Class Based vs Skill Based Character Syetems

[Andhaira]

Which do YOU prefer?

For myself, I prefer class based systems because they are more balanced and more organizied. They are also more fun IMO.

Discuss!!

 

[Hobo Elf]

skill based with classes. The more variation, the merrier!

 

[Durwyn]

Class system with wide range of specialization inside the class determined by your skills

 

[Andhaira]

Well skills within a class based system is still a class based system IMO. Pure skill based systems are like those used in the following games:

Exile Series
Fallout 1 and 2
Arcanum
Avernum Series
Eschalon

And so on and so forth.

 

[JarlFrank]

What Hobo Elf and Durwyn said. Classes but you'd still be able to become a jack of all trades. Classes should give you certain general boni, but skills could be quite free to choose. I prefer having classes instead of purely skill-based because it gives you a sense of direction during character development.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Classes usually mean limitations, so no.

 

[Sckarecrow92]

skill based with classes. The more variation, the merrier!

 

[Severian Silk]

OK, what about skill-based with/without racial bonuses?

 

[Radech]

skill based all the way, whenever I play a class based rpg, it always takes me forever to decide on which class would be easiest to mold into what i really want.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

Skilled-based. Hard to balance and easy to exploit, but the freedom to fine-tune your character far outweighs the cons.

 

[Castanova]

Class based is much more interesting. It allows the designers to give each class varied and totally unique gameplay mechanics. Not that I'm touting it as the pinnacle of RPG design but it pops into mind immediately as a very basic example: WoW. Mages have a regenerating mana pool mechanic while, say, Rogues have a power-up, finishing move type mechanic. This type of thing isn't feasible in skill-based systems. Now, the fact that RPG designers almost never actually exploit this advantage in their game designs is a story for another thread.

In a skill-based system, all characters must share the same gameplay mechanic and the only difference between two characters are which weapon skill he picked or which school of magic he's specializing in.

 

[Thrasher]

Dumb question.

Both - Classe system with skills.

 

[luckyb0y]

Skill based definitely. Much more flexible. Arcanum alllows you to build pretty much any character you can imagine. Add some backgrounds/perks/traits to a robust skill system to spice things up a little bit and you can have unique characters while having much more variaty than class system.

@Jarl
it's "bonuses"

 

[Ogg]

Class system are better for a short game. Skill systems are for the long run. D&D's getting boring after 10th level while arcanum or fallout were tedious in the early phase of the game.

 

[Melcar]

Skill based. However, I don't mind class based, specially on a party based RPG.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Yeah, what the fuck is with this "let's make up plurals ending in i because it sounds intellectual"?

At least check a dictionary before, hm?

Octopi, yes.
Penii, no.

 

[Hümmelgümpf]

Class based is much more interesting. It allows the designers to give each class varied and totally unique gameplay mechanics. Not that I'm touting it as the pinnacle of RPG design but it pops into mind immediately as a very basic example: WoW. Mages have a regenerating mana pool mechanic while, say, Rogues have a power-up, finishing move type mechanic. This type of thing isn't feasible in skill-based systems.

Unless you introduce Merits/Perks/Feats/whatever, which can be used to give characters new abilities and traits. Daggerfall in particular had a pretty impressive pool of advantages and disadvantages to choose from.

 

[Flux_Capacitor]

Skill-based, I guess. However, I don't feel design decisions such as these should be made in a vacuum. A lot of it depends on the rest of the game.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Class + Skills + Perks + Race. ToME has the coolest character creation ever. Or it would if it were fleshed out and balanced a bit more. The basic framework is gold though. Classes determine learning rates for various skills, which are modified by stats and race and class flat bonuses as well. Special abilities like extra attacks per round, treewalking, and turning into a friggin lich when you die can be purchased for various sums of skill points as well, if you meet the skill requirements. Most classes also get a slew of free abilities like this; warriors start with extra max number of hits/round for example, while elves start with the walk through trees ability. But anyone can purchase them with the right skills. To top it all off, you can find a guy who teaches you random skills you may or may not have access to as that class normally. He's an optional feature and you can increase your chances of encountering him but it makes the lategame a lot more dangerous and a pita.

 

[mondblut]

Strict classes are annoying. It's always game balance over common sense. Like, *why* can't a wizard dress in a chain mail and take a shot with a crossbow, or a thief to grab a halberd? Yes, they had no training, but why the hell they physically can not? Does a goddess of magic and thievery spank them with an invisible hammer for a blasphemic transgression or something? Are they so frail they instantly collapse under the effort? (check, no, str 9+, like an average man). Stupid.

The underside of a skill system is that no skills are evenly useful. Some weapon types and magic schools are always inferior to others, some non-combat skills are always less used or grant less benefits - in the end, the freely developed characters always end up the same, unless the player has a LARPing disease.

A system of advantages and disadvantages to combine (with classes being no more than premade archetypal templates - Daggerfall, Thunderscape) is better, but prone to same weakness as pure skill-based system. Who would choose "can't wear good heavy armor" when you can choose "can't wear shitty light armor" instead? Unless one has a LARPing disease, of course.

An alternative is a sadly neglected backgrounds system, as seen in Darklands and Megatraveller/Twilight 2000. Instead of picking a fixed class, you develop your character from early childhood, picking him a specific way of living for a period of a few years, earning special advantages and stat/skill increases this profession grants, then another (or same, if you wish) profession for next few years, and so on, until either you end with generation or character dies of old age, whatever happens sooner. Of all known system, this one always made most sense for me.

