and pristine. 5e happens to check all of those boxes but one, and it also happens to be the most popular TTRPG in this day and age. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the DnD name, but the level of success of 4e (which people HATED) shows that the name isn't enough.

I would like to see a classless system that proved I was wrong though, if anyone's got suggestions. I don't mean that as snark, I literally want to be wrong. Classless systems are much more interesting to me, they just seem to lack the consistency/balance/fun that I've witnessed in classful systems.

[emeraldstreak]

I would like to see a classless system that proved I was wrong though, if anyone's got suggestions. I don't mean that as snark, I literally want to be wrong. Classless systems are much more interesting to me, they just lack the consistency/balance/fun that I've witnessed in classful systems.

There are classless systems that can offer this, but it's a personalized experience. By definition it cannot be a mass experience as interest requires complexity, complexity requires expertise, and expertise requires - as a minimum - time many people don't have.

[Aotrs Commander]

I really hate to keep grinding this axe... but those are all functions of the 3.X multiclassing system. It's always been bad.

Personally, I thought 3.x multiclassing system was a stroke of genius and the best single idea in the entire system. (Among the VERY first thing to go for us were the multiclass penalties and restrictions, and then move totally over to classes as a metagame concept.)

But, in fairness, I had ALREADY scrapped the multiclass/dual-class restictions in AD&D because I thought they were a terrible idea the only time I ran a proper campaign in that and said "nope, any race can be multiclassed or dual classed and I'm not going to restrict it toi set multiclasses either." (I believe that party started out with at least one druid/wizard...)

The only reason I've not used it in Rolemaster is because it would be massive amounts of faff, but if we ever got an instance of a player wanting to change profession again, I'd straight just do it the 3.x way.



(PrC, on the other hand, I'm very ambivilent about and much more restrictive of, especially in what I consider to be overly flavoured ones. Mystic Theurge = good, Green Star Adpet = bad.))



I wouldn't ever switch now to a system with less crunch than 3.x or Rolemaster now unless there was an extremely specific reason for a limited time (like Warhammer Fantasy and having the quest books). Making NPCs out of all the crunch is a good half on my DMing fun, especially since I so rarely get to make an actual character these days.

[MeeposFire]

Wow goes to show how people are different I absolutely refuse to DM 3e ever again and one of the big reasons was having to make NPCs in 3e. It was way too much work for the fun involved. Before 4e came out I was making use of all sorts of hacks to make things easier and to reduce items being given to the party (those not in the know 3e NPCs designed to fight are really supposed to have a certain amount of magical gear in order to have the numbers that their challenge is supposed to have so if you have them fight these NPCs how tehy were intended your player's wealth will explode compared to them fighting standard monsters) such as giving out vow of poverty bonuses to NPCs while they did not actually have VoP. Eventually when the 4e previews came out I started using a lot of 4e principles in designing the enemies the party was going to fight and that was much easier and generally better. Later we just switched to 4e because the players really enjoyed its tactical combat and I enjoyed myself more because it is much easier to run and in more fun to run monsters.


As for "builds" I mean back in the day we had builds for AD&D single class fighters and the like and would preplan out an extent but the big difference is that in 3e you had to preplan everything in very specific ways if you wanted to be able to do anything you wanted. In 5e the need to do that is nothing like that and playing a single class anything is actually a very good choice and that is assuming you play with multiclassing or feats (which is not a given). For me that is not really the same issue at least to me.

I thought about playing the Dragon Age RPG but while I think stunts seem fun I also think that since your ability to do cool things are to a degree limited to getting lucky on the dice to give you the stunt points to do those cool things I do wonder how in the long term it would go.

[Aotrs Commander]

Wow goes to show how people are different I absolutely refuse to DM 3e ever again and one of the big reasons was having to make NPCs in 3e. It was way too much work for the fun involved. Before 4e came out I was making use of all sorts of hacks to make things easier and to reduce items being given to the party (those not in the know 3e NPCs designed to fight are really supposed to have a certain amount of magical gear in order to have the numbers that their challenge is supposed to have so if you have them fight these NPCs how tehy were intended your player's wealth will explode compared to them fighting standard monsters) such as giving out vow of poverty bonuses to NPCs while they did not actually have VoP. Eventually when the 4e previews came out I started using a lot of 4e principles in designing the enemies the party was going to fight and that was much easier and generally better. Later we just switched to 4e because the players really enjoyed its tactical combat and I enjoyed myself more because it is much easier to run and in more fun to run monsters.

