As a note, I've completed work on a classless system that works off the Pathfinder rules. In essence, you build characters a la carte by spending XP as it is earned. All that changes is character generation; you can still play your classless characters in Paizo adventures without any conversion needed. I have included some ideas regarding changes in skills lists, combat mechanics, and the like.
The advantages of the classless system are that problems revolving around "class balance" and proliferation of prestige classes are neatly circumvented. The dreaded "Christmas-Tree Effect" is also addressed. A built-in diminishing returns mechanic helps mitigate some of the problems of high-level play.
Disadvantages are lack of large-scale playtesting, specifically in the areas of XP pricing for various features.
Version 1.0 of these rules was emailed to my group (Houstonderek, Silverhair, et al.) and to Jess Door this month. Version 1.1 (smoothing out some inconsistencies) is underway.
The point of this post is to offer a copy to anyone at Paizo, in hopes that it might spark some kind of an option in a future optional rules accessory. I might be willing to send a (VERY) limited number of copies by email to people who specifically request them, but those mailings will be limited to people whose design input in the past has impressed me... and let me add that I need not agree with their conclusions; some people with whom I've had great differences of opionion I nevertheless hold in high esteem. What I want to avoid is every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Cthulhu on the boards wanting a copy on a lark but having no real interest in assisting with it.
As a note, I've completed work on a classless system that works off the Pathfinder rules. In essence, you build characters a la carte by spending XP as it is earned. All that changes is character generation; you can still play your classless characters in Paizo adventures without any conversion needed. I have included some ideas regarding changes in skills lists, combat mechanics, and the like.
The advantages of the classless system are that problems revolving around "class balance" and proliferation of prestige classes are neatly circumvented. The dreaded "Christmas-Tree Effect" is also addressed. A built-in diminishing returns mechanic helps mitigate some of the problems of high-level play.
Disadvantages are lack of large-scale playtesting, specifically in the areas of XP pricing for various features.
Version 1.0 of these rules was emailed to my group (Houstonderek, Silverhair, et al.) and to Jess Door this month. Version 1.1 (smoothing out some inconsistencies) is underway.
The point of this post is to offer a copy to anyone at Paizo, in hopes that it might spark some kind of an option in a future optional rules accessory. I might be willing to send a (VERY) limited number of copies by email to people who specifically request them, but those mailings will be limited to people whose design input in the past has impressed me... and let me add that I need not agree with their conclusions; some people with whom I've had great differences of opionion I nevertheless hold in high esteem. What I want to avoid is every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Cthulhu on the boards wanting a copy on a lark but having no real interest in assisting with it.
Id be interested in checking it out and playtesting it. I am not sure if you ar familiar with the 'buy the numbers' book which did a similiar thing with 3.5. The math in it was pretty good and it worked for the most part. I used in a campaign for 2 years before we changed over into a new campaign.
The major drawback with the system was that, often times, there needed to be the right people playing it. We abandoned it when we picked up several new players who abused the loopholes in the system.
What I want to avoid is every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Cthulhu on the boards wanting a copy on a lark but having no real interest in assisting with it.
But what makes you think Cthulhu wouldn't be interested in assisting? Sure, he's a great old one whose destiny is setting creation ablaze when the stars are right, but I still value his opinion and participation on game design.
For what it's worth, I never saw "class balance" as a chore to be avoided. As someone who enjoys the style of character building you suggest, I always thought the great strength of D&D was that it was easy to build a team that works well together... and that's precisely because the party roles are so rigid and incomplete on their own.
Hey, if you can keep it under a page, I'm all for classless rules. But I'm not sure the book "needs" them.
That eliminates me I would guess.
You'd be firmly in the category of "don't always agree with, but usually impressed with nonetheless."
Hi, Ruemere. Great points, all.
Am I right in assuming that you have assigned Xp costs to specific character features, and instead of leveling, you up your power options by doing stuff like "purchase BAB +1 for Y Xp" or "purchase spell level for Z Xp"?
Yes. Most things work off purchase of ranks, as if they were skills. Skills, feats, saves, powers all have ranks, and higher ranks cost proportionately more XP than lower ones.
If so, how do you prevent glass-jaw bazooka characters (highly specialized offense specialists with no means of defense and tons of initiative)?
In a word, I don't. In past playtests with similar rules, characters like that died in droves, and the problem was largely self-correcting. I'd also mention that this system lends itself better to the type of game in which skills get a fair amount of use, vis-a-vis combat. If you just want to kill things, D&D is fine as is; no need at all for a new system. To expand on this idea, the system is just as susceptible to abuse as is D&D, just in different ways. The upshot is that pricing can easily be adjusted to counter abuses that frequently come up in playtesting (it might be as simple as requiring more ranks, or a higher prerequisite cost), rather than having to redesign classes or rules from the ground up.
