Freeform 5e - have you tried it?

[X3r4ph]

I have been dabling with generic, and class-less, 5e home brew for awhile now and stumbled unto this:

http://homebrewery.naturalcrit.com/share/B1m8IMmMNZ

Have any of you tried it?

[Blood of Gaea]

I would never use that, it will basically make anyone who uses a tiny bit of optimization be significantly more powerful than people just making a build. There are other things too, starting with proficiencies in your highest stats means a Cleric will probably have amazing saves with Wis and Con, while a Paladin would often be stuck with the significantly works Str and Cha saves.

[X3r4ph]

It requires that everybody takes responsibility for keeping balance. For sure. But say your group isn't a bunch of donkeyhats trying to destory the fun for everyone else. Then I wonder if it would work.

[Toadkiller]

Looks like Fantasy Hero a Champions game from the 90s (it may still be around). I like the approach of being able to choose a la carte as it were, but would also want to manage the potential range of optimization. My experience is many to most home games range from “just playing my concept” to “squeezing out all the maths”. Happily that only kind of matters in 5e but I would want to really poke around on this before using it.

[Tiadoppler]

It requires that everybody takes responsibility for keeping balance. For sure. But say your group isn't a bunch of donkeyhats trying to destory the fun for everyone else. Then I wonder if it would work.

If everyone comes to the table with a specific character concept and sticks with that concept, I could see it "working" fine. Would it be D&D? No. Would it be well balanced? No.

I'd be worried that: optimized combos would be discovered. Every character would take that combo whether or not it's appropriate for the character.

Could you have a game that "works" with every character having rogue's sneak attack and warlock spellcasting? Sure! If your players are helping balance everything out, and you change the CRs of enemies to be appropriate, the game could keep trundling along just fine.

At the end of the day, "character creation rules" and "classes" are just guidelines to promote gameplay diversity and balance. Removing classes and levels entirely is a major change to the game (it's practically a new d20 based system, rather than a D&D homebrew), and you may find that it reduces gameplay diversity and balance.

[Mortis_Elrod]

omg This is a find. I've often had the most fun in levelless/classless systems. I wouldn't mind a free form 5e.

I'll be showing my group this and testing it out the next chance i get. I can finally make the D&D character ive always wanted to play.

Though i feel like the abilties should be gated by having trees like the Star Wars Era games by FFG so you don't go around taking capstones at play-start.

[ProsecutorGodot]

level 3 human (175 pts)
Assuming point buy, even cheaper if you roll high.
16, 14, 14 , 8, 12, 8 (not that any of the other scores matter, we wanted a 16 STR)

This works because Human's just get 25 extra points and since it doesn't specify that it needs to be VHuman and substitute the feat for it (it could also be read that humans don't get any score increases as a trade off for 25 points but that's terrible and we don't want terrible)

95 pts to put str to 20
10 pts for Greatsword proficiency (or for Weapon Master feat because maybe you want four weapon proficiency for the price of one)
10 pts for Ogre Grip (we really just want this for the prereq but if we were Small we could wield Greatswords with it)
15 pts for Giant's Grip, this lets us dual wield greatswords
20 pts for Two Weapon Fighting
25 pts for Great Weapon Master

Seems good.

[X3r4ph]

https://gameplay.tips/uploads/posts/2017-04/1491859806_ds3.jpg

2d6 +5 * 2 ... it's good. But not completely bonkers.

[Citan]

Hi!

Thanks for sharing this. I've been thinking about trying to make such a thing for a long time but never had... Time precisely. ^^

This author's approach is significantly different than mine though and... Honestly? I would probably never use it apart from a few funky one-shot in which everyone agrees that balance, fluff and universe coherence are foreign concepts.

I'm sure (s)he has spent dozens of hours trying to translate class abilities into free-form purchasable ones, and I appreciate the effort that I didn't have the courage to put in myself...

Yet a few glances are enough for me to consider that it's a mess.

First because it's extremely chaotic: for example, reading the Totem Path ability, it's not clear (although it seems logical enough to me at least) that you can learn different animals for the "same level" but you would obviously choose whether to activate one or the other.