I have never used the expected wealth rules in 3.x (the closest I ever came was when I whole-sale ripped out all the magic item bonuses for one campaign world and worked out a flat progression of level-based bonuses instead which was the same for everyone). I did the same as I do for everything else - just eyeball it (and remember to be very careful when converting AD&D modules - not that I need to now, as Pathfinder has showered me in more adventure paths than I expect I can realistically ever use, without me buying one again¹).

I had to think hard to the last time I even USED a stock monster in something I'd written myself (which was at the end of a low-Epic game wherein I needed to trash-fight cannon-fodder and I used some balors/pit fiends/malariths) and that was probably a frighteningly long time ago.

I mean, for the aforementioned campaign world, I also ditched Vancian casting entirely (never really liked it) and tossed the MM away completely and re-designed everything from scratch - and a large number of monsters were designed as monster classes to make them closer to classed characters.



One of the reasons I refused to run 4E was because the monsters were totally different to the characters; again, 3.5 having full stat blocks for everything was such a good idea, I started doing it for Rolemaster as well.

I did - as I always do - steal some ideas, of course. 4E's solo idea was also pretty genius, and my back-retrofitting it to 3.x as a repeatable template that essentially increments the monster hit points as blocks (which they can use to effectively Iron Heart Surge off statuses) and rerolls-at-the-expense-of-effectively-negative-levels has been the best idea ever, as it means you can sensibly have all the boss minster fights you like, even when dealing with my typical 7-8 character parties. (Without negating saves or dies or making them instant wins.)



¹At a rate of roughly three years for an adventure path, realsitically, I reckon just ten is likely to be at the point the players are going to be getting on a bit (I'd be seventy and I'm about in the middle).

[Morty]

I thought about playing the Dragon Age RPG but while I think stunts seem fun I also think that since your ability to do cool things are to a degree limited to getting lucky on the dice to give you the stunt points to do those cool things I do wonder how in the long term it would go.

I've lost all my interests in the Dragon Age RPG and its generic spinoff when I found out they're using the warrior/mage/rogue trinity. And then spend a lot of effort trying to give players options despite that but still slap them with arbitrary restrictions. Which are something RPGs should really grow out of and many of them thankfully do.

[Anonymouswizard]

I've lost all my interests in the Dragon Age RPG and its generic spinoff when I found out they're using the warrior/mage/rogue trinity. And then spend a lot of effort trying to give players options despite that but still slap them with arbitrary restrictions. Which are something RPGs should really grow out of and many of them thankfully do.

To be fair it made sense in Dragon Age because the original computer game did that (and it did that because D&D was a big influence). But considering how Blue Rose reduced the class-based limitations, and then Modern AGE just dropped them altogether, Fantasy AGE really shouldn't have gone with them.

The sad thing is, with the Abilities/Talent setup, Fantasy AGE could have been really good if it hadn't tried to copy D&D. If they'd gone classless, had a core racial selection other than 'human/elf/dwarf/handling/gnome/orc', and maybe more fully embraced the science fantasy aspects of Titansgrave it would have stood out quite a bit more*. As it is my experience of the official forums involves being told that it's completely different to D&D and please ignore all similarities and the clear line of descent.

Of course, one of my favourite games at the moment is Burning Wheel, which is intentionally going to the other side of D&D by being more medieval and more Tolkienesque (including elves who party while suffering from supercharged depression). In fact I'm loving it's take on orcs, having the art being more lithe and elfin actually makes them apart sinister, and the narratavist ideas (I think Artha takes over from the Fate Point Economy as my favourite implementation).

Actually, that reminds me. What happened to black and white art? Full colour pieces might be all well and good, but there's something more satisfying about a game illustrated in well done black and white.

* It wouldn't be anything new, but it's been a while since I saw a classless game that focused on stats and abilities over skills.

[Max_Killjoy]

I've lost all my interests in the Dragon Age RPG and its generic spinoff when I found out they're using the warrior/mage/rogue trinity. And then spend a lot of effort trying to give players options despite that but still slap them with arbitrary restrictions. Which are something RPGs should really grow out of and many of them thankfully do.

Some players really like those restrictions (class, etc), so... who am I to judge?

But the gut reaction that they're something RPG systems need to grow out of is hard for me to keep in check.

To be fair it made sense in Dragon Age because the original computer game did that (and it did that because D&D was a big influence). But considering how Blue Rose reduced the class-based limitations, and then Modern AGE just dropped them altogether, Fantasy AGE really shouldn't have gone with them.

