I'd have to say that I definitely agree with this sort of system...

I like being given the ability to mold my character into whatever I choose, but I also like the boost to get me started, and to give some initial structure to my "path"...

To further flesh out the system, it'd be nice to have certain abilities that come easily to more than one type of class, but belong to none specifically... That way, you can use your "natural abilities" to pick up a related skill more readily...

For instance, blacksmithing skill isn't really related to the warrior class, but the superior body strength that generally comes with being a warrior would help that warrior out if they wished to take up smithing... Also, blacksmithing isn't necessarily related to painting (I know, not really a class, but a decent example, I thought), but an artist would be more likely to be able to craft fine metal work... So either of these two seemingly unrelated classes (warrior, artist(?)) could get a slight bonus if they wished to take up the hammer and bellows...

I like the way MLAAS does it; it's completely skill-based, but you can choose major and minor focuses. Focuses boost the initial level of that skill, and make that skill cheaper. If you choose the same major and minor focus, you'll get a character that excels in one skill but has to work harder to be good in other skills.

That's almost the same as the system you described, except that the "classes" aren't named like Warrior/Mage/etc.; instead, they're named according to the skills they influenced. So, uh, basically I agree with you. =) I dislike systems that lock you into a character choice (D&D anyone?), which you can't change once it's made. That's one of the things that put me off Baldur's Gate II. Pure skill-based systems, like in Spiderweb Software's Exile series, are also good.

It all boils down to choice; being able to change your mind halfway through creating a character, and shift your focus towards something else. D&D (at least 2nd edition, I know very little about 3rd edition) is too constraining for my liking; once a Warrior, always a Warrior. Possibly a subclass of a Warrior (maybe a Berserker or something) but still very similar. The only thing you have to be careful with in skill-based systems is preventing the characters from maxing every stat and being uber-powerful; that gets rather boring and generic. MLAAS prevents this by not allowing you to train after you hit rank 20; you can get about 2 or 3 skills trained to the maximum before this happens, but no more.

SuperSaiyanGokuX wrote:

For instance, blacksmithing skill isn't really related to the warrior class, but the superior body strength that generally comes with being a warrior would help that warrior out if they wished to take up smithing... Also, blacksmithing isn't necessarily related to painting (I know, not really a class, but a decent example, I thought), but an artist would be more likely to be able to craft fine metal work... So either of these two seemingly unrelated classes (warrior, artist(?)) could get a slight bonus if they wished to take up the hammer and bellows...

I think that would lean more towards stat increases from using skills and stats playing a big part when using skills.
Ie, STR is used in both Warrior skills and Smithing skills. So when your increasing your STR through using Warrior skills your getting better at part of smithing, but nothing specific to smithing.

Yeah, thats why I say "I dont know why but..." at the start. I think it comes off as being unrealistic to me because while its possible, and actually pretty likily in some cases, most people doing it are doing it to gain an advantage, instead of because its part of the character.
Sort of like if Spiderman carried an Uzi. Its a good/logical move on Spidermans part, but he wouldnt do it as a character.

DarkView wrote:

Sort of like if Spiderman carried an Uzi. Its a good/logical move on Spidermans part, but he wouldnt do it as a character.

But Spiderman (sorry to break it to you) is fictional. =) A real person would use the uzi, to borrow your example. Spiderman wouldn't; not because it's a bad idea, but because Spiderman doesn't carry an uzi. He has been artifically created, as a character, to have the quality of "does not use guns"; simply because he's more appealing that way.

Also, in reality people TRY to gain advantages. It is a pretty common thing.

(Yes, I have been the one who was ranting about this system in off topic, creations, you name it, I'm obsessed with this kind of system.

D&D 3rd edition tries to make the class system pretty realistic. Once you learn something, can you go back and change what you did with the time it took to learn it? And characters can change directions, fighters no longer have to level up as a fighter if they don't want to, they can level up in ANYTHING, so long as they can find a sufficient mentor. (I had a character who was a fighter, who learned how to play the reed flute and became a bard.)

