Classless Pathfinder? One Class Ability vs. Another

[Courtney D]

Has anyone here ever toyed with or worked on a classless version of Pathfinder. One in which you do not label yourself, but simply pick level appropriate "abilities" as you gain levels.

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I only ask because I started one, and it is difficult. I have started to try and rank abilities 1 - 5 in usefulness so that I can adjust the cost. For instance, 9th level wizard spellcasting is a 5, so I separate it into 5 "Feats" and you can choose to purchase 1, or, 2,3,4,5.

Writing out all the options has grown tedious and I was finding that I was needing to make-up some more super powered "feats" for the martial type of concept.

The benefit here is that you can build what you want, the negative, some serious min-max issues.

I also include "feats" to increase HP, Base Attack, saves, and skills per level.

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Alternatively if I could make a list of class abilities and their value 1 - 3 or 1 - 5, you could simply use this list to pick a class, but then trade out appropriate abilities as you see fit. So if consensus stated that 9th level divine casting is exactly equal to 9th level arcane casting, then you could play a cleric to the god of magic and trade spell lists.

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So what systems already do this? Has anyone pathfinderized anything like this?

[Rynjin]

I have indeed.

Freeform Class Selection.

Google doc

I intend to work on it more some time when I get the time and inclination to do so. In its current state it's workable, but far from perfect.

Requires a bit of trust on the player's part, because as you said it has a bit of a min/max issue.

[Lord Mhoram]

There are a couple of books floating around with that idea - both 3.x but easily used in PF. Complete Control is one, and the Class Construction engine is another. The first is a full point buy idea, and the second lets you build classes with a budget - but it is easily modified to have "have this many constructino points this level - go to town" - I've done that for a few characters. Pretty cool.

Edit - I am a 29 year HERO system veteran, and I found the Complete Control pretty detailed, and complex.

[DungeonmasterCal]

I have one for PF that a fellow board member created--Kirth Gersen, I think is his handle. It uses XP gained through adventuring to purchase abilities, hit points, etc. I'd love to switch to it, but my group doesn't want to.

[Courtney D]

Thank you. This is exactly what I wanted to be able to compare to. I just much prefer the idea, as stagnant classes bug me.

[Courtney D]

DungeonmasterCal wrote:

I have one for PF that a fellow board member created--Kirth Gersen, I think is his handle. It uses XP gained through adventuring to purchase abilities, hit points, etc. I'd love to switch to it, but my group doesn't want to.

Where is it available? Do I just email him?

[Courtney D]

does anyone else play under rules similar to these.

[Quandary]

Plenty of game systems already don't use classes to begin with, why not use them?

[Courtney D]

Quandary wrote:

Plenty of game systems already don't use classes to begin with, why not use them?

I would and so would 2 others of the 9 I play with. This type of a thing could be our agreed solution or could act as a way to get us all more comfortable with a classless system.

[TriOmegaZero]

Courtney D wrote:

Where is it available? Do I just email him?

I have it hosted here.

[Courtney D]

Thank you TOZ

[TOZ]

I'm here for you. :)

[Kirth Gersen]

As a warning, the document I did for a classless Pathfinfer has a few caveats that potential users should beware of:

It was largely completed during the Beta playtesting, and might not reflect the final Pathfinder rules;

This is especially true for skills, which were cut-and-pasted directly from the Beta documents and don't really work well, in the final analysis.

The system was not playtested, so costs, areas of potential abuse, etc. have not been evaluated;

The critical failure/success options don't work at all -- I'd recommend looking at the revised ones in the final Kirthfinder rules instead.

Mostly, that document was an effort to put down on paper the idea of how such a system could be constructed. I'd intended on playtesting and developiong it in the years since it was produced, but demand for a class-based system forced me to abandon that project (the "Kirthfinder" rules grew from there).

[Epic Meepo]

Courtney D wrote:

I could make a list of class abilities and their value 1 - 3 or 1 - 5, you could simply use this list to pick a class, but then trade out appropriate abilities as you see fit.

I essentially do this. I use packages of equivalent class features as points of reference when designing new archetypes.