Second because the total absence of restrictions opens too many cheeses and overpowered combinations, whether a player is actually looking for it or not.
A few examples...
- From the wording of author, although you "choose a starting class", for EVERY class ability that previously scaled upon CLASS level, it now scales upon CHARACTER level ("remember that each 50 XP spent is equal to 1 level for the purpose of this ability").
Add to that the ability to learn ANY Channel Divinity and stack archetype features and you can end with extremely stupidly powerful low-level characters like a lvl 6 "Cleric" character that is a healing machine beyond what anyone could provide (grab Life Cleric bonus, Life Cleric CD, buy 4 CD uses, you're set).
Or a "Wizard" character that is more difficult to hurt than anyone: grab Bladesong feature, grab Abjuration feature, grab War Magic feature, top that with Shield and Armor of Agathys.
With "normal" multiclass rules, if you considered each multiclass "as a whole" (like each archetype is a whole class), this would be a powerful houserule but within reasonable limits since Abjurer Wards would be very limited and it would come online fairly late (level 7 and MADness).
With this system, lvl 7 is equal to 350 XP: largely enough to start with 16 DEX, INT and CON (so saving throws), then buy Bladesong (although it isn't there, let's put it at same level as Portent and say 25 XP), Abjurer (12 XP), Armor of Agathys and Shield for 6 XP (since you obviously choose Intelligence), weapon cantrips and proficiency for ~15 XP, boost DEX and INT to 20 (70 XP each), and buy 1st and 5th level short rest slots with the remaining.
You spent ~200 XP up to here, still 150: enough to get 4*1 + 1*2 + 1*3 + 1*4 + 2*5th level long rest slots.

Or take the classic lvl 7 GWM Fighter 5 with two levels of Rogue for Cunning Action: before you had some things to lose, and things that did not mesh so well, it required some dedication.
Now? You can have 4 attacks per Attack action (200 XP) AND Cunning Action (30 XP) AND 20 STR (70) AND GWM and your weapons/armor proficiencies.
AT. FRIGGING. LEVEL. 7!
(Ok, he didn't take any HP boost, so he'd better have a great Cleric pal to buff him hard, but it was to show-case the fact that some abilities should just not be available so soon).

Or take the classic trope of a Pyroman.
At level 7, he could just launch
Empowered (25) Draconic Affinity (30 XP) Irresistible (Elemental Adept, 15 XP) Sculpted (25 XP) Spell Bombarding (15 XP) Fireball (3 XP) as 4th level slots 3 times per short rest, and still have pretty decent HP and resilience thanks to Draconic Origin (+1 HP/level) + Tough feat (+2 HP per level) + 18 CON (30 XP from starting 16) + upcast Aid spell (20 xp).

Those three cases could be as equally held by powergamers that want to cheese a specific build, as by just "normal gamers" that found it fun to build a one-dimensional characters... Except the first knows what he's doing, while the second has no idea of why/how this could make him overpowered compared to his comrades.

And these are only a few examples of how far we can throw balance off...
It's not impossible to manage, sure, but it would require quite an amount of extra work for the DM to 1) ensure all players are reasonably close in terms of "raw power" and 2) adapt encounters to stay relevant for everyone without specifically designing them "against" a particular player or two, which would be much more difficult than usual.

Third, because it deprives the class of their essence. It's only an empty shell now that anyone can take even the most symptomatic, most representative features of the class, be it exclusive spells (Spirit Guardians, Hex) or features (Cunning Action, Stunning Strike, Divine Smite, Volley, Multiple Extra Attack, Wild Shape)...

Fourth, it's complex. Not very complex, but complex enough to make me wonder "why no just pick Pathfinder then"?

IMO, for a free-form to work, you would rather need...
1. Either to completely destroy the concept of class and rewrite all balance from the ground up (basically, creating a new system with just the names and descriptions as is).

2. Or keep the current situation but cherry-pick some interesting features to make them available as feats, and give a feat WITH each ASI instead of a replacement (while keeping everything else as is, including most importantly the multiclass rules).

Simply because some features and spells are just too powerful to be left accessible through a plain "xp-rush", even if that would mean a very imbalanced character on other aspects.
You just cannot imo avoid some kind of "progression tree" or "hard steps to reach" before getting some things. ;)

[ProsecutorGodot]

2d6 +5 * 2 ... it's good. But not completely bonkers.
It's actually (2d6+15)*2 since Great Weapon Master only specifies that the weapon is heavy, not that you're wielding it with two hands.

I also miscalculated the ASI cost by 25pts so you can dump TWF for Extra Attack and have (2d6+15)*2 + (2d6+10). Since you're very likely to have killed the target (this is level 3 still) you might not even need to use Two Weapon Fighting, you can just use the bonus action attack from GWM.

Alternatively you can gain Reckless Attack for advantage and go crit fishing.

[X3r4ph]

Very good points. I think I am fairly convinced that this wouldn't work. It's simply too open.

And since most classes are frontloaded, and you aren't giving up any investment in a class to get high level abilities, when you cherry pick from low level features, balance dies.

