Skill based systems are inherently better than class based systems and anyone who disagrees is objectively wrong and a servant of Angra Mainyu, the supreme dark spirit of the Zoroastrian religion.
Skill based systems are inherently better than class based systems and anyone who disagrees is objectively wrong and a servant of Angra Mainyu, the su...
Classes are just pre-balanced packages of skills - you can provide classes in skill-based systems and you can tear the skills out of class based systems, alter and reassemble them if you want. Lord knows there's plenty of homebrew classes out there.
This is a very good way of thinking about things. System designers should focus on making classes an easy way to make a character, otherwise they have no point.
I wish my table would play something other than 5e. It's the worst of both worlds.
Aw 5e's classes are pretty well balanced while still offering a fair amount of customization. Considerably less cookie cutter than 4e. See if your DM will let you use a homebrew class.
Balance is a load of crock. What matter matters is viability and whether you can make a meaningful contribution without completely overshadowing everyone else.
>you can make a meaningful contribution without completely overshadowing everyone else
So... balance?
Balance is a trigger word for some people here.
They have hallucinations about controllers and television screens whenever they see the word.
This.
Anyway, the benefit of class-based systems is that you don't need to consider every possible combination of abilities all the time, allowing you more freedom in designing abilities for your game.
>viability and whether you can make a meaningful contribution without completely overshadowing everyone else.
That's called balance.
Not sure what you're on with this take. 5e's customization is cumbersome. Each class has different customization options with different rules and restrictions. Despite having to make so many decisions while making a character, a lot of them don't feel impactful or come with flavor baked in that doesn't match the character I'm trying to make.
5e's class system and balance is fricking terrible what are you smoking
>5e's classes are pretty well balanced while still offering a fair amount of customization.
I know you're stupid since you're a namegay, but are you really this dumb?
>Considerably less cookie cutter than 4e.
Only an issue if you use nothing but the PhB. 4e classes have a shitload of customization once you dive into the compedia.
>5es classes are pretty well balanced
It's almost as badly balanced as 3/.5, and that was literally intentionally unbalanced.
Frick off, namegay.
>muh balance
As moronic as ever, I see.
No they're not, classes rarely have any special consideration of skills because skills don't do anything on DnD. Classes lock you in to one track of progression and prevent you from doing things like taking your XP and getting better at JUST lockpicking or JUST magic. Good games let you develop your character how you choose. You're a name homosexual creep and nobody should ever listen to you.
>Comparing lockpicking as a skill to "magic"
Wew lad.
Still, you should try 3.pf
>prevent you from doing things like taking your XP and getting better at JUST lockpicking or JUST magic
Yeah, that's what a pre-packaged grouping of skills would be. Also known as a class.
What the frick are you on about?
You're presenting some vague theory bullshit like a general fact. This applies maybe to a few specific games but is absolutely wrong for so many more, so state what fricking system you're talking about.
But it's far easier to
>provide classes in skill-based systems
than to
>tear the skills out of class based systems
which is why I still prefer skill-based systems.
I'd argue that class systems executed properly
>(classifications of weapons & powers that fit together in an implicit setting using any or all of the system's aspects)
are better than improperly executed systems
>(classifications of literature icons that neither mesh with each other nor the challenges of an implicit setting using any or all of the system's aspects)
because the latter is not only less fun to play, but also has ludonarrative dissonance and no internal consistency.
The aforementioned proper class system is augmented by the ability to multiclass and having all options viable to a significant degree, and by a skill system that uses skills with the active connotations of the word as declared actions with varied effects, instead of as just a passive bonus to a roll that some hack can change for any or no reason.
But this all depends on your willingness to play a game, rather than just staying hinged on something solely for the fact that it's a household name.
Skill based systems are just class based systems with extra steps.
this is quite literally the opposite of the truth...
Honestly they are, because cheesing GURPS or Shadowrun or whatever usually involves building a some combination of a hyperspecialized combatant, a hyperspecialized diplmat, a hyperspecialized investigator, etc. In general, classless systems tend to let you hyperspecialize to a much greater extent than most class-based games. And the more you can pump something, the more likely you are to run into edge cases or exceeding the range of values the game was implicitly designed around.
5e has an interesting problem of gishification such that classes lose their identity, and the optimal party ends up being 4-5 guys that all cast spells and maybe do something else.
Classes work for rules light systems and thats about it
I have yet to see a mechanically solid skill-based system.
Servant of Angra Mainyu, the supreme dark spirit of the Zoroastrian religion
Vampire: The Masquerade 20
Vampire is a class-based system
Oh no, vampire is a =socioeconomic= class-based system.
Common mistake.
Have you seen a mechanically solid class-based system?
