Different Kinds of Classes

Most people, when they think of “classes” in RPGs think of the typical class-level system in D&D. You pick a class and you advance in levels within it. You might have numerous choices to make each level (in D&D 4e) or you might have no choice of what you get in a particular level (seen more often in Essentials D&D and pre-4e D&D), but you only make those choices within that level when it is achieved. Until you’ve broken the threshold to a new level, you have no more pick of abilities. You have some limited ability to use powers from other classes each level as well. However, there are other ways that “classes” are done. I’m not particularly saying they’re better, though I will not claim to be fond of D&D’s class system, but that there’s different ways classes are handled, and the D&D model is not the only game in town for design of a class-based RPG. Here’s my personal favorite.

In the Dark Heresy RPG by Fantasy Flight Games, you also have classes, such as Guardsman, Techpriest, Sister of Battle and so on. These classes have roles in the setting of the game and implied roles in the action of the game (a scribe has a gun, because everyone has a gun, but he isn’t gonna shoot as well as the Guardsman). The classes in the Warhammer 40k RPG are immutable – when you’re in one, you can’t multiclass or switch. However, the classes are also very open-ended. Each class is essentially a starting package of items and abilities, and then a list of multiple skills and talents you can purchase that are appropriate to you. You can purchase them in any order and any amount as long as you have the XP to buy them – they usually cost either 100, 250 or 500 XP. So if you earn 500 XP, you could buy five things on your list, or two, or just one big one.

When you earn enough XP, you push to a different threshold of abilities. This gives you a new title (a Guardsman might advance to Sergeant) and a new, better list of things to buy. You can keep advancing through different lists. Each list is composed of choice things from a larger overall pool of abilities that constitutes the game, and it is possible to ask your GM for a special advance (a single thing outside your list you want to buy), or to swap into special ranks with different lists than usual, found in splatbooks.

I like this better than I like D&D classes, mostly because I like point buying abilities at any particular time you have XP to do so, rather than having to meet a large threshold within which I get the only chance I’ll have for a while to acquire new stuff. Why not just play pure point buy? The reason you use classes is to provide role guidance and role protection. You want players to have a grounding in certain necessary abilities to carry out the action of the game. (Also, I do like pure point buy, see GURPS, but I like it more in contemporary settings than I do in fantasy or sci-fi. This is just a personal quirk. In reality, pure point buy pretty much works for anything.) Rogue Trader and Deathwatch pushed the Dark Heresy system one step further, by giving each class, in addition to the lists, special abilities that are unique to its class and not found in talents or skills. The Rogue Trader class, for example, can give a free +10% bonus to a single character’s roll, once per round.

In my upcoming revision of my Copper Coins! homebrew game, I’m going to have some mix of the two. Copper Coins! is a mostly point buy game – when you get XP, you can buy anything you want from a universal pool of abilities everybody has access to. However, you begin the game with an archetype that has starting abilities picked out for you. I decided to expand the archetypes so that, instead of just being lists of stuff you get for free, they have their own abilities as well, just like in Rogue Trader and Deathwatch. I want to give each archetype a better description, perhaps an item package, a unique personal ability, and a small tree of further abilities, but aside from that they buy from the large pool of universal abilities. I think most class-based games could benefit from at least having a small neutral pool of abilities that everyone should be able to do well and can take.