The sad thing is, with the Abilities/Talent setup, Fantasy AGE could have been really good if it hadn't tried to copy D&D. If they'd gone classless, had a core racial selection other than 'human/elf/dwarf/handling/gnome/orc', and maybe more fully embraced the science fantasy aspects of Titansgrave it would have stood out quite a bit more*. As it is my experience of the official forums involves being told that it's completely different to D&D and please ignore all similarities and the clear line of descent.

Of course, one of my favourite games at the moment is Burning Wheel, which is intentionally going to the other side of D&D by being more medieval and more Tolkienesque (including elves who party while suffering from supercharged depression). In fact I'm loving it's take on orcs, having the art being more lithe and elfin actually makes them apart sinister, and the narratavist ideas (I think Artha takes over from the Fate Point Economy as my favourite implementation).

Actually, that reminds me. What happened to black and white art? Full colour pieces might be all well and good, but there's something more satisfying about a game illustrated in well done black and white.

* It wouldn't be anything new, but it's been a while since I saw a classless game that focused on stats and abilities over skills.

I really want to grasp Burning Wheel, but the presentation is so bad... for the sake of "art" from what I've read.

[Willie the Duck]

I think the best solution I've seen for that is to have vehicles work at the people scale as essentially big people with slightly different move & internal damage rules, and spaceships are all humongeous and well beyond personal scale. Plus orbital bombardment rules, because players.

That really works for tanks and mecha, but anything where the vehicle does more than scoot and shoot in a vaguely person-like fashion. I remember Hero System builds vehicles as basically oversized people, and it absolutely doesn't work for things like fighter jets. Speed is a valuable (and expensive, point-wise) ability for characters, because it allows you to act/attack multiple times in a 12-second round. A jet, otoh, only wants to be 'in-field' for a fraction of the round, doing an attack run and being out of range the rest of the time. Mind you, Hero fixes some of these things, but they do so by making a bunch of rules that are different from the people scale for jets/cars/motorcycles/etc. to reflect how they work differently from PCs.

Anybody else here not a massive fan of classes? Just me?

So how do you make a system that's not:

•Overcomplicated? (By having streamlined rules that require little tracking/lookup)
•Generic? (By having unique ways for each player to influence the narrative)
•Unbalanced? (By having a solid grasp on mechanical value and how exceptions play out in the system)
•Repetitive/Oversimplified? (By adding tactical choices)
•Restrictive (By making it Classless)

The gut answer is...you don't. Most systems sacrifice something to make everything else work. Mutants and Masterminds sacrifices balance for explosiveness, and tactical combat for a fulfilling narrative. The game basically requires everyone to be all on the same page when it comes to not breaking the game. Or, in other words, "balance" isn't something that you trust the system to do, but you trust everyone else to do.

5th edition DnD sacrifices that versatility of a classless system in order to tack on a lot of build restrictions, and this control means that everything is balanced and pristine. 5e happens to check all of those boxes but one, and it also happens to be the most popular TTRPG in this day and age. Of course, a lot of that has to do with the DnD name, but the level of success of 4e (which people HATED) shows that the name isn't enough.

I would like to see a classless system that proved I was wrong though, if anyone's got suggestions. I don't mean that as snark, I literally want to be wrong. Classless systems are much more interesting to me, they just seem to lack the consistency/balance/fun that I've witnessed in classful systems.

The original LBB or Mongoose edition 1 Traveller games are 'classless' -- starting career only feeds you into a probability matrix that you walk out of with various levels of money, age, stat boosts, and skills that from there on out are atomic entities, and it does a pretty good job of at least being on the positive side of each of those metrics. OTOH, it is a setting and premise which supports the system's balance points (the two major mechanical ways to influence success are skills and better equipment, and wealth/better equipment is the primary goal and roughly equates to level in another game).

[Anonymouswizard]

I really want to grasp Burning Wheel, but the presentation is so bad... for the sake of "art" from what I've read.

Burning Wheel Gold is the best rulebook is probably the most sensible organisation I've seen. Basic rules->character creation->specific rules, so that you mainly have to jump backwards instead of forward.

