4e Classless

[Elves]

has anyone considered doing classless 4e where everyone just chooses their powers and class abilities from everything available?

[Sneak Dog]

No. 4e has classes with roles. Mixing them gets min-maxy quite quick. Have you looked at the multi-classing rules though?

[LibraryOgre]

I've played with the idea, but it would be a big project, and I'm not ready for that just yet.

If I did it, I think I would start by having a character determine Role and Power Source, which would provide some basic abilities, and a slate of powers and class features to choose from.

It becomes a bit less "classless" and more "create a class"

[Waddacku]

You could take a look at the UA level-by-level multi-classing variant.

[Vhaidara]

The problem is that some classes have a huge difference between the power of their features and the power of, well, their powers.

Assassin, for example, has one of the strongest striker features in the game if used well in the form of shrouds. But it's balanced out by the fact that Assassin has about 3 good striker powers on their entire list, with most of the powers being MUCH better suited to playing a defender or controller role (a lot of invisibility and insubstantial tricks)

Wizard, meanwhile, has basically no class features worth talking about, but is still an insanely powerful controller because of how good wizard powers are.

It kind of runs into the problem that Hybrid Talent faces sometimes where you have one cost (a feat) for some very disparate effects (anything from +Con to one defense for one attack to making a free save at the start of every turn). And sometimes the way class features are organized just doesn't work for this. Sorcerers, for example, only get 1 class feature. That one feature contains like 5 sub features, but it is only one feature.

[erikun]

I've thought about this, actually.

I don't think that having "general" powers for everybody are the way to go, though. I was thinking more along the lines of having some role-specific powers, some power source-specific powers, along with some class-specific powers (and probably race-specific ones) and then allowing the players to choose which powers they want. Perhaps you'd want a cleric just for their improved healing ability, and just take more general leader-powers for their choices... or perhaps you really want the cleric-themed powers, maybe with a few of the race to make their choice in deity stand out. Ideally - really just an ideal, since I don't know if this would even work - the powers could be balanced so that there were only heroic/paragon/epic powers, taken at the appropriate tier, and that they wouldn't need to worry as much on powers for each individual level.

Needless to say, that would be a fairly massive undertaking. It would involve looking over basically every power in every book, deciding which group it would be a good fit in, making some adjustments so that it's appropriate for the range of levels, and then making some adjustments so that all the options work fairly well together. An absolutely huge amount of work. Simply grabbing any Lv.1 powers from any source is quickly going to cause problems, as there are some class powers (i.e. Fighter powers) which are high damage already and not designed to be used with other class abilities (i.e. Rogue sneak attack).


A somewhat related idea - and probably far easier to deal with - is to just allow multiclass characters free access to the powers on the other side of the multiclassing. It still has the above issue, especially unrestricted, but would open up a lot more options for a player who wanted more interesting options for their power selection.

[Elves]

My reasoning here is that 4e's standardized ability framework, while a detriment to creating individualized, unique classes with distinct gameplay, makes it much easier to run a classless game than it is in 3e or 5e, where abilities are so diverse that you can't realistically create a system of balanced tradeoffs between them (GURPS frankly has this problem too).

By contrast, while not all 4e powers are created equal, they're equivalent and easily comparable packets.

What goes out the window is 4e's carefully cultivated balance between classes. But my thesis is that while 4e's system was created in the name of class balance, it turns out to be more interesting as a framework for eliminating classes entirely.

This is even true of its paragon path and epic destiny system, which provides character definition without relying on a class the way that 3e's prestige classes and 5e's subclasses do. PPs and EDs can easily be overlain on a classless framework.

[Tvtyrant]

Isn't this just Mutants and Masterminds with a reskin on top?

At one point I was working on a build-a-bear system where everyone had a job and a role. The job was effectively the area of expertise that gets dolled out in fantasy. So Woodsman gains tracking abilities, skills related to the woods, and woodslore like healing. Cityslicker is essentially a Rogue or Bard's skills and abilities sans the combat. Scholar, Noble, and ascetic round out the jobs.

The role was literally Striker, Defender, etc. and gave a line of powers and a central mechanic like marking.

So a woodsman striker is a ranger, a woodsman controller is a druid, etc. But the more I worked on it the more I realized I was just trying to make a classless system inside a classed system, and it would be simpler to play M&M.

[Elves]

So a woodsman striker is a ranger, a woodsman controller is a druid, etc. But the more I worked on it the more I realized I was just trying to make a classless system inside a classed system, and it would be simpler to play M&M.
For 4e classless, there are three ways you could do it. Don't segregate the powers at all, segregate them by power source, or segregate them by role. Segregating them by role is a bad idea because it reduces each character to sifting through a lot of very similar options for the best ones, with a stronger meta and weaker regard for fluff -- plus, class features are sufficient to make characters lean toward a particular role.

Limiting it by power source, on the other hand, is definitely something you could do. The downside is it takes away some of the modularity that's the whole point of doing this (my character has an avenger's oath and in combat he mixes magic missiles with dual-weapon attacks). But maybe the modicum of coherence provided by a power source limitation would be more beneficial, while a power source hybrid option would still allow some of that modularity.