The Elements of a Classy RPG: Dungeons & Dragons (Third Edition)

Dungeons & Dragons has had many versions, editions, supplements, variants, and novations through the years. One of the most important editions of the game came to the public eye in 2000, when Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition was first released. It came after the Second Edition had been around for eleven years, seeing countless product releases, rules supplements, adventure modules, campaign settings, and gaming detritus that still litter the shelves of second-hand bookstores across the country.  Where Second Edition maintained a lot of the core mechanics of the First Edition, Third Edition took a significant number of steps away from the recognized canon. Although a number of "sacred cows" were retained but many features, previously considered untouchable, were eliminated, evolved, or re-engineered into a new framework. The class system is one of the features that had notable changes worth discussing here.

Gimble is a Bard, not a Sorcerer/Thief.
You can tell because he has an instrument.

The Player's Handbook contained eleven classes. Most of the classes had been standard selections from the previous edition. A few classes, such as the Barbarian and Monk, had previously existed in some form or another but now made their debut as core classes. One class, the Sorcerer, was a new class intended to fill the growing desire by players for a non-Vancian (or, as I prefer, non-Gygaxian) spell-caster. However, the most novel feature about classes in the Third edition, and potentially the most important, was not their variety, selection, or number. It was the multi-classing rules that made Third Edition something to really think about and value as a game.

Third Edition characters have two concepts of level. Character level is the overall measure of the character's experience while class level is specific for each class and measures the character's training within that class. Whenever a character gains a level, the player chooses which class to level in, generally selectable from any class. So, if you make a half-orc Fighter at first level, you could very well choose to take a level of fighter, thief, or even wizard when you advance to level 2. For that matter, you could take a level in whichever class you wanted. Third Edition broke open the class system, allowing a player to make whatever choices they wanted regarding their character and his or her "class."  Of course, there are a few technical limitations. Generally, characters must keep all of their class levels within one level of each other or the character will incur (experience) penalties. That level 5 Ranger, level 2 Paladin, level 3 Wizard, level 8 Fighter you had always wanted to take on an adventure is a problem within the 3E framework because she'll get less experience and, thus, level up at a slower rate than her adventuring friends. But, barring that restriction (to which there are exceptions), the system lets you do what you want with your character.  Does Gronk the Fighter want to spend some time at the Wizard's Institute of Technocery? Grab a level of wizard!

Ember was upset to learn that she, as a
Monk, would be unable to multi-class.

It does not even stop there at that, though. Third Edition was the system for people that wanted a grotesque amount of character options. Beyond the initial eleven character classes, this version of D&D featured advanced classes that had some sort of prerequisite for entry. Called "Prestige Classes," these classes provided even greater abilities for characters that were able to take levels in the class. Prestige Classes were exciting because they provided a special suite of abilities, powers, and bonuses that catered nicely to a specific arrangement of class features. Wanted to make a fighter who used a bow and knew magic? The Arcane Archer provided bonuses and special abilities for that combination of talents, allowing the character to infuse his arrows with magical energies. Beyond the small number provided, the Prestige Class was an opportunity for Players and Dungeon Masters to create specific classes suited to the campaign setting or player concept that were limited in scope (maybe 5-10 levels worth of advancement) but that emphasized a certain synergy of abilities, powers, or features.

Although the first publication of D&D had few Prestige Class options, each supplement continued to add to the roster of available options, making the field of class options quite expansive. Later publications even included new base classes, further expanding the options for character advancement. Some characters were merely alternatives to existing classes, such as Fighter variants or Wizards of different schools. Some where entirely new classes readily injectable into the mighty multi-class morass that had developed. As a player, you had many choices to make at each level with regard to what class in which you wanted to advance. This was a role-playing ruleset where anything and everything seemed possible. Because of this freedom of character design, Third Edition earned a reputation as a player's game.

Considering the system laid out in the Third Edition, one may think that it should have been the definitive take on a class system as it provides numerous options and the freedom to do practically anything. But, there are a few peculiarities.

Alright, guys. Which of these multi-class option should I take?

