# Iteration: Can You Perfect It?



## Argyle King (Sep 19, 2013)

I know I mention the game a lot, but -serious- take a look at GURPS: Dungeon Fantasy.  I think it's a very good example of how you can have something like classes, but still be flexible and allow player choice.  While I'd never expect D&D to take a path which was quite that flexible, it did seem as though early 5th Edition playtest packets may have gone a few steps in that direction.  I had hoped they did, but the last few seem to have gone a different way.  If nothing else, it's interesting to look at how somebody else did it, and compare notes to what D&D has done over the various editions.  

http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasy/
http://www.sjgames.com/gurps/books/dungeonfantasymonsters1/


Another game I've played a lot recently (and another one I've been mentioning) is Star Wars: Edge of The Empire.  The game has classes, but abilities are gained through talent trees.  It occured to me yesterday (while playing) that talent trees weren't too radically different from feat chains.  The main difference is that talent trees allow for multiple paths to reach an ability.  With the huge amount of feats in D&D, it might be more difficult to pull off multiple paths, but I think it's an interesting idea.  What if I could pick up feat Z by one of two ways?  Maybe one player progresses through X, Y, and then Z.  Maybe a different player progresses through A, B, X, and then Z without needing Y.  One of the interesting things about this is that two players can be playing the same class, but have characters who feel very different in play.  In theory, D&D allows for this too; unfortunately, in the past two editions, there have been too many choices which were "no-brainer" choices or seen as "the one true way."  I believe part of the reason isn't due to the classes per se, but is tied to how D&D level progression works, but that's a different topic.  Either way, I view EoTE to be another game which D&D could take some cues from, and it's also a game which handles things far different than GURPS, so the juxtaposition of styles is interesting.  Looking at both and seeing the two ways of doing things when it comes to handling, class, characters, and character abilities is enlightening as well as being pretty good food for thought.

http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_minisite.asp?eidm=232


edit: Links provided for references


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## Shayuri (Sep 19, 2013)

I think my main disagreement with you is in what our criteria for a 'good' class is. For example, I don't see a particular sort of conflict as being a necessary part of class design. Nor do I think a class needs to tell us anything in particular about the setting other than it's a setting where the class exists.

I prefer to move those things farther down, to where choices about the character are made. Less a question of class, than of selecting specific class features, feats, and so on. In my mind, character creation is usually a matter of moving from broad generalizations to specific manifestations.

A class is therefore a very broad, general thing...second only to race. It's later on, as the character becomes specific, that the things you're talking about take place.

Having said that, I suspect that you and I aren't as far apart on this as I'm making it sound. Our main differences may just be semantic, since a lot of what I'm talking about involves selecting optional class features...which is to say, picking things off of a 'menu' of choices available to anyone of a given class.

That's not so far from what you're talking about, except that it's done on a character-by-character basis, rather than generating an entire class unto itself that consists of those specific options. And since there's nothing in what you're saying that forbids it from being done on a character-by-character basis...yeah. Largely semantics.


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## Argyle King (Sep 19, 2013)

Shayuri said:


> I think my main disagreement with you is in what our criteria for a 'good' class is. For example, *I don't see a particular sort of conflict as being a necessary part of class design*. Nor do I think a class needs to tell us anything in particular about the setting other than it's a setting where the class exists.
> .





I don't think you were responding to me, but you said something which caught my attention.  I believe the same thing.  Often, one of the problems I have with D&D is that it assumes too much about how I handle a problem.  I think a lot of the classes, feats, and options which get derided as being "bad" or "underpowered" get that reputation not because the idea is bad, but because the idea is bad in the context of the system.  If I may steal some of the popular language being used to describe Next, I'd say I believe those options were designed with pillars in mind which the editions of their time didn't support very well.  