That's where my like of the presentation ends. The rules are confusingly written, key ideas aren't explained until later, and in several instances the style is too informal. The use of the 'three imps' is also annoying, as they either tend to highlight the utterly inconsequential and draw your eye away from important things, or don't separate advice from rules clearly enough. Get past that and you have a very well made medieval Tolkeinesque gateway system, but it takes paragraphs to day what should be said in a sentence, at best

[Telok]

That really works for tanks and mecha, but anything where the vehicle does more than scoot and shoot in a vaguely person-like fashion. I remember Hero System builds vehicles as basically oversized people, and it absolutely doesn't work for things like fighter jets. Speed is a valuable (and expensive, point-wise) ability for characters, because it allows you to act/attack multiple times in a 12-second round. A jet, otoh, only wants to be 'in-field' for a fraction of the round, doing an attack run and being out of range the rest of the time. Mind you, Hero fixes some of these things, but they do so by making a bunch of rules that are different from the people scale for jets/cars/motorcycles/etc. to reflect how they work differently from PCs.

That can be done as a velocity based turning restriction. In HERO I'd keep a fighter jet down to speed two or three, maybe even one, and give it a crap-ton of flight speed with a minimum move, stalling, and turn restrictions. Just figure out the speed/turn ratios you want and use then to discount the movement.

Really vehicles are just mobile people containers, and I suppose buildings are immobile ones... And with that thought I need to look at some games for how they handle buildings/static objects versus vehicles. Hmm, something to think about.

[LibraryOgre]

Anybody else here not a massive fan of classes? Just me?

(In all honesty, if I must have classes I'd much rather have them be archetypal and for multiclassing to be practically impossible. But give me skill-based any day.)

Classes CAN be fine, but, yeah, I can kind of hate them. They have to be carefully tailored to work... and tailored so they fit a lot of cases, rather than just one. My current toy project is turning the Player's Option Spells and Magic priests into a classless system.

Like, I love Hackmaster, but I *hate* their Barbarian class, because it's an incredibly narrow archetype; mechanically, there's really only one character you can make from it.

I really hate to keep grinding this axe... but those are all functions of the 3.X multiclassing system. It's always been bad.

The ease of multiclassing makes it a much less definitive character decision, so you get class-dipping.

And because it's trivial to snag the first two levels in any given class, the iconic class features of every class have to be spread out further than most games run.

Prestige Classes replaced Kits... but you can't get into your "main class" until 6th level and then only if you planned your build from 1st. This often exacerbates both of the previous problems, robbing classes of any narrative identity and turning them into nothing more than components of the world's most deliberately obtuse point-buy system.

And I agree; 5e continues this sort of multiclassing, though, and, for better or worse, 3.x and the SRD made 3.x the lingua franca of the gaming world.

[Knaight]

Anybody else here not a massive fan of classes? Just me?

(In all honesty, if I must have classes I'd much rather have them be archetypal and for multiclassing to be practically impossible. But give me skill-based any day.)

I used to outright despise them, but that's softened significantly - though the combination of classes and levels is still something I look at very skeptically. There's a role for them, and while that role has previously not really interested me I've seen some stuff recently involving really cool archetype emulation that would be tricky to pull off in a classless system without a lot of work.

Multiclassing tends to just come across as a needlessly convoluted way to get the benefits of classless systems at far higher mechanical cost than otherwise most of the time, though there are some deliberate half-class schemes where you put a few things together and it works okay.

[Anonymouswizard]

Classes CAN be fine, but, yeah, I can kind of hate them. They have to be carefully tailored to work... and tailored so they fit a lot of cases, rather than just one. My current toy project is turning the Player's Option Spells and Magic priests into a classless system.

Like, I love Hackmaster, but I *hate* their Barbarian class, because it's an incredibly narrow archetype; mechanically, there's really only one character you can make from it.

One of the things I'm starting to realise is that I like Archetype-focused classes, but I hate Concept-focused classes, because of the lower number of characters you can make with it.

I think the mark of a successful class is when a group of five can all pick the same class, and all have fun and feel like they're not playing copies of each others characters.

I used to outright despise them, but that's softened significantly - though the combination of classes and levels is still something I look at very skeptically. There's a role for them, and while that role has previously not really interested me I've seen some stuff recently involving really cool archetype emulation that would be tricky to pull off in a classless system without a lot of work.

Yeah. Honestly it always disappoints me when I see people who'd love point but games running back to D&D (which in the current edition doesn't even do classes right).

[/QUOTE]Multiclassing tends to just come across as a needlessly convoluted way to get the benefits of classless systems at far higher mechanical cost than otherwise most of the time, though there are some deliberate half-class schemes where you put a few things together and it works okay.[/QUOTE]

As time has gone on I've started to consider multiclassing as worse than class switching. Sure, the latter might not always make as much sense from a story perspective, bit out didn't suddenly turn your game into inferior point buy.