One problem faced by the Third Edition system was the contrast of basic, wide-reaching classes to specific, narrowly-tailored classes. To illustrate, consider two brave adventurers, Bob and Tom. Bob and Tom are both level 4 humans. Bob is a level 2 fighter and level 2 cleric. Tom is a level 4 paladin. Both have some fighting prowess. Tom is strictly better at hitting than Bob but Bob has a few more options in combat from his fighting feats. Both have divine abilities, although they express their divine powers in different ways. Bob casts spells, choosing from an expansive list of Cleric spells, while Tom can sense evil, heal his allies, and gain bonuses against evil foes. But, as far as characters go, they are both... holy warriors? They both battle monsters and wield the forces of their god. The biggest difference is that Tom the Paladin has a more restricted set of abilities than Bob the Fighter/Cleric.

She's actually charting the requirements
for her next Prestige Class. It's complicated.

This clash highlights one of the dormant issues in the Third Edition system: What is the purpose of the Paladin, a specialized Holy Warrior, in a game with free multi-classing rules that allow a Fighter/Cleric Holy Warrior with little to no fuss? The ungainly restrictions attached to the Paladin make it even stranger: Why can only Lawful Good gods have Paladins? Is there something inherently Lawful Good about detecting evil? My Fighter/Cleric can do it, except that he does it as a spell. There are other examples of the peculiarity, such as with the sorcerer/thief and the bard (different shades of the magical trickster), but the Paladin and Fighter/Cleric represent the most obvious example.

In a system like Rifts, where each class told you how you fit into the world, D&D Third Edition almost feels like it does quite the opposite as it provides different ways to make the same character concept but with different mechanical outcomes. Want to be a dashing duelist? Maybe you could make a Fighter/Rogue character. Maybe just a Rogue. Or, perhaps a Swashbuckler? Swashbuckler/Rogue? A Fighter/Swashbuckler/Rogue? The system seems to get strangest when mixing basic, broad classes like the Fighter or Wizard with very specific, specialized classes like the Paladin or Bard. One begins to wonder what it means to be a Fighter/Ranger/Paladin character. Technically, these feel like they should all be same shades of the same basic character, but within the Third Edition framework, they are distinct classes to be chosen when leveling up a character.

After playing Third Edition for a brief period, I started to think that that all I really needed were the four "basic" classes (Fighter, Wizard, Cleric, and Thief) and cleverly designed Prestige Classes.  The rest would be composed of some combination of those classes, maybe throwing in some specific Prestige Class along the way. Unfortunately, although the four basic classes covered a lot of ground, it is clear that they leave a vast array of potential character ideas out. Eventually, I began to hypothesize that what the game really needed was a solid array of basic classes that naturally developed into more specialized, advanced classes attainable after a few levels of dabbling in the core classes. Interestingly, that would later be done within the same d20 System framework in the d20 Modern Roleplaying Game, but that is a discussion for another time.

Krusk later regretted that level of
Librarian he took early in his career.

Another peculiar feature of Third Edition's class system was that, with such an abundance of options, it was quite easy to make bad choices. In fact, it was probably far easier to make a bad choice than a good one.  It is quite simple to realize several levels down the line that grabbing that level of Ranger early in the campaign was a terrible mistake. Or taking that Toughness Feat. While some choices may simply be situationally poor (such as taking Magic Item creation feats in a game where there are no Magic Items), others are simply not meant to be chosen together. It is strange that a game in which one would expect to play the same character for months, even years, would have a rule system in which bad choices are not only possible, but likely, and that no method to rectify bad choices exist. For players that hoped to do more than just play the pickup game at their local convention, Third Edition seemed to have it against you.

Unfortunately, for a system filled with a plethora of rules for different situations, it was not until Player's Handbook II that 3.5 addressed the idea of retraining. Granted, I would imagine any DM would allow players who realize they had made catastrophic mistakes with their character to have a go at re-building the character, but the idea that it took years of supplements to formalize it in the ruleset was peculiar, to say the least.