Since, quite probably, characters have a lot more build options on the start up, how do you address an issue of player confusion? I.e. "I have so many options that I don't know what to do".
That can certainly happen; it's the flip side of D&D's "what if I don't want to be one of these 11 classes?" (which seems to come up with new players quite a bit). A "rules lite" section on "how to build a character" would be a very good addition to the mechanics I've written.
Finally, if the characters built your way end up as a copy of leveled characters, why would anyone prefer to use purchase options instead of levels?
Quite simply, can build copies of leveled characters =/= have to build copies of leveled characters. All the time in D&D, I find myself going through scores of multiclass and prestige options, not to find anything game-breaking, but simply to make a character like the one I envision. This system lets me do that with far fewer splatbooks.
I'm always interested in new rules Kirth. Given a chance I could even come down to Houston for a playtest sometime.
In the words of the pimp from Bachelor Party, "That would be out of sight, dude!"
I'd be interested in seeing the rules. Any chance you can post them somewhere for download?
I'd be interested in seeing the rules. Any chance you can post them somewhere for download?
I'm ashamed to admit it, but figuring out how to post here is about the limit of my internet skillz. If someone could explain in baby talk how to do what you suggest, I'd be amenable to trying it. Unless it requires logins and stuff. Failing that, you'd certainly be on the list of people I'd be willing to email them to!
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I'd be interested in seeing the rules. Any chance you can post them somewhere for download?I'm ashamed to admit it, but figuring out how to post here is about the limit of my internet skillz. If someone could explain in baby talk how to do what you suggest, I'd be amenable to trying it. Unless it requires logins and stuff. Failing that, you'd certainly be on the list of people I'd be willing to email them to!
I'm not too familiar with the various file-hosting sites - but I do know that there are tons and tons. That being said, I'd be glad to host the file and post a link to this board. Just email me at the address in my profile and I'll put up a link.
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That eliminates me I would guess.You'd be firmly in the category of "don't always agree with, but usually impressed with nonetheless."
Many thanks Kirth!
I can't help but see that I am in my own category of "usually impressed with" as opposed to "held in high esteem". ;) (I'm totally kidding of course)
Seriously, I am honored sir, and I reciprocate, as I hold you in high esteem as well.
I totally understand the journey which you (and others) have undertaken with regards to rules/class balance, we have just chosen (sometimes) divergent paths to get to the same goal.
This whole exercise has been phenomenal. I am truly sorry to see this part of the beta test coming to a close in many ways. Of course I am really interested to get a look at the final rules to see the results of all input from the beta test. Living up north usually doesn't require any additional incentive to wish for summer but this year will be different.
Good job everyone!
Cheers
PS Can I continue to post like this and remain neutral evil? :)
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I might be willing to send a (VERY) limited number of copies by email to people who specifically request them, but those mailings will be limited to people whose design input in the past has impressed me... and let me add that I need not agree with their conclusions; some people with whom I've had great differences of opionion I nevertheless hold in high esteem. What I want to avoid is every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Cthulhu on the boards wanting a copy on a lark but having no real interest in assisting with it.
Kirth, if I am among this class of people, I would be greatly interested in what you have developed.
Like yourself, you know that I have been developing my own sub-3.5/PF system for own home-games.
Robert
Kirth, if I am among this class of people, I would be greatly interested in what you have developed. Like yourself, you know that I have been developing my own sub-3.5/PF system for own home-games.
Yes to both! I was hoping that you would have some interest in this. (Now if Jason Nelson would look at it, and/or maybe Chris Mortika, I'd be really honored!)
Tell ya what -- why don't I take up Sleepy on his very excellent offer and see if we can get it posted somewhere where it's easy to get to.
I'm ashamed to admit it, but figuring out how to post here is about the limit of my internet skillz. If someone could explain in baby talk how to do what you suggest, I'd be amenable to trying it. Unless it requires logins and stuff. Failing that, you'd certainly be on the list of people I'd be willing to email them to!
I'm still in the "Alpha" stage of putting together a fansite which will include a fan contributions page. Until I learn enough about web content management systems, I have just slapped together a rudimentary web site at: www.pathfinderportal.com
If you wish, I would be happy to host it for you. If you are interested, just e-mail me at: admin(at)pathfinderportal.com
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Kirth, if I am among this class of people, I would be greatly interested in what you have developed. Like yourself, you know that I have been developing my own sub-3.5/PF system for own home-games.Yes to both! I was hoping that you would have some interest in this. (Now if Jason Nelson would look at it, and/or maybe Chris Mortika, I'd be really honored!)