[Morty]

To be fair it made sense in Dragon Age because the original computer game did that (and it did that because D&D was a big influence). But considering how Blue Rose reduced the class-based limitations, and then Modern AGE just dropped them altogether, Fantasy AGE really shouldn't have gone with them.

And it doesn't work all that well for the video game, either. It's just worse in the tabletop one.

The sad thing is, with the Abilities/Talent setup, Fantasy AGE could have been really good if it hadn't tried to copy D&D. If they'd gone classless, had a core racial selection other than 'human/elf/dwarf/handling/gnome/orc', and maybe more fully embraced the science fantasy aspects of Titansgrave it would have stood out quite a bit more*. As it is my experience of the official forums involves being told that it's completely different to D&D and please ignore all similarities and the clear line of descent.

Yeah, it's a "we're not D&D, pinkie swear" kind of thing.

Some players really like those restrictions (class, etc), so... who am I to judge?

But the gut reaction that they're something RPG systems need to grow out of is hard for me to keep in check.

Classes have their purpose, as do restrictions. But the warrior/mage/rogue chestnut just has none of the potential benefits of classes. "Warrior", "mage" or "rogue" aren't archetypes, roles or niches. So all it accomplishes is making sure every fight-oriented character has to be a big, dumb door-opener with heavy armor and big weapons, while those who want to have a bit more finesse or skill are pushed towards the "thief" baggage and restricted in how they can fight.

I used to outright despise them, but that's softened significantly - though the combination of classes and levels is still something I look at very skeptically. There's a role for them, and while that role has previously not really interested me I've seen some stuff recently involving really cool archetype emulation that would be tricky to pull off in a classless system without a lot of work.

I think a way to start is to make sure they give more than they take away. If classes are meant to let you play out archetypes, that doesn't mean they should plot out your advancement from Day One. I also agree that levels are responsible for a lot of the problems that classes get flak for. Classes have their use, but I really don't think levels do.

[Willie the Duck]

That can be done as a velocity based turning restriction. In HERO I'd keep a fighter jet down to speed two or three, maybe even one, and give it a crap-ton of flight speed with a minimum move, stalling, and turn restrictions. Just figure out the speed/turn ratios you want and use then to discount the movement.

Really vehicles are just mobile people containers, and I suppose buildings are immobile ones... And with that thought I need to look at some games for how they handle buildings/static objects versus vehicles. Hmm, something to think about.

Well, velocity based turning restrictions are exactly what I mean when I say rules that are different from the people scale. Hero system also has rate of acceleration rules for movement for very fast things such that you can have different vehicles have different '0 to 60' speeds.

Regardless, I think my point is that, regardless of their rudimentary description, vehicles (at the threshold where they intersect with game rules) aren't just mobile people containers. And those cases where they are closest to being so is really the place where you can treat them as upscaled PCs as far as the game rules are concerned (and the farther one gets from that place, the worse using that rules conceit will be at showcasing how a vehicle is used.

All IMO, of course.

[Man_Over_Game]

That can be done as a velocity based turning restriction. In HERO I'd keep a fighter jet down to speed two or three, maybe even one, and give it a crap-ton of flight speed with a minimum move, stalling, and turn restrictions. Just figure out the speed/turn ratios you want and use then to discount the movement.

Really vehicles are just mobile people containers, and I suppose buildings are immobile ones... And with that thought I need to look at some games for how they handle buildings/static objects versus vehicles. Hmm, something to think about.

The problem with what you're describing is the shear number of variables and work you'd need to put that into a "game". What you're describing would be better as a simulation program rather than a TTRPG.

You could simulate what you're describing though, with relative ease. Rather than describing the individual variables, treat them as one that is changed per individual vehicle. Something called Agility.

Vehicles with low Speed and Agility are very easy to hit. Vehicles with high Speed can easily harass a vehicle with high Agility. Vehicles with high Agility can quickly adapt much better than a vehicle with high Speed. Speed is more important in prestine conditions (like on a road or in an empty sky) but Agility is more important in chaotic conditions (a ruin of a city, or an asteroid field).

Some vehicles have both low speed and low agility (like a tank), but most are a balance of both (like a motorcycle).


At least, that's how I'd implement something like that. The gain of tracking 5 different variables for mobility across every vehicle just seems unrealistic for gameplay. Tracking 2 streamlined variables seems...fine.

[FaerieGodfather]

Personally, I thought 3.x multiclassing system was a stroke of genius and the best single idea in the entire system. (Among the VERY first thing to go for us were the multiclass penalties and restrictions, and then move totally over to classes as a metagame concept.)

If it's any consolation, I would have agreed with you until I had some time to really digest Unearthed Arcana.

