Kits, Professions, and Sub-Classes

[Ancient History]

Been revisiting these ideas lately - the need, or at least tendancy, for a class-based game to invest time and thought into specialization, tweaking, variant classes, and sub-classes. You see this in oD&D where the basic Fighter/Thief/Mage/Cleric classes were characterized by sub-classes that eventually split into standalone classes, and to those were later added different kits and options. D&D 3.+ started out with prestige classes, then went further on with substitution levels and whatnot. Games like Shadowrun, GURPS, Call of Cthulhu, and Eclipse Phase eschew character classes entirely, with the player purchasing all the character's skills and abilities individually and deciding their own character concept.

In both cases, I think, you have a fairly workable - maybe even desirable - idea, which just tends to get clogged with impossible amounts of crap as the system develops. New players learning the game need relatively simple, straightforward throw-a-name-on-this-character-sheet-and-let's-play character generation to get into a game; established players want additional options, abilities, and methods to specialize their characters; both types of player enjoy a wider option of character types to best reflect what they want to play, and to get an idea of what they can play. The problem comes when you have a fairly basic, simplistic system - Fighter/Mage/Thief/Cleric - and then you start stacking additional systems on top of it, so that a player might begin as a Sun Dwarf Wizard (Wild Mage/Archaeologist) with a psionic wild talent and another guy might be a human fighter named Mike. The former character probably references stuff from half a dozen sourcebooks that a beginning player has never heard of, and that's fine as far as it goes - Mister Cavern probably has his or her work cut out evaluating the character, but it's their game.

The problem comes when you get the next edition, and suddenly all the stuff from a half-dozen rulebooks gets crammed into the new main sourcebook - and where you formerly had four or five character classes, now you have eight or ten, with different options that make creating a new character much more attractive to older fans but a bit of an uphill battle for new players. Some game designers, observing the way character classes are bent and broken from system kludge, eschew classes completely - classless systems offer much more freedom in character generation, but are also correspondingly more complex since they still offer more and more advanced options to more advanced players. One doesn't have to look far to see proof of this in Shadowrun, and GURPS and Call of Cthulhu have plenty of obscure skills and equipment tucked away in old adventures and sourcebooks.

And some of the character class concepts are just crap. "Barbarian" is a weird class, neither a profession (for most people) nor a calling, it's a label people apply to other people that live a little far away and do things a little differently. "Bard" is a profession, but overlaps in its interpretation with many other classes and skillsets. Many of the later D&D3.+ classes are simply vehicles to explore new and mostly bad mechanics.

I don't know if there's an ideal "solution" to the subclass-kludge problem, but as I think on it I remember something Gary Gygax said - "Background is what happens to you from levels one to six." (badly paraphrased) - and I think this might have merit. Instead of having a class with 20 levels that players aren't going to slog their way through, imagine if each player started out as a "base class" which only had three class levels - and after they max out of that they can go to a profession, specialization, advanced school etc. A series of very limited "classes" that are tightly defined might eliminate a lot of "dead levels."

Now that I think about it, this resembles in many ways the school system of Legend of the Five Rings. Anywho. Thoughts? Poo-flinging?

[Koumei]

My problem with the idea is that, at the early levels, which traditionally suck enough as it is, everyone will be very similar. More than already. When I play a ___, I want to be a ___ from the word go.

[Ancient History]

I suppose you could start everyone out at Level 4, then - three levels of "base" class firmly under their belt, in the first level of their "advanced" class.

[the_taken]

I plan to implement something similar in what I'm working on. First and second level characters are schmucks with very basic abilities and tactics. Certainly the core system will provide robust options for things to do (in and out of combat), but the abilities unique to your character at the very bottom of the power scale will be so simple that character generation will be super fast. Pick/roll stats, pick a Class, pick some specializations, pick some gear, GO! You'll be able to have all that 1st edition style whole-sale character slaughter your grandpa remembers!

