A Class of Their Own: Class-based Systems

It might be a touchy subject for some, but I’m about to call down the hate on the class-based roleplaying game systems you know and love. I won’t name names, for the sake of a sense of congeniality, but I feel like the most well-known of the roleplaying games are class-based... which leads me to believe that most roleplayers are playing a class-based system right meow and it makes me despair. But all hope is not lost. There’s a way forward, a way to roleplay for a better tomorrow, a better tomorrow of roleplaying games, and a fulfilling fiction life for everyone. Read-on for a list of my main criticisms.

Let’s start with harsh insults, also known as realities.

Class-based systems are imaginations crushers. They’re insidious incantations, subtle spells designed to steal any sense of originality burning within you, and smother it with prejudice. They do not reward creativity or inspiration, and they punish inventiveness and deviation. BEWARE! As a snake swallows its prey, a class-based roleplay system will swallow your fiction life: whole.

Hyperbole aside, there are some arguments to be made that support my position. The first one is lists.

Let’s go shopping

Class-based systems have a serious fetish for lists. The list of classes is, of course, the most salient one, which details the essential character concepts mixed with a number of other roleplay aspects inseparably linked to that concept, such as battle tactics employed by the class, personality types predisposed to the class, a set of motivations or ideals of the class, alignments, and a path of advancement laid out in its entirety. Though the class list is the ringleader of a terrible catalogue gang, other rank-and-files have passed the initiation and made it into print. Often, they take the form of race, species, monster- or alien-type lists; lists of equipment, weapons, and special/magic items; power and spell lists; types of vehicles or modes of transportation; and even details on social aspects of a campaign in list or table form, like how much things are likely to cost.

Why are lists so bad? Because the character “creation” process is, bottomline, not about creating at all, but rather picking things off the shelf Plain and simple. Where you should be able to choose whatever you can damn well come up with in your fantastic, imaginative brain, you’re restricted to the shopping lists contained in the book. The mix-and-match process between the lists is what constitutes creation here, but it’s a poor substitute - not unlike the maxim about the corporate marketplace: it’s the illusion of choice. You might think you’re coming up with a great new character, one that seems unique and interesting to you, but deep down you’re just a Fighter like all the rest.

The illusion of choice

Class-based systems, because of their list-mania, always embody “what you see is always what you get”. A a guy with a sword is a fighter and a guy with a wand is a mage; a sharp metal blade is a sword and a wood-set jewel is a wand. Which is to say that they are all specifically defined entities, and that the rules don’t allow for the addition or alteration of material. The mechanical definition is intrinsically linked to everything else about that entity: its appearance and function in physical space, the effect it can have on other entities, how it’s employed, etc. The specific mechanical parameters (#d6 dmg, AoE, range, handheld, etc.) are given a definite form, which the rules, typically, do not allow variation on. So, a way of doing damage to an area, at range, which would set things on fire and not function under water is… always a Fireball... and never a Call Lightning. Want to cast Cone of Slugs, or Power Word Dance? You can’t, it’s not on the list.

This has the effect of further restricting the options available. Let’s use swords as an example. There are a great many swords types out there, so many that only our imaginations can conceive of all the different designs. A roleplay system might take this into consideration and define a generic “blade”. I call this “encouraging creativity through mechanical generics”, because you would then fill in the blanks regarding what kind of blade your character wields. Serrated? Tri-blade? Bleed damage or tripping? Swordchucks!? Too often, however, a roleplay system has not taken into consideration the imagination-bursting variety of blades and our thirst for originality, and attempted to list many different kinds of blades, with their related forms and functions. I call this “discouraging creativity through mechanical specifics” because the creative part seems to have been done for you. And some roleplay systems think they’re getting a leg up on the competition by defining more balde options and making the list longer, filling the players with a sense of real luxury here, but there isn’t a list long enough that could match your imagination. A longer list of blades makes it seem like there’s more choices, but it’s just an illusion. Less is more.