But, in fairness, I had ALREADY scrapped the multiclass/dual-class restictions in AD&D because I thought they were a terrible idea the only time I ran a proper campaign in that and said "nope, any race can be multiclassed or dual classed and I'm not going to restrict it toi set multiclasses either." (I believe that party started out with at least one druid/wizard...)

My big current project is actually.... drastically overhauling the class/multiclass system, such that the PHB classes are "human classes" (with multiclassing) and every individual race has their own set of unique classes, to represent the race-as-class ethos of Classic D&D while still allowinig nonhuman PCs more choices.

(PrC, on the other hand, I'm very ambivilent about and much more restrictive of, especially in what I consider to be overly flavoured ones. Mystic Theurge = good, Green Star Adpet = bad.))

I'm the exact opposite. Classes like the Green Star Adept are what Prestige Classes should have been, and classes like Mystic Theurge are just the laziest-possible attempt to paper over the fact that the system as designed doesn't work. That's one of the reasons I am so passionately angry about 5e... the D&D team spent four years trying to fix a glaring hole in their system, discarded it entirely... and then seven years later put it back in place mostly unchanged without so much as including their fixes.

It's the first time in my life I've ever seen the flaws in a game system as personal attacks. Ridiculously irrational, of course, but that's how I feel about the game utterly repudiating every single direction I had wanted it to go in-- as bold as possible a declaration that they are specifically no longer making games for me.

One of the reasons I refused to run 4E was because the monsters were totally different to the characters; again, 3.5 having full stat blocks for everything was such a good idea, I started doing it for Rolemaster as well.

I am low-key impressed. I can't imagine taking the time to do this.

[Aotrs Commander]

The problem with what you're describing is the shear number of variables and work you'd need to put that into a "game". What you're describing would be better as a simulation program rather than a TTRPG.

You could simulate what you're describing though, with relative ease. Rather than describing the individual variables, treat them as one that is changed per individual vehicle. Something called Agility.

Vehicles with low Speed and Agility are very easy to hit. Vehicles with high Speed can easily harass a vehicle with high Agility. Vehicles with high Agility can quickly adapt much better than a vehicle with high Speed. Speed is more important in prestine conditions (like on a road or in an empty sky) but Agility is more important in chaotic conditions (a ruin of a city, or an asteroid field).

Some vehicles have both low speed and low agility (like a tank), but most are a balance of both (like a motorcycle).


At least, that's how I'd implement something like that. The gain of tracking 5 different variables for mobility across every vehicle just seems unrealistic for gameplay. Tracking 2 streamlined variables seems...fine.

I have never seen a satisifatory vehicle combat system in an RPG. (Well, I suppose you might be okay if you played MechWarrior.) Heck, most wargames aren't very good at it and even if they are, it tends to require large, not small, numbers.

If it's any consolation, I would have agreed with you until I had some time to really digest Unearthed Arcana.

Never touched that myself - never heard anything about it that made me want to.

Sounded like the least useful bits of the Rolemaster Companions - a lot of alternative systems that were almost certainly not playtested very much.

I'm the exact opposite. Classes like the Green Star Adept are what Prestige Classes should have been, and classes like Mystic Theurge are just the laziest-possible attempt to paper over the fact that the system as designed doesn't work.

Bleakbane's First Rule of RPG Mechanics: I Don't Want Your Flavour.

I'll use it if I'm running someone else's module (and Golarion, which i run all the APs on now, helps by being the ONLY game world in my thirty-years of experience that I think is good enough to buy the source books to read for the fluff for fun), but otherwise, I'm not going to be playing on anyone else's worlds but mine, and I take a dim view of disconnected random flavour nonsense that only exists to support a load of usually-quite-rubbish abilities.

(This is why we only play 3.x and Rolemaster with regularity - many other RPG systems are tied directly to some form of genre/world and I rally don't care for that, unless it comes with a REALLY GOOD set of quest books, like Warhammer first Ed did and Paizo has with the adventure paths.)

[Jay R]

I dislike the non-class-based approach that D&D 3.0 (and later) turned classes into.

Properly, a class is a socio-economic position. In original D&D, a first-level Fighting Man¹ was a “Veteran”. He grew up learning to fight; it was his entire lifestyle. Similarly, a first level magic-user grew up being trained in magic. You can’t just “pick up a level” in a socio-economic class, for the same reason I can't just "pick up a level" in Olympic athlete or millionaire.

¹ Yes, that was the term. The character races were Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits. It's worth noting that all players I met at this time were guys.