[shadzar]

You see this in oD&D where the basic Fighter/Thief/Mage/Cleric classes

OD&D had only:
fighting man
magic user
cleric

there was no thief.

BD&D added: elf, dwarf, halfling classes.

there needs no more classes than those 3 above. all other functions should be thrown into something that lets people buy abilities for their character the alter them to what kind of fighter (fighting-man) they want to be.

each class gets its basic functions, and those other things are added on based on some system of point-buy that grants them. no need to make or even suggest a swashbuckler kit for someone to emulate a Musketeer with, or a ranger to emulate Aragon with.

most classes need not exist as they have little value to add beyond the basic 3. just some minor abilities that those base 3 could do just as well as they [bloated classes] could do to give a little different flavor.

i dont think 6th level a good palce to add those, maybe you can get 1 at first level then add more at varying levels.

but no tech-trees, planned dependencies, or other nonsense that creates character builds. and no level based abilities. "lay on hands" can be purchased at first level, the same as EVERY other ability that is NOT the 3 base class specific. not just to the cleric either, but the fighter, or magic user. and it makes a fuckload more sense that its really divine magic than ANY healing surge ever made sense.

[Wrathzog]

I don't know if there's an ideal "solution" to the subclass-kludge problem

There really isn't one. I think the best thing you can do is to pick one point on the scale between 100% classless to JRPG and then stick with it.

[echoVanguard]

Instead of having a class with 20 levels that players aren't going to slog their way through, imagine if each player started out as a "base class" which only had three class levels - and after they max out of that they can go to a profession, specialization, advanced school etc. A series of very limited "classes" that are tightly defined might eliminate a lot of "dead levels."

This is pretty much exactly how our system works - characters choose one of a fixed list of ten Base Classes, which have five levels each. Once they complete their five-level Base Class progression, they choose a new class to add (which can be another Base Class, or an Advanced Class). Characters can have up to 4 classes total, and once you hit 20th level, you cannot add new classes (although you can adjust your skillset indefinitely).

echo

[Username17]

I don't like where point-based systems are going. Eclipse Phase has people spend over a thousand points - sometimes one at a time. That is unacceptable. At the same time, class based systems routinely ask you to play three dozen sessions just to be able to unlock the character concept you wanted. That's unacceptable too.

Threading that needle is complicated, but I think it basically has to do with grabbing modules and sticking them together into a character. That is, the old idea of "Pick name, pick race, pick class" thing is basically right. You should be presented with a short list of choices that are themselves from short lists. Because that way people can "jump in and play". Because that is the most important thing: actually playing the game.

However, those modules should themselves be fractal. Things you can disassemble into composite choices that are themselves lists of choices. In short: the PACKS model. But as a starting point, rather than as a kludge layered on top of a point system.

-Username17

[echoVanguard]

Frank -

I don't really agree, but I'm interested in how you envision something like that working. Can you provide some basic examples?

echo

[Username17]

Frank -

I don't really agree, but I'm interested in how you envision something like that working. Can you provide some basic examples?

echo

You have a Kit. That Kit is like Soldier or Sibyl or something. And it is like a 2nd edition class: it comes with everything you get at first level and as you advance you advance on the rails. But that Kit is also made out of Feats - things it lets you do now and in the future. And if you wanted to, you could swap out some of the feats for other feats.

What this would let you do is have someone sit down at the table and announce that they were going to play a Half Orc Corsair and have that be enough to do some basic calculations and draw up a character sheet for whatever level you were playing at. But if someone wanted to spend a couple hours fiddling with the particulars of their character, they could totally do that.

And of course, the Kit doesn't just have to be made out of Feats. There could be other building blocks that were worth more or less like Backgrounds. The default Amazon has Child of War and Jungle Lore as Backgrounds, but if you wanted to swap that out for Artisan Training or something to make a more "philosopher amazon" concept, you could just do that.

-Username17

[Ice9]

I suppose you could start everyone out at Level 4, then - three levels of "base" class firmly under their belt, in the first level of their "advanced" class.