They really should be called list-based roleplaying games!

Across the universe

Let’s take a quick look at the philosophical opposite of a list-based roleplaying, the universal system, to get some perspective

Universal systems are distinguished from list-based systems, not by the absence of lists, but by the separation of mechanic (in other words, the effect something can have on other entities in the game world) and “manifestation” or the special effect (in other words, the way something is imagined to look, feel, sound, taste or smell in the game world).

The universal system accepts that it can’t list all the different blades the imagination can create, and knows that it’s silly to think short, long, great, and bastard encapsulate the spectrum, but then accepts that all of them have a similar effect: doing damage. Thus, equipment or a character’s talents and abilities are defined in purely mechanical terms. Everything else, including how it functions, what it looks like, and what its called, is entirely up to the player. A Fireball and a Call Lightning could be mechanically the same, and two Fireball spells from two different Wizards could mechanically different.

Here, it’s possible to give a wide variety of mechanical rules to govern effects, but each power becomes unique in the minds of the players because the special effect exists in their imagination alone. With nothing similar to it across the universe.

Yellow brick road

Another criticism I have of list-based systems is that the system of gaining levels is too rigidly defined. Every class’s path of advancement is laid out in its entirety, even before any roleplaying starts. This brick-like structure of leveling up in specific increments and along a specific path allows for very little growth. And by growth, I am, of course, not talking about the mathematical gathering of experience points and the increase in aptitude with various skills and abilities. Class-based systems have that in spades. I’m talking about the narrative kind of growth. Stuff related to telling a good story. While The Wizard of Oz is a classic tale of adventure, not every party wants the GM to lay a convenient yellow brick road in front of them.

Speaking of Wizards, one example of level-gaining-absurdity is the Wizard-turned-Fighter, or the Fighter-turned-Wizard. Never heard of it? I know. These two classes, which I’m sure appear in one form or another in every class-based fantasy roleplaying game ever created, are the exact opposites of one another. The Fighter is concerned with physical attributes, wading through combat, and a focus on the martial arts, while the Caster is concerned with intellect, casting magic from a safe distance, and a focus on the arcane arts. It’s the classic meat-shield vs. squishy. And don’t they love to kill each other! While some systems offer a different set of classes that meld the two skills together, like battlemages (or whatever), there’s really no viable option for a player who’s advanced a number of levels in one class to switch over to the other. Rather than being two halves that make a whole, you really just stay two halves. You can multiclass, but they don’t actually mix.

As a result, players are often stuck between a brick and a hard place: pursuing an interest the character might have that forms part of the player’s vision, and makes sense considering the narrative, while seriously hampering the development of certain skills, thus nerfing one’s effectiveness in the party; or, putting their nose down, staying on track, and ignoring all the intrigue related to the other vocation. Like a salesman who just needs to put up good numbers.

Stacking the deck

The third criticism I have of list-based systems is that effects stack. Stacking is the idea that a player can choose complementary skills, feats, class abilities, etc., all of the effects of which combine to increase their total effect. And not that they just go together like swords and chucks, but they mathematically increase. So getting +1 to Jump and +1 to Tumble means you can jump and tumble pretty well, but getting a +2 to Jump is something entirely different. Stacking puts the focus of character creation into a framework of metagaming rather than of story weaving. It puts the focus of character advancement into a framework of number crunching, rather than character development. The human mind can’t help but advantage itself. When you get a chance to stack the deck in your favour, why not? And I can’t fault people for playing the game like a game, but remember there are no decks to stack in a good story, because it’s not about winning.

Variations on a theme

Lastly for this post, is that class-based systems are often genre-specific. There’s not much more to say about it, but investing the time and energy into learning a system, creating characters, and becoming familiar with mastering a game, only to leave you with little options for exploring all of your varied fiction interests because So&So is fantasy-only ... that's less than ideal.

That’s not the fiction life I want to live!