To be fair, I can't really blame D&D.  It took me a while to realize it, but, in many cases, I was trying to use the particular editions of D&D in a way they weren't really intended (or I at least believe they weren't intended) to be used.  Each edition that I'm familiar with (which includes mostly 3rd and 4th) has some ability to stretch to other styles, but, overall, I found that a lot of problems I was having were due to the fact that I was trying to do things which often fell outside of the game's expectations.  That is something to consider when it comes to class design as well.  If you want a class to be designed in such a way to highlight certain features, it helps if that class exists within a game which supports the highlighting of those features.


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## I'm A Banana (Sep 19, 2013)

Shayuri said:
			
		

> That's not so far from what you're talking about, except that it's done on a character-by-character basis, rather than generating an entire class unto itself that consists of those specific options. And since there's nothing in what you're saying that forbids it from being done on a character-by-character basis...yeah. Largely semantics




I think I'd say that if we start in different places, with different approaches and different needs, but end up being able to use the same system, then I've pretty much hit the goal.


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## Jhaelen (Sep 20, 2013)

Shayuri said:


> I think my main disagreement with you is in what our criteria for a 'good' class is. For example, I don't see a particular sort of conflict as being a necessary part of class design. Nor do I think a class needs to tell us anything in particular about the setting other than it's a setting where the class exists.



I'd like to give an example to illustrate these criteria:
In the DSA rpg, there are hundreds of classes. The reason why there are so many is that the designers really tried to allow players to play absolutely every individual that might have a place in the game's setting. What they didn't do though, is to think about what a pc of any of these classes is supposed to do or contribute in the context of a typical adventure set in their game world. A party consisting of a baker, a shepard, a catamite, and a pearl-diver may have trouble dealing with almost any kind of conflict that might be expected to come up in an adventure. So, are these good classes?

Neglecting the setting when designing classes works better. It's what D&D's been doing at least since 2e: The core rules define a (small) set of (broad) class concepts that can work in a multitude of (somewhat similar) settings. Then, in setting-specific supplements they show how to use and modify these concepts to work well within the setting. This can be done by introducing new feats, alternate class features, prestige classes, etc.
There are some obvious advantages to such an approach.

Imho, the question is, if I know from the beginning what kind of setting I'm going to play in, wouldn't it then make more sense to incorporate everything required for them to fit-in, right from the start?
Many rpg systems are doing this if the system is meant to be used only for one particular setting, e.g. FFG's 'Star Wars RPG' or 'The One Ring' for Middle-Earth based games. FFG even decided to split their RPG system into three 'sub-systems' to account for different campaign types played in the same setting.
Again there are some obvious advantages to such an approach.

I'm of the opinion you have to decide for one or the other approach. D&D hasn't always taken a well-defined path there. AD&D 1e had a bunch of classes that carried the baggage of belonging to a very specific cultural group that didn't necessarily have to present in the setting that was used: Assassin, Monk, and Druid are all examples that didn't work well as 'generic' classes, especially because of the way they worked mechanically: all of them implied the existence of a certain kind of organization.


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## I'm A Banana (Sep 20, 2013)

Jhalen said:
			
		

> party consisting of a baker, a shepard, a catamite, and a pearl-diver may have trouble dealing with almost any kind of conflict that might be expected to come up in an adventure. So, are these good classes?




Yeah, that's exactly the kind of thing that paying attention to the "conflict" helps to avoid, I think. Just saying "You can play a baker!" or "You can play a cultist of the Crystal Dragon!" doesn't necessarily give you something useful to _do_ when you play the game. 



			
				Jhalen said:
			
		

> I'm of the opinion you have to decide for one or the other approach. D&D hasn't always taken a well-defined path there.




What do you think of the proposed idea of having very specific classes embedded in a highly adaptable system, like the proposal? The "organic growth" example shows that it'd be trivially easy for a setting to introduce a new Core Mechanic (for instance) that changes how a given class works. You can imagine Dark Sun offering things like Defiling, Preserving, Loyalty, and Psionics, for instance. Eberron might offer Dragonmarks or Artifice. Those could be Core Mechanics and/or actual classes, so that if you have a Templar class that gets its own unique abilities and has a Loyalty Core Mechanic, you could either take that core mechanic and go to a different class (to perhaps represent Templars of different regions, or different kinds of Templars), and you can also take the templar class and swap out the Core Mechanic (perhaps the Templars of Gulg take the Spirit Binding core mechanic instead!). 