While this is reasonable in theory, in practice I've found that a lot of GMs just will not start beyond 1st level. It's burned into their brains or something - "Starting = 1st level".

That's why I'm against having the first few levels be "training levels", with few options. Because it's not only new players that end up playing them.

[Ancient History]

GURPS has something similar, though they don't make regular use of it - races are a collection of advantages/disadvantages with a set point cost, there are "lenses" for certain character concepts that bundle qualities, skills, and sometimes equipment, etc.

Before PACKS was a thing, I proposed something similar:

ALTERNATE BUILD SYSTEMS
I’d like to suggest two alternate build systems: Karma-based and QuickCraft; the former is more detailed than build points (for detail minded players), while the latter would be very fast and easier to use for new players. QuickCraft could also be used by GMs to quickly assemble NPCs as needed.

Karma-based Character Generation
Rather than use Build Points (BPs) characters would be given Karma and allowed to build their characters using the rules for Character Improvement on p.264 of SR4. This section would include rules to smooth the character process (including a Karma-for-nuyen rule only to be used at chargen, 1 Karma = 2,500 nuyen). Beginning characters would receive 800 Karma. Due to differences in chargen and post-chargen development costs, the advantage can be slightly on the side of Karma chargen. The major advantage of a Karma-based Chargen is for players that want more control over their character generation and are willing to take the time and effort to do so. Also, it would help familiarize the players with the Karma character development system.

QuickCraft
This system is a four step mix-and-match of different “suites.” Players or gamemaster can quickly create PCs and NPCs by selecting the relevant suites and adding the results together; this system can easily be used to quickly create PCs comparable to those of the standard BP system, or stronger or weaker as needs may be.
Each “suite” would contain skills, attributes, and equipment suitable to that type of character. The suites would be balanced to prevent mixmatch (a character could not take both the Adept and Technomancer qualities, for example) and death at chargen (from excessive implants). The cost of each suite would be balanced with other suites of the same class, but may not be empirically equal (i.e. if two Background suites were converted to BPs, they would not necessarily be about the same, but the resulting character would be). Some chargen taboos (maximum BP of qualities) might also be violated, but this would not be unduly imbalanced as QuickCraft characters are not going to be as precisely-honed as standard BP or Karma chargen characters—no maxing out attributes or the like.
What follows is a short overview of the four step process and two examples for each suite. Please note these are all very rough at the moment, but enough to give you an idea.

Step 1. Background
More than metatype, a character’s lifestyle growing up determines their educational, economic, and sometimes health background; how they grew up, what schooling they’ve had, what skills they brought with them. The background also determine the character’s starting equipment and lifestyle.

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High Background
You grew up in relative luxury to the rest of the Sixth World; you attended better schools, ate well, received regular medical care and probably had some minor cosmetic surgery done before you got out of your private high school. On the other hand, your affluence also means you’re in the system.
Attributes: Body 2, Strength 1, Agility 1, Reaction 1, Logic 1, Willpower 1
Skills: Computer 3, Data Search 3, Economics 3, Influence 3, Japanese 2
Qualities: SINner
Gear: Commlink (Transys Metalink with Novatech Navi), Datajack (Betaware), High Lifestyle (2 months), Platinum DocWagon Contract (1 year)
Contacts: Corporate Lawyer, University Dean

Street Background
You grew up on the streets of a major metroplex. There are things you’ve done to survive that you’re not proud of, but at least you have survived—that’s more than some can say. Self-educated, self-made—you don’t owe anybody a damn thing, and they don’t owe anything to you.
Attributes: Body 1, Agility 1, Reaction 2, Intuition 2, Willpower 1
Skills: Cityspeak 3, Close Combat 2, Outdoors 2, Stealth 1, Street Drugs 2
Qualities: Guts
Gear: Knife, Commlink (MetaLink with Vector Xvim) w/trodes, Street Lifestyle
Contacts: Drug Dealer, Fence, Fixer

Step 2. Archetype
An archetype covers the most basic spectrum of shadowrunner careers: Combat Specialist, Face, Hacker, Magician, Technomancer. These characters can be further defined in Step 3. Each archetype brings with it certain traits and gear common to that career.

