Classless D&D

[tedcahill2]

Is there a system someone, homebrew or official, that let's characters buy abilities from any class using XP? Basically looking for a classless variant.

[Venger]

Is there a system someone, homebrew or official, that let's characters buy abilities from any class using XP? Basically looking for a classless variant.

There are a number of similar systems under d20 that will allow you to roll your own classes to s degree, such as mutants and masterminds, or BESM. under D&D 3.5 proper, not to my knowledge.

[heavyfuel]

Unearthed Arcana somewhat did this with the Generic Fighter, Rogue, and Spellcaster

I think its as close as youre gonna get to classless in D&D

[LTwerewolf]

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/genericClasses.htm

Only thing I'm aware of.

[AOKost]

Is there a system someone, homebrew or official, that let's characters buy abilities from any class using XP? Basically looking for a classless variant.

My personal favorite system is Custom Characters (http://www.easydamus.com/CustomCharacters.html). I've used it for groups for 7 years and expanded upon it with Pathfinder material and LOOOOTs of other classes and prestige classes. Check it out!

Edit: I downloaded the PDF and expanded it myself with my own files, but using the base system as a reference and starting point. It gives a breakdown of every class in the Player's Handbook, but no prestige classes or anything from any other book.

I start every group off as Commoners, with Clubs, backpacks, 3 days of trail rations, 50' of Hemp Rope, 3 Torches, and d10 copper. They get to choose their race, and I give them 90 points to distribute to their Ability Scores with the proviso that no Ability Score can be above 18 before racials, and no lower than 6 after racials. On average, that's 15 to each ability score. You either survive the first adventure, or you don't and so you either gain experience to learn new traits, or you don't.

I feel this give vastly more opportunity for players to learn certain things and make their character the EXACT way they want without having to shoehorn certain things with cumbersome classes. You could run a Fighter EXACTLY as a Fighter from the Player handbook, or Rogue, or any of those classes... or you could be a rogue with a little extra BAB, or a few extra tricks... They survive an encounter with a Mind fayer and want to improve their Will save, they have the ability to, and now the RP REASON to...

[Mordaedil]

Taking the generic classes and having their features be based on how you roll is the only way you'll do it. If you allow rolling, that is going to make some insanely unbalanced characters.

[EldritchWeaver]

There is the Eclipse (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/51255/Eclipse-The-Codex-Persona-Shareware) book, which has a number of additional examples here (https://ruscumag.wordpress.com/) and is available for free, too.

[JustIgnoreMe]

Is there a system someone, homebrew or official, that let's characters buy abilities from any class using XP? Basically looking for a classless variant.
You want to find a book called "Buy the Numbers": it's literally what you're asking for. I think it's still available to buy as a pdf, it was also a physical book.

Everything was given an xp value, right down to hit points and saving throws. There are some reviews and discussions in the usual places.

[JBPuffin]

There is the Eclipse (http://www.rpgnow.com/product/51255/Eclipse-The-Codex-Persona-Shareware) book, which has a number of additional examples here (https://ruscumag.wordpress.com/) and is available for free, too.

I heartily second this - it's great, man.

[EldritchWeaver]

You want to find a book called "Buy the Numbers": it's literally what you're asking for. I think it's still available to buy as a pdf, it was also a physical book.

Everything was given an xp value, right down to hit points and saving throws. There are some reviews and discussions in the usual places.

I've read it and I can't recommend it. The prices of the abilities aren't scaled to the levels. So at higher levels you simply start buying the low-level abilities of other classes, which makes the characters quite wonky.

[Boozy]

You know...

For a long time I've been trying to find a way to do this well. The simplistic beauty of the WoD chassis in a D&D setting (didn't care for Exalted). The starting point was the Mage: The Ascension approach to magic. THAT was a well-designed system, fluid and creative. The character point buying system was great too.

The problem was trying to balance the other supernatural abilities. While I ported over the Vampire Disciplines without much issue (aside from the Blood Pool cost), the Gifts system from Werewolf never quite worked unless you were a lycanthrope murder machine, even with a tax cut.

I'm convinced a solution exists, and the WoD system of buying advancements is beautiful. As an alternative, you could go the Deadlands Classic route, but the system is thematically designed for a western setting, and much more clunky than WoD (Still a beautiful game though, and probably my favorite out of the box).

[weckar]

There are any number of generic RPGs that allow for this. Any particular reason you want to stay within the D&D scope?

[Godskook]

Is there a system someone, homebrew or official, that let's characters buy abilities from any class using XP? Basically looking for a classless variant.

Not technically classless, but Approach is *almost* classless in that you can get all the class features you want:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16FfgVpvPDWm2DAHznP5AU4BRkI3nf_mfBOekEv4750s/edit?usp=sharing

[Darkholme]

There's always Everstone.

[Coretron03]

My personal favorite system is Custom Characters (http://www.easydamus.com/CustomCharacters.html). I've used it for groups for 7 years and expanded upon it with Pathfinder material and LOOOOTs of other classes and prestige classes. Check it out!

