Classes - some thoughts.

[hunter]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by aramis:
Even under that rationale (which I felt wass obvious from the classes), I still feel too few and too broad. There should at least be Crewman and GP (Ground pounder, aka GroPo), instead of Mercenary. The Traveller class I feel should be split between crewman and Socialite... But that's just an opinion. Your classes however, are still too few for a core by comparison to the two other d20 engine games.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Crewman = Professional, Traveller, or even Rogue

Ground Pounder = Rogue, or even Traveller, but most likely a Mercenary. It's what they do. Also note, infantry does not = ground pounder per say. Lots of cooks and quartermasters are assigned to infantry companies.

As for the Traveller class being split between crewman and socialite, that's what Social Standing is for.

On more core classes, exactly how many were you expecting? Looking at D&D, you have Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, Wizard, and Sorcercer. There are Paladin, Ranger, Bard, and Monk, but honestly those should be Prestige Classes (IMO), and were included as core classes because they carried them over from AD&D.

For Star Wars, unless you are a Jedi there is the Fringer, Rogue, Noble, Soldier, and Scoundrel.

We have to fit all of this, plus worlds, ships, and material on the Imperium in a 256 page book. There is only so much that can be included at first. Supplements can always be done to expand the selections.

Hunter

 

[Kuranov]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by hunter:
Yeah Mercenary is not a good term for that class but warrior and soldier are not quite right either.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Call the class 'Armsman' or 'Combat Specialist'.

I hope you make the classes a great deal more broad than the classes in Starwars. Those classes were supposed to be few and broad. Few they are, broad they are not.

I had to create a class design system to make D20 starwars work, I hope that wont be necessary in T20.

 

[tjoneslo]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kuranov:
Call the class 'Armsman' or 'Combat Specialist'.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I like the term "Armsman" as a better name than Mercenary.

 

[hunter]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Kuranov:
I hope you make the classes a great deal more broad than the classes in Starwars. Those classes were supposed to be few and broad. Few they are, broad they are not.
<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Are you referring to the Star Wars classes or the current T20 classes?

The T20 classes are meant to be broad within the scope of what they are. There are many different types of people that could be termed an Academic and we hope that the Academic allows for players to create those various types. The same follows for the other T20 classes

Hunter

 

[Antares Administration]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tjoneslo:
I like the term "Armsman" as a better name than Mercenary. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What we're really talking about here, in the most general terms, is a personality type that confronts rather than investigating (academic) or exploiting (rogue/scoundrel/whatever).

What Hunter is describing are some really fundamental personality archtypes.

For the sake of this discussion, let's call a Mercenary a "Combatant". A Combatant is someone who prefers to confronts an issue/problem/challenge. Combatants can be soldiers, combat pilots, athletes, Aslan males (genetically predisposed).

Combatants develop skills that help them win. Soldiers develops arms skills, camoflague, and technical skills that help them survive and fight in the field. Combat pilots develop a keen sense of environment, and lightning-fast hand/eye coordination.

A quartermaster can fire a gun and sleep in a foxhole, but is a technician, not a combatant. Likewise, a merchant pilot can fly a starship, but doesn't have "the right stuff".

I could argue that a good criminal lawyer is a combatant.... Maybe Mercenary is a better term!

AA

 

[Kuranov]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by hunter:
Are you referring to the Star Wars classes or the current T20 classes?<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Oh I were just rambling about the SW classes and expressed a hope about the T20 classes.

The little you can see about the T20 classes looks like they use a more customizeable way of defining a character (They use the same low/average/high definition of class elements that I used in my design system).

A good test is to have lots and lots of people come up with all kinds of character concepts and then see if they can be made within the classes without having them gaining all kinds of class special abilities that don't have anything to do with their concept.

The best way to avoid this is to limit starting feats for a class and to focus more on bonus feats than class special abilities when you gain levels.

It is also important to see whether you can cover the skills they need at low levels. Multiclassing is overrated as a tool in D20 because the 1st level counts as 4 levels in skills, so you need to be at least 5th level if you need a balanced multiclassing of skills, unless you can customize class skills in some way. And those 4 other levels will then create an unbalance between the non-skill elements of the classes.

One other important element of classes is whether or not they are role defining in such a way that they create a living group dynamic. The point of classes is to make people different from each other through what they can have access too and what they can do. So if you make the classes so broad that they become invisible at the end, then you have only managed to create a cumbersome character creation system that could just as well be done with a point system.

So it is a difficult balance you need to find before a class system works well.

[This message has been edited by Kuranov (edited 30 May 2001).]

 

[Neo]

a few broad classes as such won;t be a real bad thing.