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Combat Specialist Archetype
More than just some rabid street punk that likes to get her hands dirty, the combat specialist is trained in the arts of combat. While not a world-class martial artist, the Combat Specialist can more than hold her own in a fight, and has the scars to prove it.
Attributes: Body 1, Agility 1, Reaction 1, Willpower 1
Skills: Close Combat 2, Firearms 4, Gunnery 1, Military Jargon 3, Throwing Weapons 2
Qualities: Martial Arts (2), Toughness
Gear: Ares Predator IV w/2 clips, Armor Jacket, Contact Lenses with Smartlink and Image Link, Extendable Baton, Lone Star SWAT cyberware suite (Watchman version), Throwing Knives (2)
Contacts: Desert Wars Veteran, Mercenary

Magician Archetype
Magic suffuses the Sixth World, and the magicians act to channel and direct those mystic forces to her whims. No matter what her background, magicians of all stripes tend to cultivate formidable personalities and an air of the arcane.
Attributes: Charisma 2, Intuition 2, Logic 2, Willpower 3, Magic 3
Skills: Arcana 3, Conjuring 3, Enchanting 2, Magic Background 3, Sorcery 3, Wiz 2
Qualities: Magician, Mentor Spirit, Nano Intolerance
Gear: Fake licenses for all spells, Spells (Analyze Magic, Bugs, Crank, Firewater, Heal, Hearing Removal, Ignite, Knockout, Sterilize, Thought Recognition), Binding Materials (Force 3), 3 doses of psyche
Contacts: Lone Star Forensic Thaumaturgist, Talismonger
Note: Characters with the Magician Archetype cannot also take the Technomancer Archetype.

Step 3. Specialty
Beyond basic archetypes, players can further define (and specialize) their characters either by taking a second archetype, a speciality, including metahuman-specific suites. For example, a player who wants a Combat Hacker could take both the Hacker and Combat Specialist archetypes, while a player who wants a Rigger could take the Hacker archetype and the Rigger specialty. Players that want to get the most out of their metahumanity can forgo a specialty by taking a metahuman-specific suite.

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Combat Adept
A combat adept approaches warfare like an artform, magic fuelling her deadly dance through her battlefield canvas. Where others use implants to push themselves beyond metahuman limits, the combat adept relies on her own inner magic.
Attributes: Body 1, Agility 1, Strength 1, Reaction 1, Willpower 1, Magic 2
Skills: Arcana 1, Close Combat 1, Firearms 1, Magic Background 1, Meditation 2
Qualities: Adept, Focus Addiction (Mild), Martial Arts (2)
Gear: Adept Powers [Astral Perception, Counterstrike, Elemental Strike (Electricity)], Weapon Focus (Rating 2, bonded, brass knuckles—treat as hardliner glove), Leather Jacket
Contacts: Martial Arts Instructor
Note: Characters with the Technomancer Archetype cannot take the Combat Adept specialty; if a player chooses to take both the Magician Archetype and the Combat Adept speciality, she gains the Mystic Adept quality instead of the Magician or Adept qualities.

Ork
Bigger and stronger than most metahumans, orks have emerged as a very vocal and active subculture in the 2070s, helped in part by the emergence of a unique racial language—Or’zet—and the Orxploitation and Goblin Rock phenomena led by Ork artists like CrimeTime and rock-poet Bobby Page. The Seattle Metroplex, particularly the Ork Underground and the local trog slang studded with or’zet loanwords, is especially prominent in Ork culture.
Attributes: Body 1, Charisma 1
Skills: First Aid (Poisons) 3, Or’zet 3, Ork Underground 3, Trog 3
Qualities: Allergy (Silver, Mild)
Gear: A six-pack of Orkstaff’s XXX (6 doses of hurlg), glasses w/flare compensation and image link, Chrysler-Nissan  Patrol 1 (modified for an ork)
Contacts: Goblin Rocker, Ork Rights Committee member
Note: Characters with the Ork speciality are of the Ork metatype.