Edit: I downloaded the PDF and expanded it myself with my own files, but using the base system as a reference and starting point. It gives a breakdown of every class in the Player's Handbook, but no prestige classes or anything from any other book.

I start every group off as Commoners, with Clubs, backpacks, 3 days of trail rations, 50' of Hemp Rope, 3 Torches, and d10 copper. They get to choose their race, and I give them 90 points to distribute to their Ability Scores with the proviso that no Ability Score can be above 18 before racials, and no lower than 6 after racials. On average, that's 15 to each ability score. You either survive the first adventure, or you don't and so you either gain experience to learn new traits, or you don't.

I feel this give vastly more opportunity for players to learn certain things and make their character the EXACT way they want without having to shoehorn certain things with cumbersome classes. You could run a Fighter EXACTLY as a Fighter from the Player handbook, or Rogue, or any of those classes... or you could be a rogue with a little extra BAB, or a few extra tricks... They survive an encounter with a Mind fayer and want to improve their Will save, they have the ability to, and now the RP REASON to...

I'm reading that document now it it seems pretty flawed ,to say the least.

Red flag 1:A level of druid spellcasting costs less xp (the points the system uses) then a point of bab (200*cl (character level) and 300*cl respectively). It should be pretty clear to everyone why this is a issue.

Red flag number 2: If I'm reading this correctly, a druids animal companion costs 100 at level 1, but to function requires a druid character level (what you buy to keep the scaling class features scaling) that cost 25*cl. What the issue with this is however is that buying spellcasting gives you a character level for that class equal to the spellcasting level, meaning a druids animal companion that scales normally and full druid spellcasting costs less then a point of bab per level (It also means a animal companion costs the same as tower shield prof). If you can't see a problem with that, you need to play some more DnD.

Third red flag: The same as the above 2, except with every other class feature. Sneak attack? Cost 100*cl xp for every 1d6 improvement. Rage? 100*cl xp for every extra use per day, plus the greater rage and co improvements. On the other end, monk wis to ac bonus. Cost 100 xp to get wis to ac as a monk does. Then it costs 100*cl for every +1 ac like the monk has.

Okay, i lied. This isn't pretty flawed at best, this is downright terrible if I'm reading it correctly. If I'm misunderstanding the system I am sorry.

However, I'd like to play a druid in this system. Or not, because it would be incredibly powerful.

As a fun side note, cleric (domains included) and druid casting together cost the same as wizard casting.

Edit: Plus, the barbarian built with this system at level 1 costs 1975 xp (2000 available) while the sorcerer costs 1275 xp, letting the sorcerer buy more stuff, like barbarian level hp (hp costs 25 xp each) and better saves (100xp per +1 to a save) or nab some class features like fighter feat for improved init or alignment aura and a cleric class level to set himself up for cha to saves next level.

Edit 2: Nevermind the bit about the Monk wis to ac and animal companion, it costs 100*cl in xp. The other parts still seem relevant though.

[Yahzi]

I start every group off as Commoners, with Clubs, backpacks, 3 days of trail rations, 50' of Hemp Rope, 3 Torches, and d10 copper. They get to choose their race, and I give them 90 points to distribute to their Ability Scores with the proviso that no Ability Score can be above 18 before racials, and no lower than 6 after racials. On average, that's 15 to each ability score.
You big softie. :smallbiggrin:

I start my groups as commoners with a knife, a club, and the clothes on their backs. One attribute is 12 and the rest are 10. They have to work their way through 5 apprentice levels of a class to get their stats up to normal.

Sheesh. DMs these days. How are kidz ever gonna learn self-reliance if you coddle them? :smalltongue:

[Morphic tide]

Personally, I've been wanting to build a system that has classes be specifically listed as their component point buy per level, essentially making classes into premade character builds designed around coherent themes and the assumed optimization level of the game. Of course, the problem of exponential power by level makes it so that you have to build the system around the mathematics responsible for casters being so bull****, having multiple linear progressions multiply together to create exponential and quadratic progressions. And then the system is assuming that you are doing a decent degree of optimization by properly exploiting this mathematic detail, so playing it point by makes it possible to have people render their builds nonfunctional by not grabbing the intended exponential progression abilities.

You might want to take a look at Trailblazer, which does nothing with point buy but does try to balance everything around CR and actually gives each class a CR per level rating, which is really helpful for using character classes for enemy NPCs. If you can dismantle the setup they used to define this, you can break it down into a point buy system for D&D that balances by the CR of the character, thus making it so that the system is equally applicable to creating level-appropriate encounters. It also has a lot of optional rules and is not actually a system of it's own but specifically an attempt at fixing the problems with D&D, slaughtering all the sacred cows needed to do so. The system does have a unified casting progression as a magic equivalent of BAB, but actually works to balance it by both making the progression of spell power not be insane and by making spell slots a serious restriction.

Don't take their Spine Analysis as the competency of their creation, it has some pretty nasty mistakes that aren't replicated in the actual mechanics they make. For example, they considered Monk to be as under-CR'd as Wizard, but didn't end up rendering Monk completely worthless or Wizard even more godlike. They made a mistake on the analysis, but didn't have that mistake screw up their mechanics.