I imagine the uniqueness and exact nature of a character will fit loosley into one of these broad classes, and be definied by FEAT choice, skill picks and prior service etc..

Allowing for endless possibilities

One other question springs to mind, will this 256 page wonder be Hardbound? i hope so..

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Neo

"Et semel emissum volat ireevocabile verbum".

 

[aramis]

<BLOCKQUOTE>quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by tjoneslo:
I like the term "Armsman" as a better name than Mercenary. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

I agree, Armsman really does fit.

I still think one of the base classes should be focused on the uys who'se life is the ship; What little was on site lumped the social-oriented to the ship oriented.

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-aramis
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Smith & Wesson: The Original Point and Click interface!

 

[GypsyComet]

Lotsa Bujold readers here, obviously...

As I mentioned elsewhere, broad classes are fine if you make the effort to define the actual jobs within them. I for one would like to see a large number of "Starting Packages" as are found in the D&D3 Player's Handbook. The book needs to have at least one of these, associated with one class or another, for every CT/MT/TNE career appropriate to the setting. Thus the "Armsman" class entry has starting packages for Marine, Army (and maybe Inf, Cav, and Art), Pirate Crew (if that ends up under Armsman), Aslan Warrior, and others. (I personally would prefer these were mandatory at Character 1st level for most classes, but then we'd need a LOT of them.) Each starting package would account for at least half of the starting skill points available, and in some cases set the starting Feat...

 

[GypsyComet]

...which brings up ANOTHER question. D&D3 gives Humans a bonus Feat at 1st level to make up for their lack of other goodies like darkvision, etc. Are you planning on doing the same here?

 

[Phil]

I'll plead guilty on the Bujold charge Gypsy, and I do like the term Armsman. I also agree about the inclusion of character templates/examples, however it would be possible to get by with fewer than you seem to be envisioning through the prior service tables. The template might be a marine, but you can look at the prior service tables, do a little skill and feat switching, and viola, you have a navy character. An interesting middle ground might be to include one full example and list the others as appropriate changes, like the PH does with the different race entries for each class.

 

[GypsyComet]

I consider the typical Marine and the typical Navy rating to be extremely different in skillsets. If you can get to both from one class, then the classes are WAY too broad. I could reasonably expect Merchants, Scouts and Navy (and maybe Pirate) to share a class, as I would expect Army and Marine to share (though see below).

Yes, I think one military class is one too few. Traveller PCs are versatile because they are PCs, not because their prior profession taught them everything (or even could have).

The problem, of course, is how you divide them. The CT careers really gradiate from one skill set to another. Army types are ground forces, Marines are ground/orbit/vacuum, but are still at the same scale of combat (visual range) as the Army. Pirates fit into the next spot, being mostly space-going close-in types, but with more ship-to-ship than Marines are expected to have, and less ground combat. The Navy goes one further and abandons the ground completely; they'll fight OVER the ground, but not ON it (that's someone else's job); at the same time the Navy are the masters of ship-to-ship combat well beyond visual ranges.
Being para-military at best, the Merchants and Scouts are probably best left to other classes...

Where does the above progression get us in terms of classes? Hard to say, really. Dividing along theater lines (Ground vs. Space) leaves the Marines and Pirates multiclassing to fill out their professional needs, while lumping them all into one class means breaking the D20 skill point conventions (by providing a huge class skill list but shorting on skill points to force specialization), or doing the subclass thing as found in the D&D Psionics Handbook.
The subclass idea is probably the best way to handle it, though you want to remove the multi-classing limitation that Psions have (they can never mix subclasses). Instead you want to provide two or more skill subsets within "Armsman", call them "Ground" and "Space" with "COACC" and "Wet Navy" as a likely third and fourth. Most armed forces will be limited to one skill-set, or have the ability to spent one point in four in another skill-set. Marines must split between Space and Ground (or for lower tech, Wet and Ground) fairly evenly, while Pirates have the option to go 50-50.

Of course, this could all go into a cocked hat if the weapon and armor proficiencies are done a particular way...

 

[Spinward Scout]

I find the 5 classes to look very good to me. But they reflect what the character is AFTER the prior services - just like in CT. Actually, those classes seem to me to reflect what the character will do for/outlook about MONEY and POWER. An Academic - research and knowledge is more important than money. A Professional -just an average Joe Spacer who goes home to his wifeling and 2.5 larvae. A Traveller - the go-getter of the Traveller universe - the type to start his own business. A Rogue - the one who would backstab to get what he wants. And the Mercenary - the one who would destroy a planet for his objective. Good Traveller adventuring archetypes.