Excellent. I'm honored. How big of a file are we talking? Is it in MS Word format?
My yahoo can handle 10 MB file.
SirKicley(at)yahoo(dot)com
I would be please to get info from you offline - even beyond the scope of this document as we both have exchanged a number of great ideas over the past year (since Alpha playtesting began).
Robert
Email sent, to those whose addresses I had.
Many, many thanks to anyone with a real interest.
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Hi, Kirth. I could hit the Zip file above but I wanted to see where I rate in your opinion, and I wanted to let you know that I was interested in your system. I also played a bit with the 'by the numbers' class-less rules and I use them to modify existing classes in games I currently play (changing a couple things here and there and keeping it all balanced). I would like to try out your system.
falsehealer at yahoo dot com if you deem me worthy.
Email sent, to those whose addresses I had.
Many, many thanks to anyone with a real interest.And a link for those who did not:
Cool! Thanks, Sleepy. You're a man (dwarf?) of your word.
What I want to avoid is every Tom, Dick, Harry, and Cthulhu on the boards wanting a copy on a lark but having no real interest in assisting with it.I think KG was trying to avoid an open playtest...
More wanted to avoid having to send upteen bazillion emails to people who might never open them. An open playtest would be just fine... although I lack my own boards to handle the traffic!
Well it looks like Sleepy beat me to uploading this, but here's another copy of the "Classless System", however these are single file downloads.
The first link is for a zipped DOC file, the second is for a zipped PDF file.
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Kirth Gersen's PF Classless System (Single zipped .doc file 257 KB)
Kirth Gersen's PF Classless System (Single zipped .pdf file 1.8 MB)
Once I get the Pathfinder Portal up and running with some proper software I could certainly host the needed forums, unless you find a "home" before then. (Probably in about 3 weeks.)
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An open playtest would be just fine... although I lack my own boards to handle the traffic!
Would something like this be appropriate in the paizo PBP discussion forum? A thread(s) might not be enough, perhaps a full forum would be more helpful.
I haven't explored too much of what ENWorld could offer, but they seem to have lots of forum space/blog space. Here's a list of personal forums: http://www.enworld.org/forum/personal-hosted-forums/, maybe space is available there, but I'm pretty sure you have to have a paid membership for that.
Once I get the Pathfinder Portal up and running with some proper software I could certainly host the needed forums, unless you find a "home" before then. (Probably in about 3 weeks.)
Thanks, Kor! Pathfinder Portal seems like an ideal hosting site, assuming you like the system and don't mind the extra headache too much. Considering the final Pathfinder rules aren't due out for some time yet, we've got plenty of time to figure out logistics.
Kirth. Wow! Nice job! That is a lot to digest. It will take more time to fully comprehend. Again, nicely done sir! Cheers
Thank you! It's less complicated than it looks; the bulk of the stuff is just conversion examples. For feats and powers I'd intended just to provide guidelines and a couple of examples, but when I found how easy it was to convert stuff, I just sort of got carried away and did most of what I could think of. I've an entire separate document of converted non-OGL feats and features as well, but didn't include that in the main document due to copyright concerns. As it is, I ended up referencing some non-OGL spells in the Powers section, but since this is a non-profit, personal-use only endeavor, that shouldn't be a problem (unless someone tries marketing it, which I expressly and unequivocally disallow -- unless Paizo wants to in the future).
I really like this - I have always been a fan of classless systems (Shadowrun and the such where there are archtypes but not classes) I converted a fighter/cleric over and ended up a bit more powerful but this is a really wonderful thing - I can now do character concepts that I really want to do so much easier! like a more martial cleric....... (I wanna smite and have auras but mixing cleric and pali just doesn't add up that well)
Glad you liked it! Funny you should mention Shadowrun; HoustonDerek's obsession with that game was part of my impetus for putting this system together -- we didn't want to have to choose between Shadowrun or Pathfinder -- and now we don't. Shadowrun characters should convert fairly easily, since they're already on a classless system with powers, weaknesses, etc.
P.S. If you're stuck playing in a class-based system in the future, the SRD Prestige Paladin is a good cleric/paladin combo class.
I've registered the system under Paizo's Community Use Policy. Kor, I notice your Pathfinder Portal is already listed there -- good show! If you could add the policy boilerplate to the classless documents there, I'd be greatly obligated (use "system" in place of "[website, character sheet, or whatever it is]").
Thanks for your help, and thank you again for hosting the classless system on your excellent Portal.