My favorite true class-based system is Flashing Blades – role-playing in France in the time of the musketeers. The classes are Noble, Gentleman², Soldier, and Rogue. They affected what skills were available, and how you learned to fight (fencing academy, barracks training, school of hard knocks).

² See Fighting Man. When I ran the game, I invented the character class Actor, because in the 17th century, actresses were fairly autonomous.

I wish the non-class-based learning paths in 3.5 were named something else. [“My character has two levels on the Fighter Path, 4 on the Ranger path, and 6 on the Horizon Walker path.”] I like the game, just dislike that abused terminology.

My favorite games are:

Original D&D
Flashing Blades
Champions (3rd – 5th level)
TOON
D&D 3.5e

These are in chronological order, since I can’t really give them a preference order. I like them for very different things.

The looseness of original D&D made it a perfect game for imaginative people. You didn’t have a search check. You had to discuss how to search the room. Did you remember to look at the bottom of each bookshelf? Its biggest strength (and biggest weakness) was that it isn’t a game; it’s a set of pamphlets to help you build a game. [People who started with this game are usually far more comfortable with DM judgment calls instead of exact rules, since that’s what this game is.]

Flashing Blades has a minimal system, just enough that you can focus on rapiers and court intrigue, not on mechanics. It’s as immersive as any game I’ve played.

Champions allows near-infinite flexibility to design characters. Its only flaw (arithmetic-based character design) is no problem for me – a math Ph.D.

TOON is the exactly correct madhouse for simulating cartoon characters. If a character tries to do something clearly impossible (an elephant tries to go through a mousehole), you roll on his Smarts. If you fail the roll, you succeed at the task.

And 3.5e has a richness of detail and option that allows a huge ability to build unique characters.

So I don’t prefer class-based or classless designs. I don’t prefer old games or new games. I prefer systems that allow you to do what the system is supposed to do, within the limits of it being something I want to do.

[Anonymouswizard]

I dislike the non-class-based approach that D&D 3.0 (and later) turned classes into.

Properly, a class is a socio-economic position. In original D&D, a first-level Fighting Man¹ was a “Veteran”. He grew up learning to fight; it was his entire lifestyle. Similarly, a first level magic-user grew up being trained in magic. You can’t just “pick up a level” in a socio-economic class, for the same reason I can't just "pick up a level" in Olympic athlete or millionaire.

¹ Yes, that was the term. The character races were Men, Elves, Dwarves, and Hobbits. It's worth noting that all players I met at this time were guys.

My favorite true class-based system is Flashing Blades – role-playing in France in the time of the musketeers. The classes are Noble, Gentleman², Soldier, and Rogue. They affected what skills were available, and how you learned to fight (fencing academy, barracks training, school of hard knocks).

² See Fighting Man. When I ran the game, I invented the character class Actor, because in the 17th century, actresses were fairly autonomous.

That's an interesting approach. Maybe what would be interesting is a mixture of 'class' and 'kit/path', while as I type this I realise I just renamed the 'race/class' system.

Eh, I'm a fan of lifepath character generation anyway. Let me pick abilities based on Sir Tim's experience, instead of just giving me certain abilities because he's a knight, and ideally have a structure where I work out what happened to him over the years instead of just giving me a bunch of points and telling me to go.

(Sir Tim is one of my 'characters that I would like to play, but have never had the chance', on there because he really doesn't fit into D&D conventions. He's a courtly knight, with his skills primarily in speaking to people, and combat skills focused more on jousting and dueling rather than melee combat.)

[Max_Killjoy]

That's an interesting approach. Maybe what would be interesting is a mixture of 'class' and 'kit/path', while as I type this I realise I just renamed the 'race/class' system.

Eh, I'm a fan of lifepath character generation anyway. Let me pick abilities based on Sir Tim's experience, instead of just giving me certain abilities because he's a knight, and ideally have a structure where I work out what happened to him over the years instead of just giving me a bunch of points and telling me to go.

(Sir Tim is one of my 'characters that I would like to play, but have never had the chance', on there because he really doesn't fit into D&D conventions. He's a courtly knight, with his skills primarily in speaking to people, and combat skills focused more on jousting and dueling rather than melee combat.)

I have no problem with lifepath backgrounds if they're entirely based on player choice and have balanced results and tradeoffs... but I can think of one type of character creation that's worse than Classes -- randomized lifepath.

And yeah, from what I've been told by at least some of its fans, D&D isn't the place for characters like Sir Tim... because Sir Tim is not an "Adventurer", and in D&D all that stuff is just sidelines to the "Adventuring".