 

[Castanova]

Unless you introduce Merits/Perks/Feats/whatever, which can be used to give characters new abilities and traits. Daggerfall in particular had a pretty impressive pool of advantages and disadvantages to choose from.

I disagree with that. Imagine you want to play a vampire character. In a class-based game, you just pick "Vampire." In a skill-based game you'd need to pick:

- Perk "Blood Drinker" : gain a buff after drinking the blood of a living being
- Disadvantage "Night Dweller" : exposure to sunlight results in death
- Feat "Shapechange" : can switch into the form of a bat
- Feat "Invisible in Mirrors"..
etc etc etc

A Vampire implies an extremely specific gameplay mechanic and so the supporting skills/perks must also be extremely specific. Now imagine in that same skill-based game I create a new character... I could do something like this:

- Skill "Two Handed Swords"
- Skill "Speechcraft"
- Skill "Heavy Armor"
- Perk "Blood Drinker"
- Perk "Ninja Stealth"
- Skill "Shurikens"
- Perk "Loved by Children"

Ummmm.... what? The fact is, a skill-based system implies that the skills are relatively generic unless you're dealing with something like VtM where ALL characters are vampires to start with.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I don't see anything wrong with that. Just because you know how to run around in plate with a claymore doesn't mean you can't also know how to sneak around and throw daggers. Just because you drink blood doesn't mean you're an obvious monster.

About the only fix I'd say needs to be made to skill systems is a set of requisites. You can't learn Disarm without a lot of combat skill, you can't learn pickpocketing without a lot of stealth and you can't learn fire magic without a basic dump into arcane magic. However, anyone should be able to learn stealth or polearm wielding from the start. There's nothing specific and esoteric aboutnot making noise while walking or sticking people with the pointy end of a stick.

And vampirism wouldn't be a skill or perk, it'd be a racial or character trait, only selectable at start and would include the benefits and disadvantages of being a vampire all at once. (Including access to skills/perks that only a vampire might have, like sunlight resistance) There's no need for it to take up a whole class. What skills would vampires not have access to? Armor? Weaponry? Magic? Stealth? Diplomacy? None of those make sense.

 

[Balor]

Personally, I'd much prefer skill-based systems, and instead of 'classes' - there should be factions (that give exclusive training, but ensure that it STAYS exclusive), and traits and perks that make you more specialized.
Perhaps also 'talents' that are only avalable when you start a game, think: Artist. If you cannot draw shit, it will take you MUCH more time to learn even simple things, and you will surely never become rich and famous... or even good.

 

[denizsi]

This is ridiculous. I'm thinking of games with classes and free skills and the differences inbetween, and apart from combat, I can't think of anything significant from most (99/100) games. Combat has always been the dominating factor and THE motivator in RPGs and the differences between classes and skill have seldom meant anything other than melee/magic/ranged. If anything, there have been more skill based games where your choice of skills were more restrictive in a meaningful way than class based games where restrictions of classes were meaningless due to high combat frequency.

In the end, it's all about shit design vs. good design. Suggesting inherent superiority for either over the other is pretty stupid.

A Vampire implies an extremely specific gameplay mechanic and so the supporting skills/perks must also be extremely specific.

Where exactly is this implied, and in what form? I've yet to see anything remotely similar in any rpg type, and almost anything remotely similar in any other form of media. There have really been very few IPs where being a vampire meant a very specific and very restrictive transformation, like vampire characters being reduced to mindless killers, zombies, all with the same set of generic abilities within the IP.

From a gamist point of view, the notion of a vampire being a class in itself might be interesting in certain settings, but from a generalist and logical view, it doesn't make any sense with the vampirism in popular (and unpopular) culture so far.

Ummmm.... what? The fact is, a skill-based system implies that the skills are relatively generic unless you're dealing with something like VtM where ALL characters are vampires to start with.

Again, where why and how is that implied at all? Most skill-based systems have been terribly generic that tends heavily towards getting good at everything eventually, so whether you add vampirism into the equation or not, is utterly irrelevant.

Also, saying that ALL characters are vampires to begin with in VtM couldn't be any further from truth. Even if you're specifically talking about VtM:B, it has various straight human NPCs as well, where your choice of skills between fight/sneak/talk matters, despite the fact that Troika did a terribly shallow and stereotypical job handling the VtM PnP setting with Bloodlines, but did a pretty good RPG despite that shortcoming that has nothing at all going for it to support your argument.

I really don't understand where you are coming from with this "universally implicated notion: vampire=one single class" thing, and I definitely don't understand your problem with how skills play into it. According to your suggestion, we couldn't have any diversity with vampires, and have nothing like the cool vampire stereotypes in popular culture, like Dracula whose strength derives from his coercive charisma and elusive abilities, or D, who doesn't have much going for his character and social interaction but is a cunning fighter or what have you and his opponent in one of the animes, who's that IP's version of Dracula. Basically, what you're saying is as good as vampire=zombie because of the single type restrictions you propose.

 

[Castanova]

Where exactly is this implied, and in what form? I've yet to see anything remotely similar in any rpg type, and almost anything remotely similar in any other form of media.

My point is that a vampire has very specific rules he must follow that are more than just simple modifiers on existing gameplay. A vampire would act completely differently than any other type of character both in terms of social interaction, lifestyle, and combat. Yes, this could be represented in a form of a "character trait" or something apart from the list of skills. But, really, that's just another name for a character class, isn't it?