Step 4. Putting It All Together and Finishing Touches
At the end, the players have 50 BP to spend on extra touches—picking a metatype (if they haven’t already), upping skills or attributes, buying extra qualities or equipment, etc. Then they add it all together, with a few final decisions—tradition (if a magician), native language, etc.—and then calculate damage tracks and final Essence.
For example, if I wanted to make a combat-savvy ork mystic adept using the suites above, I would use the Street Background, Magician archetype, Combat Adept specialty, and then spend 20 BP for the Ork metatype, their attributes and skills would be base (for metatype) + mods (for background, archetype, and speciality), which would appear as follows (keep in mind there would be 30 BP left for min/maxing et al.):

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BOD	AGI	REA	STR	CHA	INT	LOG	WIL	INI	MAG	ESS
6	3	4	4	3	5	3	6	2	5	6

Active Skills: Arcana 4, Close Combat 3, Conjuring 3, Enchanting 2, Firearms 1, Outdoors 2, Sorcery 3, Stealth 1
Knowledge Skills: Magic Background 4, Meditation 2, Street Drugs 2
Language Skills: Cityspeak 3, Wiz 2
Qualities: Guts, Mystic Adept

[Wrathzog]

You have a Kit. That Kit is like Soldier or Sibyl or something. And it is like a 2nd edition class: it comes with everything you get at first level and as you advance you advance on the rails. But that Kit is also made out of Feats - things it lets you do now and in the future. And if you wanted to, you could swap out some of the feats for other feats.

So... something similar to playing a Pathfinder Rogue without Multiclassing?

[Mask_De_H]

You have a Kit. That Kit is like Soldier or Sibyl or something. And it is like a 2nd edition class: it comes with everything you get at first level and as you advance you advance on the rails. But that Kit is also made out of Feats - things it lets you do now and in the future. And if you wanted to, you could swap out some of the feats for other feats.

So... something similar to playing a Pathfinder Rogue without Multiclassing?

Or a 4e Essentials character but able to free-pick the hotswap power feats. And not in 4e.

[Username17]

You have a Kit. That Kit is like Soldier or Sibyl or something. And it is like a 2nd edition class: it comes with everything you get at first level and as you advance you advance on the rails. But that Kit is also made out of Feats - things it lets you do now and in the future. And if you wanted to, you could swap out some of the feats for other feats.

So... something similar to playing a Pathfinder Rogue without Multiclassing?

Or a 4e Essentials character but able to free-pick the hotswap power feats. And not in 4e.

Sort of. Neither the Pathfinder Rogue nor the Essentials Thief are sufficiently transparent with other systems of ability gain to do that, although I guess the Essentials Thief is closer (albeit way underpowered). I think the end goal would look something more like a 3.5 Beguiler who could trade out their spells for Advanced Learning if they wanted. So you could roll up a Beguiler 12 in a few minutes, but if you wanted to you could go back to the master ability list and take fairly complete control over your character's abilities.

-Username17

[JigokuBosatsu]

Can someone give me what PACKS is in a nutshell?

[shadzar]

Can someone give me what PACKS is in a nutshell?

im thinking it is like MREs (meals ready-to eat). you get a pack of this, and that is what you get. so classes are pre-PACKed with things like the kits or classes, etc.

[RobbyPants]

Can someone give me what PACKS is in a nutshell?

I guess I was assuming it was an acronym with things like Class, Kit, and possibly Abilities and Skills in it. But I have no idea what the P stands for.

Or I could be way off base.

[hogarth]

Can someone give me what PACKS is in a nutshell?

I guess I was assuming it was an acronym with things like Class, Kit, and possibly Abilities and Skills in it. But I have no idea what the P stands for.