Some of the more obvious peculiar expressions of the Third Edition multi-class system came about in the d20 Star Wars RPG. Based on a very similar version of the d20 ruleset presented in Dungeons & Dragons Third Edition, the Star Wars RPG took the game to a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. Game books would always feature stat blocks for iconic characters. As new source books were released with new Prestige Classes, feats, and features, some iconic characters would change class or build to better suit the new content. The Dark Side Sourcebook includes a stat block for Emperor Palpatine that included the following text:

The statistics presented here differ from those presented in the Star Wars Roleplaying Game.While these statistics provide a much more holistic interpretation of the Emperor's abilities, either version of the Emperor works perfectly well for most roleplaying purposes.

I have multiple, different stat blocks, young Skywalker,
but I'll happily electrify your ass with any one of them.

Although there is nothing inherently wrong with having to adjust, even ret-con, the occasional stat block, the idea that even the villains needed a few chances to "get it right" said something about the potential complexity of the system. I could almost here the player upset on discovering that an important boss has multiple game statistics. "But, last week he couldn't do that!"

This was even more apparent with the "power creep" that often appears in Dungeons & Dragons. Later content, such as classes and monsters, would be more powerful than earlier classes. Sometimes done to "balance things out" while other times done just to make new features interesting, the net result was that things introduced later would have a higher power level than earlier options. This could lead to new features, feats, or Prestige Classes meant to balance out the problems. The net result was a slow escalation, leaving early sourcebook options relatively unimpressive in later years. "Oh, you're a standard Fighter? I'm glad you think that still works for you!" Eventually, the iconic heroes and villains featured in early sourcebooks would have to be replaced by a more powerful version to keep up. It is no wonder that only four or so years into the game they felt the need to release an updated rulebook, version 3.5, to blank the slate.

The Third Edition of Dungeons & Dragons brought a lot of interesting ideas to the table, at least with respect to the Dungeons & Dragons game. A more flexible and robust system let players make characters that felt more like the character they wanted while giving them unique or interesting abilities to distinguish them from every other character out there. Unfortunately, having too many options or unnecessarily repetitious options weakened the impact of the system. Overly specific character classes did not mesh well with extremely general ones, leading to peculiar results. Further, having identifiably bad options or, in the worse case, secretly bad options, undermined the strengths of the system. Finally, the slow progression in supplements of raising the power level tended to make earlier options less impressive, sometimes even relegating them to obscurity. In the end, it opened a lot of interesting doors in the world of Dungeons & Dragons and class-based RPG systems, but it leaves open a lot of strangeness that should really have been better resolved.

The Elements of a Classy RPG: Dungeons & Dragons (BECMI)

This post is part of a series concerning Class within the context of Role-Playing Games.  For an introduction to the series, see The Elements of a Classy RPG: Introduction.

Dungeons & Dragons:
Basic Set (1977-1983)

Dungeons & Dragons has a strange history.  Although the game first appeared in 1974, written by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, would eventually be divided in 1977 into two different games: Dungeons & Dragons and Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.  The “basic” form of the game would eventually be released from 1977 to 1986 in several boxed sets with multiple revisions, labeled as Basic (Red Box), Expert (Blue Box), Companion (Green Box), Master (Black Box), and Immortal (White) sets.  These would eventually be compiled into the Rules Cyclopedia in 1991, corresponding with several mass market items, including the “Big Black Box” and its progeny.  The interesting consideration is that for nearly two decades, Dungeons & Dragons had two distinct forms with contradicting rulesets and approaches to play.

My first Dungeons & Dragons set was the BECMI Basic Set, a system of sometimes questionable acceptance in the greater D&D world. I really liked it at the time and I thought it was a great way to learn about the game. The rulebook had a solo adventure to show you how things worked and it provided content to unleash upon your unwitting friends. To this day, I rarely see role-playing game products that introduce players to the game quite like the old Red Box did. There is something about thrusting a potential player right into it through a solo adventure that so many games fail to do. When they created a new mass market product, the “Big Black Box,” they made an even bolder attempt at the solo adventure concept.  It used a map, paper stand-up characters, and an involved packet of tabbed pages.  However, outside of those products, I did not see that kind of introduction to a role-playing game until the new D&D Essentials Red Box and the Pathfinder Beginner Box.  What sets the old Red Box apart for the discussion here was the way that edition of Dungeons & Dragons approached the concept of class.

