Orion wrote:as far as I know nobody takes RIFTS, Rolemaster, or Warhammer seriously. Rolemaster classes are unbalanced, flavorless procedurally-generated garbage. Many Warham careers are literally jokes. I guess I want to challenge the idea that many games have actually benefitted from large numbers of classes.
Also, anecdotally, the number one complaint I hear about After Sundown is that it has too many classes.
But as you noted, the problem isn't the quantity of classes, it is the quality. And the qualify of the ruleset outside of classes. If Rifts had just 10 classes it would be a fucking disgrace that nobody would want to play. Instead it was a fucking disgrace that
people couldn't help themselves from playing- thanks to the massive quantity of class options.
Of my physical RPG book collection I probably have almost as many Rifts books as DnD, and it was all because of the classes. I could have given maybe two shits about new psychic powers or spells. Equipment... I cared somewhat, but mostly it was about the new class options that me to the yard time and again. My biggest disappointments were with books that I couldn't mine classes out of for games.
And too many classes in After Sundown? What the what? Are they conceptually stepping on each other's toes (nope), if not then how the fuck is that possible? Hopefully it's not stupid reasoning like this:
hyzmarca wrote:Hundreds of classes seems like a great idea, but you have to ask, as a player and as a DM, so I want to learn hundreds of classes?
The answer to that is no.
No, you don't have to learn all the classes, just the ones people choose to bring to the table, of which there may be 6. Conservatively 30 minutes of work in total for the MC if they have to learn classes that are totally foreign, and that doesn't even need to be done during session time.
My enjoyment of Rifts classes was not lessened by that I didn't learn what classes were offered by Rifts Underseas or Cyber Ninjas or whatever books came out after I kicked the habit. If someone brought it to the table I'd be like "Oh, lemme see. That's ridiculous and stupid! No, no, no. Totally bring it."
I recall MCing for:
Seljuk Burster
Phoenixi
Psi Stalker with some MDC granting armadillo symbiont
Psi-X Alien with Automatic Dodge for his giant fucking head
Monster Hunter (2 of these actually)
Atlantean Monster Hunter
Head Hunter
Hunter Cat
Crazy
Phaeton Juicer
Robot Horse
Vagabond
Rifter
Coalition Military Specialist
Godling with a homebrew light saber and homebrewed Predator forcefield/cloaking
Some sort of giant beetle D-Bee that used power armor
Super Power human with supersonic flight
- We tapped maybe 1% of the straight RCC/OCC options (not counting the millions of combos if you mix classes/races), but we got a lot of mileage out of classes.