Or I could be way off base.

It's a Shadowrun thing, apparently.

[JigokuBosatsu]

It's a Shadowrun thing, apparently.

Ah, that makes sense.

PACKS: this 28-page book is described as “an alternate character creation system for Shadowrun.

[Ancient History]

Can someone give me what PACKS is in a nutshell?

Link
Pre-generated Auxiliary Character and Kit System

Basic breakdown: character generation in Shadowrun is long and complication, in part because at the end of it you need to spend literally thousands of units of money on a wide assortment of gear. So I wrote a system which simplifies things a bit.

You have Packages of skills, cyberware, equipment, spells, etc., and you have Kits of just equipment, vehicles, weapons, lifestyles, etc.

Each Package gives you the basic core of a character concept - Elemental Mage, Combat Biker, Ex-Mercenary, Cyberprostitute, whatever - and has a total overall cost. But this package is further broken down, so that you can see the cost of each entry (i.e. how much total for Skills, Equipment, etc.) and then each item in each entry (i.e. how much for each specific skill, each specific piece of equipment), and each item not in the corebook has a little note on it telling you which book it comes from. There are also some notes if the Package requires you to have a certain quality, attributes, etc. to take or use it.

The cost of Packages differ, but many are around 100 Build Points - players normally get 400 BP, up to half of which is spent on attributes, so they can literally buy two or three Packages and just add the stuff together to make a character (so you can make an Ex-Mercenary Cyberprostitute, or whatever). If there's overlap or conflict, you just choose to drop one of the conflicting entries and get the points back to spend on something else.

Kits are pretty much the same, except focused on equipment, so their total and individual costs are expressed in terms of both BP and nuyen (the money for SR).

There's also a thing for Sets, collections of adept powers at a given level.

After I left and posted my PACKS to the internet for free, Catalyst got some people to make their own PACKS for Runner's Companion. It's a...very different take on the same concept; and honestly I'm not sure it's as balanced as mine, though their entries are more generic, but they lack the granularity of mine; each of their things only has a total cost listed. If you have a conflict in nuPACKS, sucks to be you.

[hogarth]

Champions 3 (not 3rd edition Champions, but the sourcebook of that name for 2nd edition Champions) had a random character generation system that did a decent job at generating generic characters.

You'd pick your character type (e.g. Brick, Energy Projector, Martial Artist, etc.) and that would determine your base stats. Then each character type had a table of attacks and defenses that you could pick from or roll on. There was also a table for skills and a table for disadvantages that you could also choose or randomly generate.

The resulting characters weren't necessarily balanced, but they were usually a good enough starting point for further personalization.

[echoVanguard]

Kits made out of Feats

Okay, that helped illuminate - essentially, you're talking about combining mix-and-match character creation with templates in a specific way. This is pretty much what our system does, except that you get a free character option at specific levels (kind of like bonus feats).

That being said, I think I see the draw of what you're suggesting - basically replacing a fixed choice + a free choice with two fixed choices that can be overridden. However, doesn't that strongly dilute class identity? You could very easily end up with a character who has five levels of wizard, but traded out all his spells for melee abilities. So you have a mid-level wizard who is unexpectedly awesome with hitting dudes with a stick, but can't actually cast any spells.

echo

[Wrathzog]

However, doesn't that strongly dilute class identity?

Not necessarily. If every class has That One Thing that no one else has then they'll remain unique. If Wizards gain the fastest progression of Arcane magics, then their identity as the best arcane magic users is pretty much guaranteed.

But even then, is class identity something we even care about? If given the option between playing a Wizard and Fighter, someone picks Wizard and then swapped every class feature they got to become a Stick specialized Fighter... whose fault is that, really?
Is it even a problem?

[JesterZero]

Can someone give me what PACKS is in a nutshell?

Link
Pre-generated Auxiliary Character and Kit System

If anyone's interested, I posted a version of that same .pdf with bookmarks here.