Classless PCs?

[joela]

Wait. What? How'd I miss this?!?

Classless 4e

[CourtFool]

Sacrilege!

[Uchawi]

I don't know what to say ... the web filter at work prevents me from accessing the link!

[Matthew Koelbl]

Here's the summary - the suggestion is that you can take more of a classless approach to 4E by having each PC choose a class and gain the appropriate class features (healing word / combat challenge / sneak attack / etc). However, all PCs would have equal hitpoints (based on Con), and could choose powers from any class.

So you could 'build your own' character, essentially. It wouldn't be especially well balanced, but would probably be a viable approach in a home game.

I think applying it to 4E as a whole is tricky, but that using something like this as a basis for a new system could certainly be cool.

[Uchawi]

I was expecting something along those lines with gamma world, but then they took it too far by making the process random, and not following the full 4E rule set.

But the simple fix in regards to maintaining the current 4E class structure, is to provide more choices on powers, but still limit how many times they may be used. This would mimic previous spell casting systems, from 3.5. So instead of taking feats to swap powers, make it built into the class structure.

I really wish I could sit down with one of the developers for an hour.

[Diffan]

This style of play would be a lot of fun but completly broken with very little balance. Were I to run this sort of game, I'd put in restrictions (of a sort) for power selection.

For example, you still have to choose a base class to gain healing surges, at least 1 at-will power, class features, etc. Other options like your 2nd (or 3rd if human) at-will power, encounter power, and daily power could only come from the same power source as your base class. So a base-fighter could chose Ranger, Rogue, or Warlord based powers for his at-will, encounter, and daily allotment.

At 11th level, you automatically gain a 2nd power source to choose from (Arcane, Divine, Shadow, Primal, Psionic) and you can choose any power of that specific source. At 21st level, you can then select powers from a 3rd source. You are by no means required to choose additional powers from these sources, just that the access is there.

Alternatively, Multi-class feats work to allow you specific powers withing that specific class. So the same base-Fighter could take MC feat for say the Barbarian and now can choose ANY power that Barbarian has to offer. This completly takes out the point for further multiclass feats unless you want to Paragon Multi-class. Taking additional MC feats (like Adept Power) gains you 1 more additional power selection (so your not swapping but have access to select either) NOTE: This would NOT gain you one more usage, just further expands your repitoire (like a Wizard's spellbook).

What do you think?