[LibraryOgre]

My big current project is actually.... drastically overhauling the class/multiclass system, such that the PHB classes are "human classes" (with multiclassing) and every individual race has their own set of unique classes, to represent the race-as-class ethos of Classic D&D while still allowinig nonhuman PCs more choices.

You might take a look at ACKS (Adventurer, Conqueror, King System) which does that... Humans have the usual array of classes, while the races have a couple of different classes each, focusing on what they do best.

I'm the exact opposite. Classes like the Green Star Adept are what Prestige Classes should have been, and classes like Mystic Theurge are just the laziest-possible attempt to paper over the fact that the system as designed doesn't work

Whereas I think the Green Star Adept-type concept works best as a kit, not a PrC.

[Morgaln]

That's an interesting approach. Maybe what would be interesting is a mixture of 'class' and 'kit/path', while as I type this I realise I just renamed the 'race/class' system.

Eh, I'm a fan of lifepath character generation anyway. Let me pick abilities based on Sir Tim's experience, instead of just giving me certain abilities because he's a knight, and ideally have a structure where I work out what happened to him over the years instead of just giving me a bunch of points and telling me to go.

(Sir Tim is one of my 'characters that I would like to play, but have never had the chance', on there because he really doesn't fit into D&D conventions. He's a courtly knight, with his skills primarily in speaking to people, and combat skills focused more on jousting and dueling rather than melee combat.)

I feel much the same way; I've long since turned away from D&D, since I just don't like the kind of class structure that prohibits me from doing anything that class isn't specifically allowed to do. I also prefer more narrative systems, but that's less of an issue because you can play D&D just as well with a less numbers-oriented approach.

You really do need to find an opportunity to try out "The Dark Eye" (I know you own it because we've talked about it in another thread a while ago). In that game, while being a knight will give you certain skills meant to represent what you were taught during knight training, you will be able to learn whatever you want with your leftover points. There are no restrictions whatsoever, as long as you can afford what you want to learn (except for magical abilities, if you are not born with the ability to do magic, you can't do it period). I think you'd really enjoy the possibilities for character creation the system provides.

[Max_Killjoy]

I feel much the same way; I've long since turned away from D&D, since I just don't like the kind of class structure that prohibits me from doing anything that class isn't specifically allowed to do. I also prefer more narrative systems, but that's less of an issue because you can play D&D just as well with a less numbers-oriented approach.

You really do need to find an opportunity to try out "The Dark Eye" (I know you own it because we've talked about it in another thread a while ago). In that game, while being a knight will give you certain skills meant to represent what you were taught during knight training, you will be able to learn whatever you want with your leftover points. There are no restrictions whatsoever, as long as you can afford what you want to learn (except for magical abilities, if you are not born with the ability to do magic, you can't do it period). I think you'd really enjoy the possibilities for character creation the system provides.

I keep meaning to check out TDE.

Also hear good things about Splittermond (sp?), but it's not available in English as far as I know, and I'd need to improve my German from a few words to actual reading comprehension just to see if I like the game's basics, let alone its details.

[Anonymouswizard]

I have no problem with lifepath backgrounds if they're entirely based on player choice and have balanced results and tradeoffs... but I can think of one type of character creation that's worse than Classes -- randomized lifepath.

I don't mind an 'optionally random' lifepath system, but yeah. There should pretty much always be the option to just pick, because I've found that once most players get out of the D&D mindset then they'll start picking less optimal options for the sake of character.

And yeah, from what I've been told by at least some of its fans, D&D isn't the place for characters like Sir Tim... because Sir Tim is not an "Adventurer", and in D&D all that stuff is just sidelines to the "Adventuring".

Yep, there's a difference between being an adventurer and being an adventurer. Sir Tim would fit pretty well as an adventurer in say The Dark Eye, where resolving the conflict is typically seen as better than just killing everything in site. Because Sir Tim has a lot of skills useful to a wandering band of mercenaries, just not many useful to murderhobos or people only interested in The Dungeon.

You really do need to find an opportunity to try out "The Dark Eye" (I know you own it because we've talked about it in another thread a while ago). In that game, while being a knight will give you certain skills meant to represent what you were taught during knight training, you will be able to learn whatever you want with your leftover points. There are no restrictions whatsoever, as long as you can afford what you want to learn (except for magical abilities, if you are not born with the ability to do magic, you can't do it period). I think you'd really enjoy the possibilities for character creation the system provides.

I really want to, I'm wondering if I should just move to Germany at this point