The "Big Black Box" of the early 1990s.

Out of the box, the base game had seven classes.  Character creation was an extremely simple affair.  Although the game lists twelve steps, that may be something of an exaggeration.  [Note: This twelve step process was taken from the 1991 TSR publication D&D Rules Cyclopedia.]  Step 1: Roll for ability scores. Step 2: Choose a character class.  Step 3: Adjust ability scores (lowering some to raise your “prime requisite”).  Step 4-6: Roll for hit points and money, buy equipment.  Step 7-8: Computer other relevant numerical data (saving throws, ability score bonuses, etc).  Step 9-11: Choose alignment, name, height, weight, and other “background” elements.  Step 12: Earn experience (seriously a step of “character creation”).  The whole process probably took less than 15 minutes.  The only real choices involved in making your character that had mechanical result were rolling ability scores and choosing a class, with the potential option for tweaking ability scores to better prepare your adventurer.  So, class was an extremely big deal in this edition as it said mostly everything about your character.

This guy is a Fighter.

The four Human classes ran the standard D&D range of “core” classes: Fighter, Thief, Magic-User, and Cleric.  If you picked a Fighter, your character was a Human Fighter.  There were no Elf or Dwarf fighters in this edition of Dungeons & Dragons.  The same was true of the other three core classes.  However, the class you chose said a lot about who your character was and how he interacted with the world.  Did he wield the powers of magic?  Did she invoke the gods?  Could he sneak about, undetected by others, and gain access to locked and trapped spaces?  Honestly, given the few choices you had in character creation, your class said more about who your character was than any other choice you made.  There were no subtle distinctions and no real variants.  This Dungeons & Dragons had no Paladins, no Rangers, no Wardens, no Duelists, no Barbarians, and no other sorts of nonsense (at least not as a basic class choice).  This was Original Dungeons & Dragons.  You picked one of four classes and you filled in the rest on your own.

What do you mean Halfling is
a "class" in this edition?

One peculiarity of this system was the presence of three demihuman classes.  To play an Elf or Dwarf in Dungeons & Dragons, you chose that as your class.  They occupied a space somewhat different than the Human classes.  The Elf was a sort of Wizard/Fighter, allowing strengths of both classes to shine.  The Dwarf felt like a Fighter but with unique traits or characteristics unique to a non-human race.  The Halfling felt like a very different kind of special fighter, acquiring different abilities that made him more capable in woodland settings.  By the Expert Set, they had a different advancement system and very different rules, but in the short term they felt a lot like unique or interesting variants on the standard Human classes.  All around, the idea that the fantasy races were described using class felt like a really peculiar choice but it worked in the context of making a game easily approachable by new players.  That said, it did result in one peculiar element: all Elf, Dwarf, or Halfling adventurers were very similar to one another, potentially even exactly the same.  An astute player may wonder: what about Dwarven Priests or Elven Thieves?  As far as player characters were concerned, there was no such thing.

Hey!  These guys are Fighters, too.

This way Dungeons & Dragons handled class is interesting when compared to other games.  Your class says everything about you character mechanically.  It says a lot about his place within the world yet it leaves a great deal of room for you to fill in the blanks.  Was your Fighter a brave, stalwart knight, clad in the shiniest armor in the realm?  Perhaps your Fighter was a dueling swashbuckler, fighting off enemies with a deft blade and clever wit.  Maybe that Fighter was a wild tribesman from the Far North, clad in hide and swinging a mighty axe at his foes.  They were all Fighters and, to that extent, all the same.  Yet, by not saying much about the character, it did allow you, as the player, an opportunity to fill it in as you thought relevant.  It just so happened that any choices you made about your character would not mechanically impact your character unless your Dungeon Master wanted them to (and made up some rule to provide for it).

The Druid, relegated to
level 9 Cleric upgrade.