That, and, though I do not agree with it, D&D uses the classes-feats-skills system. Basically it's a cake, the bottom layer, the class, supports the icing that will go on top, the feat, which makes a resting place for the lettering, the skills. The cake is still a cake without icing, but it is somehow... missing something, unless it is an ice-cream cake... (WHOO! BAD METAPHOR!!!)

and D&D offers the prestige class option, it allows character to level up in guild-oriented classes. So, a rogue could level up in jump, tumble, climb, et cetera, and eventually join the ranks of the thief-acrobat, or they can levelup in pickpocket so highly that they grow weary of doing it manually, and learn spells to do it for them. D&D is infinitely customizable.

Ter13 wrote:

I mentioned it in 212747. I think that classes are merely a package of skills and abilities with a name taped on. Whereas a skill system with no classes, the players would call themselves what they wanted to be known as, such as a character with all combat skills, would call himself a warrior, or a fighter. While, a character with magic AND combat skills would call himself a Spellsword, or a Bladecaster. These aren't classes, they are just character niches.

There's nothing stopping players from creating their own titles for their character's role anyway. If they're not creative enough to make themselves stand out as a member of a given class, then I don't want them trying to make up names for their abilities.

I hear people complaining "What if someone tries to master every skill, and becomes too powerful? That would ruin the game!" This argument is ridiculous, because they have tried to max everything out, they have made themselves an incredibly diverse character, but they have given themselves a fatal flaw: No specific strengths.

Character A has a skill of 100 (maximum) in Fencing. Character B has a skill of 100 (maximum) in every skill in the game. Character B has no specific strengths, but this is hardly a weakness. You make no mention in your post of any sort of limiting factors in skill growth other than time spent; without such factors, there isn't anything stopping anyone from maxing out every skill.

Alternately, you could remove all restrictions, even skill level maximums, and let players pump up their skills as high as they want, but that just opens up even bigger balance problems.

This system is more balanced on a whole than levels, so long as you keep the skills balanced.

So it's more balanced than levels, if you make it balanced? Why doesn't the same rule apply to levels and classes? And why is it inherently more balanced in the first place?

Class-based systems are an example of defining arbitrary rules rather than more naturalistic ones, which in general costs some suspension of disbelief but creates a much more manageable rule set; defining rigid classes allows you more control over how abilities get used. In a skill system, each individual skill must be carefully balanced against every other skill, in order to ensure that there aren't any unbalancingly powerful skill combinations. In a class system, you don't have to worry about this problem nearly as much, because you can define what skill combinations there are.

For instance, suppose that your hypothetical game includes, among other things, a Fighter class and a Wizard class. The fighter can wear heavy armor and use heavy weapons but can't cast spells; the wizard can cast spells but is very limited in weapons and armor. This is an important distinction, because being able to use lots of armor and cast spells at the same time would be a big advantage; perhaps we have lots of self-protection spells that would boost the defense of a character in full armor to obscenely high levels. In a skill-based system, there would be no built-in catch for this; you'd have to define one yourself. So you could make a rule whereby wearing heavy armor drastically impairs your ability to cast spells, sneak around, or perform other tasks not traditionally performed by knights in full armor--problem solved.

But suppose now that you want to add a Samurai class, both out of respect for Eastern culture and out of deference to venerable RPG classic Wizardry. Eastern martial tradition placed much less emphasis on the heavy body armor used by Europe's knights; Samurai used comparatively lighter armor that allowed much more mobility. In the Wizardry sense, samurai were mystic warrior-mages who could cast fireballs and other wizardly spells. So you combine these two, and make the Samurai class one that can use moderately heavy armor and be able to cast spells. We established that this is not something we want balancewise; so, in order to keep the Samurai class in check, we assign rigid behavioral restraints and requirements to Samurai to limit them, along the lines of the code of Bushido.

Now suppose we try to translate this new development over to the skill-based system. We have skills that let characters effectively wear heavy armor, and skills that let them cast magic; players can learn both of these, but they contradict one another in simultaneous use. Now we add in a skill that mimic's the samurai's ability to move fluidly in armor, which would in turn lift the restrictions on heavy armor and casting. This reintroduces the balance problem we had before: a player can cultivate the ability to cast spells while in heavy armor. We can no longer use behavioral constraints, because they don't make sense; the ability to move more effectively in armor is not a part of the Bushido code, or vice versa--both of these things just happen to occur simultaneously in the Samurai class. The only way we can balance this ability now is to nerf one or more of the ablities involved--we cannot allow for a full-power substitute for the Samurai class in a skill-based system.

