I have loved RPGs for as long as I can remember, and one of the biggest things my friends and I have enjoyed about them is the ability to be extremely creative with everything you can do.
My friends and I love other games besides Pathfinder and other great tabletop RPGs, and one of our long time favorites has been the Elder Scrolls series and most recently Skyrim.
The reason I bring up Skyrim is that it is a game where you go in and you are classless, you don't have to fit any role you simply play the way you want and that is what you level up.
I am asking you as a community to help us as we continue to explore this idea of at least starting a classless system. Our first idea is similar to the point buy method for stats, only you don't use them for stats alone, you would use them for class abilities, so Rage, sneak attack, increased movement speed, trapfinding, animal companions, mounts, Eidolons, basically anything in the game can be brought through this point buy system and later as the character progress by spending XP similar to World of Darkness if you have used that system.
To make things easy we wanted to start off with each person having 100 points and still having one starting feat, 2 if human. (Racial archetypes we are leaving the same. )
So for example -
Rage is 25 points
having feats at every level is 25 points (instead of every other level as standard rules), feats would be 10 points if one wishes to buy a feat.
Good saves for everything is 45 points (15 points per save)
Total cost - 95 points
You have 5 points left over which will be giving to you at 5x100xp so you begin the game with 500xp to spend as you "level".
Or you could take those 5 points and give yourself 1 skill as a "class skill"
We could do a simple 0 or 1st level spells cost 10 points, all the way to 9th level which costs 90 points.
Every 100 xp would give you 1 point to spend, or something like that for leveling.
As you can see this is not balanced in anyway but its just something to give an idea of what we are trying to accomplish. We know this really throws a lot of things out the window and we are almost building from the ground up but we think it might be fun to at least think about.
We would love to be able to branch out and do something like if you swing your sword for long enough you get better at wielding a sword, but for now we are focusing on the classless system and the xp buyout idea. Feel free to comment on this we would love to hear from anyone who has tried this before and what did and did not work and why.
Thanks again
Ruuak
A friend made just such a set of rules for AD&D 2e.
As I understood it you kinda have to give up being able to mirror the existing class system and settle on a point system for everyone, like you are already doing. It may make it harder to balance against APs but it was fun to play test. As I recall casters had a harder time in my friend's system. But since you are effectively making a whole new d20 game all the balancing is going to have to come from extensive play testing.
First of all, classless systems are hardly new. There have been innumerable classless PnP RPGs over the years.
Second, classes are pretty much part and parcel of the D&D (and thus Pathfinder) experience. Remember, Pathfinder is designed to discourage multiclassing; the designers really want you to stick to one class. Non-class systems are like super-multiclassing.
A problem of all classless systems is that they are open to abuse. Every variable that the player gets to control means another avenue of potential abuse. Pathfinder is an extremely large and complex system at this point, without an extreme amount of retooling a classless approach to it would lead to phenomenal amounts of abuse.
I think it might be smarter to try a classless system (such as BRP) rather than converting Pathfinder into a classless system.
If you are really set on this, I would suggest looking at the generic classes from 3.5's Unearthed Arcana. While this is still a class system, it is flexible enough to allow for much more unique characters than currently possible in Pathfinder.
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Ruaark, I seem to remember, Mutants and Masterminds broke everything down to a point buy basis...
you had a pool of points, the GM would set how many.
From this pool you would buy your Base attack bonus, your saving throws, your hit dice,
and then your powers.
Perhaps that might be a good place to start with what you are looking for.
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Sounds like what you want is the Hero System. It's a very flexible point based system where even the spells are built with points. I have played every edition except the latest one and from what I have heard 6th edition is not worth it. See if you can find a copy of the 5th edition and also Fantasy Hero supplements.
First of all, classless systems are hardly new. There have been innumerable classless PnP RPGs over the years.
Thank you for pointing this out, I guess I should have said that in my experience I am new to this concept for PnP RPGs.
Thank you for your help thus far everyone!
Also Elyas, thank you for bringing to mind Mutants and Masterminds, we had all forgotten to mention that system as we are coming up with ides for this!
Whale would you mind describing in what ways you have seen Pathfinder discouraging multiclassing? I would say that it holds the same amount of multiclassing idea as 3.5 did, only without the xp penalty. Thanks again!
There are a couple of homebrew classless systems floating around out there for Pathfinder. One was created by a fellow messageboard member and is really, really well done.