At later levels, the core classes began to see some variety in the options available.  Fighters could choose to become Paladins, Avengers, or Knights.  Clerics could choose to become a Druid.  Wizards and Thieves would have to choose whether to become free agents or lords.  Although available, these options to further customize your class were few and far between.  In fact, most characters would have roughly one or two choices to make throughout the adventuring career.  They usually amounted to choosing between a traveling lifestyle or that of a landed ruler.  Would you have a stronghold or would you become an agent of an existing lord, guild, or priesthood?  With all that being said, the mechanical elements were light compared to later editions of the game.  It made character advancement simple but not terribly enthralling.

It seems very strange to look back on so definitive a game and realize that it did not provide a great deal of options for players with respect to character advancement.  A player could make two Fighters, creating one as a fur-clad barbarian with axe and the other a dashing swashbuckler with rapier, and both would function identically outside of their randomly rolled ability scores and weapon choice.  Maybe this dearth of features or options are why an Advanced version of Dungeons & Dragons felt so necessary for some players.  Perhaps this fundamental lack of options, features, or interesting things to meddle with is why so many people who played the game began making up their own rules.  Class provided you only the most limited framework with which to build a character.  It was up to you, be it player or Dungeon Master, to fill in the interesting details.  Maybe wearing lighter armor gave your swashbuckler a bonus in a way that an armor-clad knight would not have.  Maybe your group felt the need to create your own classes to fill the holes.  Nonetheless, I cannot help but feel like it would have been nice if the game gave players something to make each character feel unique from another character of the same class.

Madness? No, this is Dungeons & Dragons!!!

It is a strange thing to look back at a game system I loved so much as a youth and find that it no longer feels welcome amongst my stable of interesting role-playing games.  It had its interesting points, to be sure, but that old systems sits in a weird place in the modern game world: it is too complicated and fussy to fit in with modern story games but wholly unsophisticated (complicated?) enough when compared to modern tabletop RPGs.  The game’s use of a class system is so encompassing yet so fundamentally uninteresting as to give a player like me pause.  Unlike a game like Rifts, this original Dungeons & Dragons does not supplement its simple class options with a vast range of selectable classes nor does it allow the mixing of different classes in unique ways like Final Fantasy.  The class system presented here, outside of its bare simplicity, does not bring much to the table when it comes to looking at class within a RPG.  As it stands, this Dungeons & Dragons serves best as a gateway game, introducing players to the concept and then quickly turning them to more sophisticated options.

The Elements of a Classy RPG: Final Fantasy

This post is part of a series concerning Class within the context of Role-Playing Games.  For an introduction to the series, see The Elements of a Classy RPG: Introduction.

So many jobs, so many different abilities!

After reviewing the system used in Rifts, it seemed appropriate to consider a system that feels completely different than the epic Palladium system.  I looked around, hoping to find a system that de-emphasized the character elements (story, background, history, etc) part of a character's class.  Final Fantasy is not a tabletop RPG, but it still has a lot to say about the concept of class (or “job”) within the realm of role-playing games.  Although different games within the series used somewhat different game mechanics for character improvement, especially regarding how new abilities or skills are acquired, the “job system” has been popular enough in the series to reappear several times in several slightly varied forms.  First introduced in Final Fantasy III, the system reappeared in Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy Tactics (et seq.), and Final Fantasy X-2. When considering the different class systems in various role-playing games, this "job system" within the Final Fantasy series presents a sort of extreme for what class means within a role-playing game.  The way that the game handles class is different and interesting enough that it warrants consideration in the grand analysis of class-based systems.  This is especially relevant when you consider that most people are first exposed to a class-based RPG system from games like Final Fantasy, so it informs what expectations people bring to the table.

The “job system” is interesting because it feels a lot like a class system mechanically but does not necessarily feel like one thematically.  When I say it has no effect thematically, I mean to say that it has no effect on the character's story.  Just because your character is now a Dragoon or a Dancer is irrelevant to the character outside of powers and abilities.  The character’s history, background, story, personality, training, and place within the story are completely independent of what job they may have selected.  Faris, the pirate captain in Final Fantasy V, can be a Red Mage, a Thief, a Geomancer, or any job you want.  The job system is flexible enough that you can even change a character’s job whenever not in combat.  Yet, despite whatever class you may choose for her, Faris is still the pirate captain and lost heir of the Kingdom of Tycoon.  Whether she be a Black Mage or a Mime, her place within the greater story remains exactly the same.  In fact, there are no circumstances whatsoever where a character’s job (or job experience) will impact the story elements.

