However, the Magic: the Gathering comparison was based on Mark Rosewater’s “Making Magic” column over at dailymtg.com — it’s basically a weekly tutorial on how to turn creative ideas into good game design, and I highly recommend it.

Barbarian damage bonuses would be a bit of a problem. I can see two fixes – one is to say that striker bonuses only apply to powers from that class. The second is to put the barbarian damage adds as part of the class features – you don’t get them unless you’re a barbarian.

What might be the biggest problem for me is concept. I can see a concept that spans a couple of power sources. But it’s ahrd to have a concept that spans all of them. Let alone a party of them.

It also brings up the possibility I see in a lot of point-build games. The majority of people buy certain powers because they’re so useful. It ends up reducing flexibility.

And for every one griping about power level, it’s really a non-issue. This sort of reminds me of a 3.5 game I played where we all had Gestalt characters. In Gestalt you basically pick 2 classes and every level improves both of them. You get the best hit points, best BaB, best Saves. These characters were friggin RIDICULOUS. At 5th level my character was routinely doing attacks with upwards of 10D6+ damage. But we were ALL ridiculous. That’s sort of the point. I focused my character on being a bazooka, doing crap loads of damage. Another focused on being a skill master with tons of nifty side abilities. Another was an honest to god Tank. AC was in the 30′s by end of the game and had the hitpoints of two characters. Increases in power level only really matter on 2 aspects: 1) Is it spread evenly between the players? and 2) Can the GM keep up and still keep the game challenging and interesting?

For those who take issue with the paralysis of choice, you have valid concerns. But this sounds like the sort of experiment you would do with seasoned gamers anyways. Plus, most players would still want some sort of cohesive concept to bind the character together. If the other players would all keep an eye out for powers that might be useful to each other I think this could work fairly well.

The whole thing brings to mind the popular “Gestalt” system from 3e’s Unearthed Arcana, in that it beefs up singular characters quite a bit. I think it might especially be worth trying in a game for 2-3 PCs.

Because it totally sucks to have a character that doesn’t really have a niche within the group, a “thing that they do”. This was the thing that classes brought to the tabletop when they were first invented. Everybody had a job to do, and you could see how they all contributed to the success of the group. I’ve seen classless games end up in problems when people found that the character they built sucked.

I’ve come to feel that it’s best for play if everyone at the table is engaged during every activity, whether that’s a puzzle, a combat, or a social interaction. Which is why I like the Obsidian skill challenge system.

Ok, with all that said, Matt’s idea is certainly one that could be fun for a campaign or Dungeon Delve among experienced players who are aware of the kinds of problems I outlined above.
.-= Toldain´s last blog ..Innovation in EQ2 =-.

Kudos for Matt for openning up the box and shaking it.
.-= LordVreeg´s last blog ..edited Steel Isle Town =-.

Another possibility is let them pick a couple classes and let them mix and match from them both. More freedom than the current multiclass, but a greater risk of breaking your character and making them either too overpowering, or making yourself unintentionally useless.

And yes, both ideas are similar, but the first gives them a more rigid structure in clinging to your role, the other giving them a chance to try to create a role that fits to their own personal tastes.

Taking the premise at its face value…there is a synergy within a class, providing more power in some areas and weaker ones in others. Allowing people to cherry-pick powers negates some of that inner balance. If you then need to apply exceptions (you can do this but not this and then not this unless you do this, and later you can do this but not that) to rebalance things then its not really a system.

When I first read this the first thing that popped into my head were a myriad of characters running around doing large damage, using the best protections and then healing themselves.

I think to make this concept actually work you’d have to rework the system from the ground up. This might be a fun idea to try out. Just trying a classless system with the caveats you mentioned will not provide for a viable system. It can however, be the basis for some thought. (In fact I am sort of doing just that on my latest project; allowing less powers per “class” but allowing people to take two full “classes”.)
.-= callin´s last undefined ..Response cached until Wed 10 @ 15:38 GMT (Refreshes in 0.17 Hours) =-.

The quick fix I could think of, would be to limit the choice to power of the same role or power source (Arcane, martial, etc…). Role seems to be the best in case of mechanic and power source seems best in terms of fluff. Even then still a lot of choices too much for most players.

But definitely food for thought.

I don’t want to step in Matt’s spotlight, but I think you missed the point of the article; this isn’t a start-to-finish redesign of the rules…it’s just a suggestion to try something a little different. It prods the reader to open their mind and approach the game from a different angle.

In his first sentence, Matt acknowledges that classes are intrinsic to the design of the system – but thankfully, that doesn’t prevent him from messing with canon and trying something new. I commend that type of forward thinking. In fact, it’s this type of “hey, try this” thought process that actually LEADS to the creation of new games; it’s literally what Gary Gygax did when he added fantasy rules to Chainmail. Through trial and error and playtesting, D&D was eventually born. Sure, it’s all structured and rigid now…but it inevitably all started with the suggestion, “Well, what if we try it this way?”

So I’d say Matt has a pretty good idea on what game design entails. As for it being fun — well, that just depends on the type of players involved. Some people really let loose during experimental play. Others, make generic comparisons to Magic: the Gathering. I’m just glad you’re not sitting at MY gaming table.

@Groumy: the hybrid system is definitely interesting, but it isn’t the end-all/be-all of cross-class design. I think it offers a fresh alternative to the initial multi-class system, but it requires a bit more work, as well. And if you have any homegrown classes, it’s a challenge because you have to design the hybrid skeleton and make sure THAT balances with all the other classes. What Matt offers up here is a quick, “flash-in-the-pan” way of just letting loose and mixing up the characters. I will say my friends and I considered testing a style of play that was a cross between what Matt suggests here and the hybrid system, back @ 4e’s initial release. We were really unsatisfied with the multi-class system as presented, and felt there was a way to create a “branch-like” system where features from two or more classes could be combined. In our concept, we took the HPs and other stats, added them together and divided by the number of classes to get an average. We imposed a limit of a max of 3 classes, and you had to choose an at-will from two different classes. I think you also had to sacrifice one class power…either one in general or one from each class…I don’t really recall. But the game was so new, we never explored the concept further, because we wanted to unerstand how 4e worked the way it was intended.

What I like most about this article is that it isn’t the end of the concept…it’s only the beginning. In much the same way that Mike Mearls’ “Ruling Skill Challenges” articles forced me to start thinking about skill challenges in a new and exciting way that completely changed my outlook on 4e, you’ve gone ahead and encouraged me to take what I’ve assumed about 4e — that it’s a rigid, structured rules set with a well-defined class/role system with no room for deviation — and toss all of it out the window in favor of trying something new and seeing where it leads.

I won’t be able to test out this suggestion in my regular group…but I just might set up an online game and feature this type of progressive experimentation.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Kudos, Matt!

–The Secret DM

I will definitely have to give this a try sometime.
.-= Carson F. Ball´s last blog ..Don’t Neglect Story Telling =-.

I think you’ll be looking at much more powerful characters, unless you limit everything that has synergy, especially with the extra HP per level.

Overall, I’d think this would be a better idea with a small group, where the role flexibility will give the players a bit more survivability – in a large group, it’s too easy for for one character to purposefully or accidentally do everything better than another character, and everyone will be stepping on each other’s toes role-wise.