Whale would you mind describing in what ways you have seen Pathfinder discouraging multiclassing? I would say that it holds the same amount of multiclassing idea as 3.5 did, only without the xp penalty. Thanks again!
I dried to dig up a dev quote, but I spent 5 minutes looking for one and couldn't find one. Nonetheless, if you search for "Pathfinder Multiclassing" on Google or just "Multiclassing" on the forums you will find a lot of threads either gripping about or appreciating the fact that pathfinder discourages multiclassing. This was a stated design goal as the devs believed there was too much optimization happening in 3.5 through a few dips into various classes.
Evidence:
* Lots of new capstone abilities, encouraging you to go the full 20 levels in a class.
* More tiered options (that is, you gain access to even more options if you remain faithful to a class).
* Class Abilities got spread over the first few levels (compare the PF ranger to the 3.5 ranger)
* Worse and less prestige classes (in 3.5 it was common to dip a few classes then go full bore into a prestige class; this isn't as good in PF)
Cal, would you mind posting what member had or at least there guide? Also Whale thanks for the info, I see what you mean now.
* Class Abilities got spread over the first few levels (compare the PF ranger to the 3.5 ranger)That's a rather poor example. If you look at the two, the PF ranger is IDENTICAL to the 3.5 ranger, except that it also gains Favored Terrain (first at level 3), and provides a core alternative to an animal companion.
In fact, most of the PF classes gain MORE in the first few levels than classes did in 3.5; PF is designed to make starting out at level 1 not suck quite so hard by providing characters with some more, cool stuff to do from the get-go.
PF discourages multi-classing by:
--making sure to fill later levels with new and relevant abilities, designed to entice players to stay in a class (no dead levels, new abilities instead of just having progressive old abilities, capstones)
--making prestige classes much less appealing (partly by tying more of the power into the stem classes)
--providing characters with more feats, and classes with more options, so that you can do some of the differentiation and specialization associated with PrCs in 3.5 without leaving your class (archetypes and multi-choice class ability options are the biggies here)
--not including the multi-class enabler feats (Swift Hunter, Ascetic Knight, etc...)
--retooling favored class to provide a bonus that you want, rather than a penalty you try to work aroundThat said, PF also enabled multi-classing more than 3.5 did by removing the penalties associated with doing uneven splits, allowing for better mixes irrespective of race choice, including more abilities early, and by providing more feats worth taking.
How was Pathfinder designed to discourage multiclassing? The penalty for doing so seems much less severe than the EXP cut one took in 3rd ed.
Vestrial has the right of it.
Wow thank you very much everyone! This has been helpful thus far, if we still have more that is great, we are off to a great start!
I remember those books. I think I still have my high level campaigns book...
I seem to remember one of those books splitting attributes into two separate attributes each... Like instead of having an 18 stregth that did hit bonus, damage bonus carry capacity all at a given level you could adjust each attribute by a split of 2 in each direction so your 18 strength would become a 20 in terms of damage but a 16 in terms of carrying capacity....
I found that idea particularly awesome.
They had a high level campaigns book?
That might be worth a read.
Flagged this for move into the house rules forum.
Re: PF discouraging multiclassing, I don't think that's true. In fact, there are a ton of feats and prestige classes that do just that. But in 3.5 it was almost ALWAYS a good idea to multiclass, and in PF they have tried to even that up a bit.
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Cal, would you mind posting what member had or at least there guide? Also Whale thanks for the info, I see what you mean now.
Kirth Gersen's Classless Pathfinder.
Download link here.
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Pretty much every RPG that isn't D&D based is classless. Rather than trying to reinvent the wheel, you may want to just check out some other RPGs that are built on a point-buy system.
Check out Savage Worlds. It has a much easier entry compared to GURPS or HERO, both in terms of rules complexity and price. The basic book is only $9.95.
Here's some d20 Class Construction rules I came across recently in another thread. No idea how helpful it should be for PF, but interesting nonetheless...
I think it's generally better for tabletop games, which have a bigger emphasis on roleplaying, to have classes, especially when these classes are operating in an established world. Your race and class helps determine your place in it and how to roleplay.
That isn't to say classless is universally bad, but I think it's easier for people new to tabletop gaming to wrap their heads around the game when most of their abilities are decided for them via a class progression.