So much to master, so little time!

This idea seems somewhat contrary to how class is normally presented.  In a game like Final Fantasy V, a character’s class (or job) is nothing more than an expression of what that character does in battle.  It provides abilities, powers, features, and other ways to interact in battle.  The player selects a specific class for each character and that determines what that character can do.  As they fight battles, characters gain “job points” along with their experience points.  While experience points influence the character’s level, affecting their game statistics, these job points are used to advance the progress within that specific job.  Eventually, more job-based abilities become available.  Some abilities are passive while others are new active abilities available for use in battle.  This kind of advancement, gaining new abilities and powers, is comparable to the kind of advancement one sees in other role-playing games.  However, a major difference here is that a character can change their class at any time outside of combat with no penalty.  Further, the system allows some unique blending of the jobs.  These features are what make the Final Fantasy V system so interesting mechanically.

Assign abilities as you will, no matter how absurd.

Every character has four basic combat ability slots: Fight (for attacking foes), a job based ability (based on which job is currently selected), an optional slot (for equipping additional abilities), and Item (for using items).  The interesting feature in that set of abilities is the optional slot.  The optional slot serves two purposes.  The more obvious purpose of the slot is to allow a character to equip an optional ability gained by advancing within the class.  For example, the Monk class learns both “Focus” and “Chakra,” abilities that can be equipped to the optional slot.  Some passive abilities can also be equipped in that optional slot, such as “HP +20%,” which boosts a character’s overall hit points.  But, the more interesting feature of the optional slot is the ability to equip abilities learned from other jobs.  Want to use Chakra as a Knight?  Get to job level 3 as a Monk, change to the Knight class, and equip it in the optional slot.  Want to fight bare-fisted as a White Mage?  Get to job level 2 as a Monk, change to White Mage, and equip Barehanded.  With this, you can have Black Mages wielding two-handed swords, Blue Mages casting White Magic, or any sort of ridiculous combination.  This becomes even more interesting when a character selects the “Freelancer” job, which has the innate abilities of every “mastered” job and to equip two different job abilities.  Thus, by mastering a job, that character’s “default” job becomes more powerful.

What is important to understand about the Final Fantasy V job system, as I stated before, was that all of this was independent of the character’s role in the story.  The same is true of the system that appeared in Final Fantasy Tactics.  Galuf, Lenna, Ramza, or T.G. Cid have no different interactions with the characters, locations, or events within the story based on their currently selected job or any previously trained jobs.  It just does not matter at all.  This seems peculiar when you consider how much weight people give to class as a definition of character in tabletop role-playing games.  Yet, the idea of having character class provide abilities, traits, or powers is not unusual in tabletop games.  Examining this kind of job system provides a perspective worth considering when thinking about what the concept of class means within role-playing games.

The Elements of a Classy RPG: Rifts

This post is part of a series concerning Class within the context of Role-Playing Games.  For an introduction to the series, see The Elements of a Classy RPG: Introduction.

Although it is not any sort of proper order at all, I want to start with the class system used in the Palladium system.  Palladium Books published a number of different role-playing games, including Heroes Unlimited, Rifts, Ninjas & Superspies, Beyond the Supernatural, After the Bomb, and Palladium Fantasy.  They also had licensed titles such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Robotech.  All of them used the same (or similar) game mechanics.  Most of the games used a class system, referring to a character’s class as O.C.C., or Occupational Character Class.  In addition, some games utilized classes based on race instead of occupation, known as R.C.C., or Racial Character Class.  [A few games also utilized P.C.C., or Psychic Character Class, but that designation did not survive to Rifts.]  Eventually, all of this would come together within the Rifts setting, bringing the Palladium Megaverse together in a grim future.  Thus, I want to look at the system as it appeared in Rifts (and its many supplements) in order to get a sense of what the O.C.C. system entailed.