On average they tend to be more solid, on account of inherent role protection. In skill-based systems, you tend to either end up with pseudoclasses or 4xMr. Optimal.
Just figure out your genre archetypes, make classes, and save yourself and your players the analysis paralysis in character creation.
I've rarely seen analysis paralysis be a problem, even when players more familiar with class-based systems move to skill-based systems. Inherent role protection doesn't really make a game more solid, either. The bet way to handle character creation is probably some kind of a lifepath system, with character advancement after character creation being skill-based. That makes for easier chargen and helps make sure that the starting skillsets are solid, without coming with all the downsides of class-based systems.
This is just a class system with extra steps.
It's really, really not. Calling a defined starting skill package that doesn't restrict future progression a class requires redefining the term pretty radically.
The skill packages are still designed with certain character archetypes in mind, and the system should have the tools to SUPPORT those archetypes as well. At that point if you have the skeleton of each archetype laid out already, what do you gain by removing the clarity that a class system brings in aligning tools and providing structure? Clearly you see some of that scaffolding as necessary, or you wouldn't want there to be codified starting positions.
What do I gain? Freedom and flexibility, of course. Was that a genuine question?
>Clearly you see some of that scaffolding as necessary
No, I see it potentially useful for new and less mechanically savvy players. I'd still choose a fully skill-based system with none of that 'scaffolding' over a class-based system any day, because the clarity of a class-based system just isn't worth its restrictions.
Just stop playing powergamey gishes that want to do everything.
Trying to do everything is the opposite of powergaming in most systems, as specialists are usually more optimal than generalists, especially in the context of a group of PCs.
Several. The closest to a decent skill-based game (Shinobigami) still separates its ninpo by clan.
What are these solid class-based games? The class-based games I've tried have generally been worse than skill-based games, but I don't claim to have tried every game out there.
Shinobigami, for one. Forbidden Lands, BitD, and Spellbound Kingdoms are standouts.
I’m not claiming I’ve played every game either, I’ve just yet to see a skill-based game that works.
Actually I tell a lie, Sentinel comics is skill-based and it’s awesome.
Haven’t played CoC, but Traveller bottoms out after the admittedly very strong character creation. It’s not that it lacks direction (debt), it’s that your options become less about engaging with the system and more about engaging with whatever plot or stumbling block the GM has cooked up.
>hasn't played CoC
>his complaint about Traveler's skill system has absolutely nothing to do with said skill system
It's just a dndogshit drone, I see.
Progression should be up to the player. Forcing people to go down a narrow tracked class path is strictly worse than simply not doing that and pricing character advancements directly with XP, like in GURPS or WoD.
It has everything to do with the skill system. It’s coasting off the dice rolls as the meat of the game. There’s a dearth of explicit effects, of gameplay texture. It’s mechanically equivalent to lite systems like risus or FU, but with more crunch (because it’s trying to be a sim, not a boardgame).
And I haven’t played d&d in years.
>Progression should be up to the player
This is completely irrelevant
Yeah no disagreement here.
>It has everything to do with the skill system. It’s coasting off the dice rolls as the meat of the game. There’s a dearth of explicit effects, of gameplay texture.
BitD is pretty good, but also a good example of classes working specifically in the context of a light and tightly focused game. For crunchier and/or more versatile games classes don't gave much going for them.
How are CoC and Traveller not mechanically solid?
Burning Wheel
I tried to get into BW. Man it was convoluted. I gave up after I realized I would be hard pressed to find someone to play it with me.
The best middle ground is careers.
You can bake all the secondary skills you want inside them (as opposed to skill based games where you usually have to waste points to fluff out your character) + it is usually way easier and encouraged to buy other careers in games that use them than multiclassing in games with classes.
IE a guy with a good amount of levels on the "knight" career knows how to fight with the lance and the sword plus basic tactics, horse riding, heraldry, courtesanship and anything else that might make sense.
Careers is literally just another phrase for classes in RPG context.
They're not, though.
Not really, to me they are much more like a middle ground between skill packages and classes.
So explain why classses would make, say, Call of Cthulhu, better or more "mechanically solid" or whatever.
Class-based work best for screen plays and video games, like PbtA and D&D. Skill-based works best for roleplaying. Simple as.
you wish to roleplay, yet buckle at the idea of a role to play
curious
Mechanical aspects are the parts that are not roleplaying.
I have only the vaguest idea what you're talking about, but I like both your picture and turn of phrase so I'm giving you my full support.
To summarize the terms of OP's statement, most TTRPG systems have some sort of rules structure defining what the player can do, and what the player cannot do. Said actions typically also have rules for improving their scope, scale, and success rate. In broad game design archetypes, as the character increases in level/power/etc these actions can either be improved individually at the player's discretion (skill-based) or pre-packaged by the game designer into distinct archetypes of related skills (class-based). There's usually some degree of bleed between the two types; class-based systems will often have axes of customization, and skill-based systems will often have starting packages of skills to serve as guideposts for new players and show what archetypes are supported by the system.