I think it might help give people obvious things to change that have a big impact on how the game plays, at a level independent of class -- it essentially defines how you get the resources you're spending on things.


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## Neonchameleon (Sep 20, 2013)

That was a vast improvement on the last one   Looking at that character pathway I might want to play it for a few sessions, depending on the DM and pitch.  But there's still plenty of room for improvement even at a fundamental level.  Notably:

I'm still unhappy with very little player choice in levelling up - and looking at how you say multiclassing works, anyone who found 4e classes too samey is probably going to have at least as much problem with that class structure - and some of us who liked the 4e class structure are going to have significant problems.  If you can multiclass the way you say without cherry picking being ridiculously easy and effective, you're basically back into the realms of point buy rather than class based with multiple pools for points (see WoD for an illustration).

And asboth DM and player I don't _want_ the default assumption to be that the DM creates the classes for multiple reasons.  Firstly that I want to be able to play the game out of the box and don't want the faff.  It's overhead I don't need, and I'm very much an improv DM - and believe in general that lowering the barriers to entry for DMs is a good thing in general.  Secondly as a player I seldom like playing a pregen (and that's ultimately what these optionless classes amount to in my eyes - pregens).  It's my character - for the DM to cross that line is for them to cross into storytelling rather than DMing territory.  Thirdly as a DM I want to see what the players come up with.  I want to give them guidelines as to the world, then I want them to add their own richness to it.  I certainly won't have fleshed out every nook and corner.  Worlds are complicated, chaotic, and confusing, and more heads working on them makes them feel more alive.


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## I'm A Banana (Sep 20, 2013)

Neonchameleon said:
			
		

> And asboth DM and player I don't want the default assumption to be that the DM creates the classes for multiple reasons.




I think I've successfully made the system so that you don't have to have that assumption. The "organic growth" example shows a player basically deciding to crib an ability from these guys. Speaking functionally, the abilities are free-floating. If a group would prefer to just do whatever, they can open up the selection so that you can pick any character ability, meaning each player can customize their OWN vision of what their specific character looks like, from literally every ability and core mechanic and background and basic ability set in the game (this would make the Compendium or something like it VERY valuable for these groups!  )  

But if another table is a more traditional top-down kind of table, they've got printed classes to choose from, too, so that they don't HAVE to make a million choices to play a certain type of character (thus leveraging the big benefits of a class-based system). And when new classes gets printed, groups that go more open still get a brand new pile of abilities, backgrounds, basic abilities, and core mechanics that they can re-assemble as they desire.


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## Jhaelen (Sep 23, 2013)

Kamikaze Midget said:


> What do you think of the proposed idea of having very specific classes embedded in a highly adaptable system, like the proposal?
> [...]
> I think it might help give people obvious things to change that have a big impact on how the game plays, at a level independent of class -- it essentially defines how you get the resources you're spending on things.



I think that would work for me, but I'd really like to see it in action. I'm still wondering how much say a player should get when picking bits to create a class.
When I started my 3e campaign I met with each player individually before the first session and asked them what they were interested in playing, then we basically built the character in tandem, with me making suggestions and explaining options.

Maybe it would be possible to see the class only as a starting point. It often happens during game play, that a player discovers she'd like take her character in a different direction than she initially thought. In such a case, the system shouldn't put any obstacles in her way. So, there should either be a way to 'retrain' or 'multiclass'. Perhaps classes could even be designed in smaller increments. Assuming the system uses the concept of levels, you could initially restrict yourself to define class abilities only for the first few levels. Then, after reaching the last level of that increment, if the player wants to continue on that path, you design the next increment, etc.
Writing this, I suppose this would be similar to D&D's BECMI approach... hmm.


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