I would have loved to see some kind of feature tree system where you had to make the investment still. Do you want to get this and this? Then you must take ****ty abilities first.

Paying extra every time you cherry pick from the same "level", or from a different archetype from the same class, could also be a solution.

Hmm. Guess it still needs a lot of work.

[Citan]

Very good points. I think I am fairly convinced that this wouldn't work. It's simply too open.

And since most classes are frontloaded, and you aren't giving up any investment in a class to get high level abilities, when you cherry pick from low level features, balance dies.

I would have loved to see some kind of feature tree system where you had to make the investment still. Do you want to get this and this? Then you must take ****ty abilities first.

Paying extra every time you cherry pick from the same "level", or from a different archetype from the same class, could also be a solution.

Hmm. Guess it still needs a lot of work.
The points I had determined out myself were thinking about it were these, if that can help you or the original author, in the objective of NOT making a free-form 5e yet bringing more flexibility into the builds.

1. Spellcasting.
- Basic slot system should be the PHB multiclass one.
- A chain of feat should allow any character to get the equivalent of three levels of a long-rest caster (meaning, you get the whole spellcasting feature of the chosen caster, but none of the other features).

This should allow most people to achieve character concepts that rely on limited magic (like martials getting Hex or Bless or Mage Armor, or even Shadow Blade / Aid / Pass Without Trace etc) without breaking anything (chained feats = you wait a long time to get 2nd level spells). Of course this is a wild idea, there are probably other/better ways to achieve a similar goal.

2. Martial Abilities.
Make a repeatable feat (you can take it several times as long as choosing another option) that would allow you to cherry-pick any feature from the other class, as long as that feature is obtained at most "current level -5" (number is a totally arbitrary choice of mine).
That means that a Fighter could, for its level 12 feat, decide to get Evasion from Rogue (lvl 7) but not its Wisdom proficiency (gotten at level 15).
Or that a Paladin could get a 3rd Attack when he gets level 16 by grabbing Fighter's lvl 11 Improved Extra Attack.

That design choice is made to ensure that the classes that got "poached from" don't feel tip-toed on. Five levels is an awful long time to get by at higher levels, and it also rewards players for staying single-classes while opening a whole lot of new builds.

3. "Magic Abilities".
Create specific feats to...
a) Learn and use Channel Divinities (repeatable feat), but no more than 1/short rest (same rules as explained in PHB: so only Cleric would get several uses per short rest).
b) Learn and use one Metamagic among the non-scaling ones (non-repeatable feat except if you had it as a class feature already = buff to Sorcerer to keep it ahead, he learns and use it normally) once per short rest.
c) Get any 2nd level Wizard school feature, with requirement being caster level 8 (same as above, no tip-toe).
c) Get a use of the most basic version of Wild Shape feature, once per long rest, 1 hour duration.
d) Learn a spell of whatever list you want, but of spell level which is at most "level of the highest spell you know -2".

Improve the Magic Initiate feat by making it once/short rest instead, and spell "fully learned" if you are a spellcaster already (to keep it relevant compared to the new "fullcaster" feat chain). Allow it to be taken several times.

4. stats/ASI/feats
Use point-buy with 31 points amount and 16 pre-racial allowed. Add a free feat at character level 10 for all classes.
This should be largely enough for 90% characters concepts to be realized without struggling for stats as often.

>>> Basically you work on the feat systems to make many simple concepts more painful to build with multiclass, without any risk of voiding another class's substance or ruining balance. :)

[X3r4ph]

I like it. It's a fairly simple rule to use for snatching stuff you like from another class.
And as a long time sorcerer player this sounds very appealing.
I have always had a soft spot for fighters. But I shy away from them because they are too simple for me. This could really help with that.
Very cool house rule.

[JellyPooga]

Modular D&D exists already...it's called GURPS or Savage Worlds or whatever modular game system you care to play. If you want to play D&D, play D&D. If you want something less restrictive from a character creation point of view, play a system designed for it.

I wouldn't touch this homebrew with a standard issue 10ft pole. Too much room for abuse, likely too little play testing for just such bugs and at the end of the day, it's trying to crowbar a system that has been designed with specific style and mechanics of play into a design paradigm that is almost the polar opposite.

[X3r4ph]

I have played a fair bit of gurps. The mechanics didn't have the simple flair of 5e DND.
Savage Worlds do seem interesting. I have also looked at that Mutants and whatever. Both could be worthy variants for a more organic system.

But I can't help thinking that there must be some math behind Crawford's design that could be reverse engineered into a more generic system. Not necessarily classless, but just less punishing to players that let the story decide their character progression.

This dokument is most definitely broken. But the idea is fun.