Both have their merits, but depending on what you as a player want out of a game the preference is mostly subject to personal taste.
Every system is able to be broken, but it's easier to break skill-based games.
If you want an example, just look at the Elder Scrolls Series. It has a clear dominant strategy. Every class basically degenerates into Stealth Archer when things get tough. Experienced players grasp the meta of the game rapidly, come to the same conclusion, and make character builds that all seem kind of generic and "samey."
Some players play different builds, but at that point, you're relying on players to intentionally play less optimal strategies to keep the game interesting.
I would argue that most skill-based games have this same problem.
Class based games mitigate this problem by limiting the number of things that the game designer needs to balance. For instance, you might only have to balance four classes instead of 20 individual skills.
In a class based game, you have some leeway to give the less powerful classes some more beefy skills to try to balance things out. This also helps to give classes distinct identities so that they feel unique.
> Continued...
I will admit that I do like the freedom and creativity that skill-based games provide. For that reason, classes in the game I'm designing are created by the players.
Players fill in the blanks to give their class abilities and a fighting style. This is part of the game, adjudicated by the DM. There are still classes, they're just freeform.
Skills are penciled in by the players and vetted by the DM to eliminate duplicates and anything inappropriate or OP. Different classes give bonuses for different skills in order to keep each one unique.
I think that's a pretty good middle ground between class-based and skill-based.
>namegay
>is moronic
checks out
>it's easier to break skill-based games
>lists one example of a vidya with skills that can be broken
some of you don't even try do you
Neat idea with the players making their own classes.
Stealth Archer is the best playstyle in Skyrim and Skyrim alone. For literally every other TES game, playing as a wizard is objectively the most powerful option by far. In Morrowind's case the difference in dps between a wizard and a non- wizard is in the billions. In Oblivion it's only in the millions. And yes I include alchemy as wizard.
>In Morrowind's case the difference in dps between a wizard and a non- wizard is in the billions.
Wtf, how is that possible? How can the difference be that fricking big between classes?
Because there's no stat cap in morrowind, and alchemy is based both on the alchemy skill as well as the intelligence and luck stats. So what you do is.
>buy a spell that increases your alchemy to as high as possible for a split second(optional but make the process faster)
>go to a merchant that sells potion ingredients that increase intelligence
>make 10 intelligence potions
>drink them
>buy ingredients for another 10 potions from the merchant again
>make another 10 potions, but this time their stats will be better because of the previous 10 potions
>repeat for an hour
>make 1(one) strength potion
>+638473947394729473936493 strength for 7384828582947394749 seconds
>one-shot everything with a fork you found
As for oblivion
>get access to the mage guild spellcrafting
>level up destruction to 100(can be done in an hour by just using a 1 mana self damage spell and casting it 2000 times)
>make a spell that gives an enemy 100% weakness to fire or whatever and 100% weakness to magic for a couple seconds
>make another spell thats exactly the same
>find enemy
>shoot him with the first spell
>shoot him with the other spell
>shoit him with the first spell again, the timer for it now resets
>repeat the process, doubling your damage each time until you do ×2^whateverthefrickthemaxis
>hit them with a one damage firebolt
>they die
Yes. And I love the Elder Scrolls, and I break the game like this too, but I feel like this post proves my point, that skill based games get extremely broken.
You end up nerfing certain skills in order to avoid game breaking, but even then, people find ways around it.
You might as well play a class based game.
No, because one is a video game limited by the pre-set programming, while one is an rpg where the GM can say "no".
It is class based games that are 100 times more breakable than skill based ones. It's not even close.
It isn't as though class based games are immune to that either. Even 5e has Wish + Simulacrum cheese.
A broken skill is going to be a broken skill, even if you lock that broken skill to a single class.
Classes aren't perfect, but the goal is to mitigate broken skills by distributing them evenly across different builds so that players have to choose between tradeoffs.
The goal of doing this is to avoid situations where there is only one clear dominant strategy.
This will help your game to aspire to be more like chess and less like tic-tac-toe.
It seems like players have more fun in games with greater strategic depth. The goal is to make the game more fun.
You are an AI
Fricking hell, you're right
I hate it
Do you really think I write like an AI? XD
Is it just because I use proper grammar and pronunciation?
More importantly- would an AI call you a Black person?
None of what you're saying is actually intrinsic to class- vs. skill-based, and you're very stupid for thinking it is.
>Angra Mainyu
So you're saying they frick themselves in the ass to create all of the demons in the world?
This is unironically part of Zoroastrianism.
I love that image
I love that image a lot