The Juicer, the result of
Nancy Reagan's failure.

The Rifts core rulebook had a wide variety of classes for players to choose from:  Rogue Scholar.  Wilderness Scout.  Cyber Knight.  Crazy.  You chose your class at character creation and that defined the character in mechanics, concept, and story.  It defined what kind of skills your character had, what kind of special features she might have, what kind of money and equipment she would start with, and how she advanced through play.  It also said a lot about where your character came from, how she got her start, and something about her place in the universe.  In a way, the Palladium O.C.C. or R.C.C. defined almost everything about your character (outside of race).  There were not a lot of details to change within any O.C.C. and once you chose it, your character was generally stuck with it.  Occasionally, a character class would allow for a type of major change or “out” from the confines of the class, but such a thing was mechanically rare (i.e., the Juicer O.C.C., a warrior hooked up to a sophisticated drug injection system, could try to break her addiction to the drug treatment, which would result in a longer life span but substantially fewer abilities, leading to a less functional character class).  However, with few exceptions, this type of transition was never explicitly presented within the ruleset.  A player who wanted his or her character to undergo a fundamental life change would likely have to discuss it with the Game Master.

Perhaps "Adventurer" or "Wanderer" would have
sounded more heroic than "Vagabond."

The interesting thing about the Palladium system was that there were a huge number of O.C.C. and R.C.C. choices available.  I even remember seeing Rifts sourcebooks advertising the number and variety of new O.C.C. selections available.  Consider a look at this purported class master list.  On it, you can find Bandit Highwayman, Bandit (Peasant Thug), Reaver Bandit/Raider, Bandit/Pecos Raider, and Vanguard Brawler Thug (a R.C.C.).  Although covering all sorts of Bandits and Thugs, I failed to mention thieves, represented by Gypsy Thief, Gypsy Wizard Thief, and Professional Thief.  In the Palladium universe, there was something different enough about these different types of characters to warrant different classes individual advancement tables and rules.  Sometimes, you would even find an O.C.C. that felt like it was there simply as a joke.  The Vagabond O.C.C., from the Rifts core rulebook, fits an important niche within the greater Rifts universe (that is, everybody who is not something fancy and special) but feels mechanically like half of a class, with less skills, equipment, and abilities than any other class in the book.

The Coalition: Better than you
simply because of the name.

Just by looking over the class system of the Palladium role-playing system, it seems obvious that class is less about mechanical features and more about filling a specified character concept within the greater universe.  It was less the game mechanics that mattered but the place within the overall world that mattered.  In Rifts, it was not enough to have a soldier of the sinister Coalition as a class in the game; the game had some six or seven in the base rulebook alone.  How a Borg differed from a Coalition Borg, or a Psi-Stalker differed from a Coalition Psi-Stalker, was obviously sufficient to warrant individual classes: one was a member of the Coalition military while the other was not.  Granted, there may be particular mechanical differences between the classes, but the fundamental difference rested in its origin.

No, as it ends up, Glitter Boys do
not have special parades every year.

The distinctions between classes sometimes feel almost cheap.  A Glitter Boy O.C.C. has but one identifying feature: it starts with a giant “pre-war” suit of power armor (called a Glitter Boy).  The power armor is its primary class feature.  A Coalition Grunt is not especially different than any other type of bounty hunter, grunt, or mercenary, but the Coalition Grunt is a unique O.C.C. because it represents a character who is (or once was) a member of the Coalition and retains his or her specialized body armor.  Since the classes were so specific in theme and representation, hundreds were available to fill each unique background, story, or character concept.

Considering all of this, Palladium represents a sort of extreme within the RPG system.  Hundreds of classes, each representing a specified niche within the universe.  To make a Coalition Grunt and then insist he was something other than a grunt of the all-mighty Coalition seemed to be missing the point.  You picked Coalition Grunt because your character was a basic soldier within the Coalition military (or, was recently such a soldier).  Although Rifts, like any RPG, promoted the use of your imagination, your character would generally fit within one of the pre-made character molds presented by the creators.  This somewhat unique class system presented a peculiar economic possibility because it allowed the creators to continue to publish new sourcebooks with new classes.  However, as the number of classes continued to soar, the distinctions between classes seemed to decline.  The proliferation of classes ended with very few being especially unique or interesting outside of the role it played within the greater Rifts narrative.