Whereas you shouldn't put skills like "spellcasting", which gives them every spell, and makes them better at everything, or "fighting", there should be skills like "elemental focus: fire/lightning/wind/water/earth/sonic/etc." which makes it easier to progress with certain elemental spells, but does not directly make them more powerful. Skills like "fighting" would be a bad idea, so you break it up into "unarmed fighting", which could be subdivided further: "punches" and "kicks" "throws" "submission holds" etc.

Once again, you put forth sweeping generalizations with no explanation why. Why is it automatically a bad idea to use broad skill categories?

But what you have to watch out for is making too blanketed skills and also making them too powerful. You want a huge ammount of different skills, each with it's opposite.

No I don't. I may want an easily accessible character system that doesn't rely on hundreds of statistics. Even with a computer taking care of all the calculations, creating a realism-oriented system takes a huge amount of effort both from the designers, the programmer, and the players trying to use the system, and in the end there's nothing to guarantee that it's going to end up being any more compelling a game system than a skill system that just uses 10 skills. I'm a stat-monger, in the sense that I love exploring statistical relationships, but even that doesn't mean that I will necessarily enjoy a game where I can pick amongst dozens of combat subskills when for all intents and purposes the same effect would have been achieved just by having a single skill called "fighting" that handled everything.

I do not know what I did to anger you, but if I did do something, I will apologize. I did not. Do not act offended, because you should not be.

Your character B vs. A situation is not as I meant it, I mean that the characters have an equal ammount of skill points.

You act as though I hurt your world when I said this all. Do not take offense to an opinion.

No I don't. I may want an easily accessible character system that doesn't rely on hundreds of statistics. Even with a computer taking care of all the calculations, creating a realism-oriented system takes a huge amount of effort both from the designers, the programmer, and the players trying to use the system, and in the end there's nothing to guarantee that it's going to end up being any more compelling a game system than a skill system that just uses 10 skills. I'm a stat-monger, in the sense that I love exploring statistical relationships, but even that doesn't mean that I will necessarily enjoy a game where I can pick amongst dozens of combat subskills when for all intents and purposes the same effect would have been achieved just by having a single skill called "fighting" that handled everything.

You, by responding as such have proven my point. You said the simpler the better. This reduces the possibility for unique and entertaining characters. This is what I originally said:

I myself do not like the idea of classes, because a class restricts the skills of a character. So, the class makes the character. But what is a class? A job focusing around specific skills and abilities. So what makes the character? The skills and abilities.

I did not say a skill system is better than a class system, as a matter of fact, I still think it is a simple way to get the point across. Look at it this way: if you want to learn how to make a glove, do you, in real life, have to become a tailor? No. You have to learn to sew. There is my point short and sweet. All I ever said was that in my opinion, it raises the individuality of characters. And there IS a way to prevent abilities from being abused.

It's called experience penalty. It totals up every skill level of every different type, let's say combat, magic, trade skills, etc. and whichever you have the most of, counts as your specialty, you get penalties to the cost of your training to advance in the other types, or the conflicting types. Simple enough, the better you get at one thing, the more attention you have to pay at other things.

Be it that this MAY cause problems, it can be hammered out.

Oh, and leftley, a well balanced class system can have it's unbalances. Look at D&D 3rd ed. The monk is the most powerful character in the game, a fighter and wizard cannot easily beat them. They are immune to poison, disease, damage, spells, ageing, AND mind-games! They are unbalanced character types.

One more thing: the samurai's light-movement ability would be a pwerful skill, so you make it hard to master, not only expensive, and hard to find, but also reduce it's effects, it will decrease the restriction penalty of your armor by 1 point per 5 levels... balanced.

I think you need to add some OOC restrictions on your character -- don't use tricks to increase your skills quickly. =)

Well the whole point of playing most if not all computer RPGs is developing your character. If it takes hours(if you restrict yourself to only using magic when needed) of painful effort to gain levels it's just not fun. As a warrior character I've managed to pull off gaining a few levels from one difficult enemy in the timespan of 5 minutes which is a bit fast especially compared to the slow rates a mage progresses at. There are some severe balance issues here :P.

But in the end the absolute quickest way to build up a mage is just paying trainers and as a mage it's easy to get around 60k of cash early on :).