Rogue Scholar: Clearly these books
are full of old beer recipes.

All that being said, the Rifts system was interesting in that it gave you, as a player, a character to play.  It had a sort of “pick-up-and-play” aspect to it.  Pick a Rogue Scientist?  Well, you had a pretty good idea that you were a trained scientist, potentially on the run from the Coalition.  You likely had discovered or created something that the Coalition wanted or you were attempting to devise some technology that would work against the Coalition’s interests.  Rather than ask yourself how your character came to be in the world, Kevin Siembieda provided it in your character’s class description.  This is great for a first time player, but I feel that most players want a little bit more in the production of a character than merely slotting into a pre-existing archetype like Rifts provided.

I suspect very few people are interested in playing a game with a class system as presented in Rifts.  What it accomplishes in providing a character fixed into the greater story has been easily accomplished by other games, both more simply and more effectively.  Instead, the Rifts system ends up becoming nothing more than a horrifying example of bloat within the role-playing world, where the basic ideas of role-playing are pushed aside to get more books on the shelf.  Its few strengths are readily outmatched by the absurdity of its weakness, making a framework few should attempt to emulate.

The Elements of a Classy RPG: Introduction

My class is Wizard. Or Magic-User.
Or Illusionist. Or Enchanter.

Many role-playing games, both tabletop and electronic, have some concept of class to define a player's character.  It has become such an iconic concept that sometimes it appears even when it does not really matter.  However, despite the prevalence of class within the gaming context, the basic notion of class seems to have no definitive meaning.  Many games seem to use it different.  So, in the great adventure that is designing the optimal role-playing game, the question of class is an important one.  What is a class?  What encompasses a character’s class?  Should it be different than a career, or a job?  What about a background or personal history?  These are questions that need to be addressed.

I thought I would start considering how class is treated in different systems and write a thing or two about it.  From there, I hoped to think about what class could mean and, in the context of the new Dungeons & Dragons, what I think it should mean.  That being said, when I began this project, it was intended to be a single article.  Quickly, it grew into two.  From there, I realized that nobody really wants to read a 10,000 word treatise on class and felt it would best be broken up into individual articles.  To begin with, I have decided to examine various games, both tabletop, console, and computer, and look at how they handle the concept of class.  Specifically, I want to look at what the class encompasses, what it means within the context of the game, how much freedom a character has within that class, and what other features exist to further flesh out a character within that system.

Go ahead and guess what class this is...

Why look at all of these different systems?  The hope is to come to an idea of what the concept of class should entail.  A lot of game systems have abandoned the system of class because it is considered far too constraining.  Yet, many games continue to employ a class system because it provides a player with a pre-built archetype with which to interact with the game world.  On the other hand, some game systems try to make very broad, highly encompassing classes intending to capture every possible permutation that of character that could exist.    Although I admit that every rule system is different, the hope is that there is a sort of optimal place for class within a RPG system.  Thus, I go on this journey under the assumption that there are a few basic principles that every game should potentially apply to its class system.  Whether that is true remains to be seen.

Hopefully, this will be a useful adventure.  Although I have read and played a wide variety of game systems, my experience is limited and I hope I can reach all of the relevant different rulesets out there.  If there are particular systems worthy of consideration, I hope that readers will recommend them to me so I can consider them further before I conclude.  In the history of gaming, it is likely that every reasonable idea has been explored by some game at some point, so hopefully I can find them all with a careful examination of the genre.

The Elements of a Classy RPG, Part 1: Rifts

The Elements of a Classy RPG, Part 2: Final Fantasy

The Elements of a Classy RPG, Part 3: Dungeons & Dragons (BECMI)
The Elements of a Classy RPG, Part 4: Dungeons & Dragons (Third Edition)