Warning: this is a 3,000+ word analysis of my previous 1,000 word design pitch. 

As part of my creative endeavors, there are a few processes that I have found helpful over the years. Three of them are… 

• Write out your ideas to the point that it is in a testable state. Don’t try to build the perfect system or a full system, just get something down. You do not need to fully flesh out every permutation of a subsystem, but you do need to have a few options for each for testing and clarifying ideas. Once this is done, publish a draft or preserve in a state as a reference. 
• Give yourself some time before you return to the previous draft. Then iterate with a focus on challenging assumptions, unifying systems, and really drilling down to where the fun or interesting idea is. It is really easy to build a complex system that is unfun to play and get bogged down in the rules. It is hard to build a simple system that is intrinsically fun to play. 
• Make sure you understand what your characters/classes are not. I think this is a detail lots of designers miss. If this is a group centric game, creating internal group dependence is powerful. 

So in doing that with this design from my last post, we have to pull out a bit and ask the question: do I need classes? What would a classless version of this look like? 

So let’s review the things in the original design:

• Crafting 
• Might 
• Weapons 
• Cunning 
• Magic – Divine/Druidic 
• Magic – Dark Sorcery 

In the original design Barbarians and Elf were the middle 2 classes in the spectrum and they got 3 options. This gave each of them a nice internal triangulation to work with so they had an interesting choice to make every time to gain an upgrade. The Dwarf and Sorcerer were the end pieces, which only got 2 options but they each got one of the most powerful options in the game. Both the Dark Sorcery and the Crafting have a ton of smaller options within them, thus giving tons of customization and flavor. Those two end pieces are also more powerful than the other options. The game designers sleight of hand here was that 2 of the 4 classes have heavy design asymmetry which means that they can’t be easily compared. 

To further the class distinction I gave half, Barbarian and Dwarf, some specific bonuses with weapons/armor. This helped split the Barbarian from the Elf, which otherwise were too similar, and gave the Dwarf a bit more combat options since currently they have the least. This does make the Barbarian a bit of a stronger choice than the other 3 options… but I am actually ok with that. This is a sword and sorcery setting, I was wanting a disproportionate number of barbarians in my world. I was thinking about making an optional 1d6 to choose your character with 1-3 all being different kinds of barbarians. I think the design itself may produce similar results. 

So with the explanation of why the previous system is what it is, can I make a classless system? Let’s not answer the question of should I make one just yet, just can I make one. 

So basic idea: There are 6 things, gain any 2. Maybe later you can gain a 3rd. Simple enough. Does this create a good system across characters and within characters: no, I think there will be notable imbalances. Specifically: 

• The internal choices of melee vs. magic at the character level 
• Crafting maybe too powerful given the extra downtime without a penalty 

So there is clearly both a feel and power difference between melee and magic. On the table melee is far more reliable but magic is more powerful. Or at least sorcery magic is more powerful, the divine/druidic magic is a smaller set of spells that serves to give other classes support. Supporting other classes gives you the power impact of… those other classes, thus support is generally self balancing with martial options. This is why the Elf has standard health and melee options while the Sorcerer is designed as a glass cannon. That is a balance correction. They are more powerful but also riskier to play. So what happens when we are about to mix sorcery with the other classes? Well when leveling sorcery is always better in a one on one choice against a melee option. 

This is an internally design imbalance. I want sorcery to be game changing in challenging situations like it is in early D&D. The problem in early D&D is players quickly become reliant on magic like the sleep spell which turns every combat into feeling similar. There is a similar feel in games like Everquest where classes like the Enchanter can charm enemies to fight for them. Note that in Everquest any given enemy is always notably more powerful than any given player character. Heroes can never go mono e mono and win thus they have to rely on groups. The Enchanter’s charm ability to control something more powerful then they are is thus very powerful… but sooner or later the enemy will resist it and turn to attack the party at a random time. Thus charm is both overpowered in the offense it brings to a group but also overly risky in consequences when the offense turns against you. That is the kind of magic we want here. 

So to use make a mathematical example here: if a barbarian does 2 damage, a sorcerer needs to do 6 damage to feel the impact. Note, this is not 6 raw damage necessarily but something that has the impact of 6 damage. But to balance the game we need to get that back down to 2, thus the DC mechanic on the spell so they only work two-thirds the time. This lowers the result to an average of 4 and it forces the players to not rely on specific spells all the time, thus fixing early D&D’s Sleep issues or 5e D&D’s Fireball issue. This forces sorcerers to develop multiple answers instead of focusing on ways to overleverage a single answer again and again. The sorcerer also needs some other penalty of -2 in some way so they are weaker or more limited than a Barbarian. This makes the Barbarian a 2 & 0 while the Sorcerer is a 4 & -2. 

Now many of you may point out “you don’t need the extra penalty, just make spells only work one-third of the time.” While that is mathematically correct… it feels awful in play. A low chance event in a system where they can be repeated on a success actually introduces more randomness than fewer high chance events in the same system. The average result is the same, but the low chance approach creates a much larger distribution. We are seeking a Goldilocks zone of sorts here which is really tricky to determine. We want magic to be unreliable enough that players always make a plan B but not so unreliable that Sorcerers are worthless 75% of the time and Gods the other 25% of the time. 

Currently I have that -2 as just weaker weapon options, lower health, and a lack of other roll choices. I think that works fine for Sorcerers and fits into the classical “glass cannon” of magic users that we have seen in past games. It works fine, but I am open to other kinds of -2. I have strived to keep this game simple, so I am unsure what the other penalty options would be here. But if we opened up to the classless system I would be happy to say “if you gain sorcery, you also have to take this penalty set of your choice”. I just have no clue what those other penalty sets would be at the moment. 

So looping back to the topic of a classless system, for me the issues above create an interesting question: if Sorcerers need this kind of penalty, do any of the other options need it? 

Cunning, Might, and Weapon all have pros and cons already. Divine/Druidic Magic is balanced with those as discussed before. Crafting is a bit trickier. 

Crafting actually has lots of powerful long term effects and short term boosts built into it. This also allowed for me to lean into the Dwarf vs. Elf dichotomy with each have opposite martial skills and completely different party support mechanisms. Both classes are medium power martial classes with support elements but since neither class shares a single element of either, they feel very different to each other.  

Since I limited the Dwarves combat potential a bit in original design I was happy to give them the free crafting downtime. This design asymmetry let me dodge the question of balancing crafting vs. other melee investments. Basically, if crafting comes with a free downtime then take crafting becomes an automatic pick for the free resources that happens outside of your downtime investment. Thus not really a choice, you do this or you are just wrong. 

Currently in the crafting system there are tons of options. Some have temporary effects, like increasing regeneration out of combat or a small batch of potions to use in combat. Others have significant campaign effects, like setting up a castle or training mounts/pets. Since downtimes serve as our leveling mechanic here it is debatable if those one-off bonuses are worth the investment. I am not sure if I am comfortable with short term power at the cost of a character being weaker in the long term. I think that is less of an issue in this system than most others since the power curve is flatter, but it does feel like a character build trap and I never want to design for that. I don’t want a player to get pressured into being a permanent brewer of health potions every downtime and thus never improve their baseline abilities. Having a full-time alchemist would be powerful for the campaign, but weak for the player in the long term.

So I think the answer for crafting is similar to the answer for Sorcerer, we need that X & -2 format if you get a free crafting option each downtime. That -2 has to be a big enough penalty that people don’t want the free powerful crafting bonus abilities. 

So restating the classless design with updates: There are 6 things, gain any 2. Later you can gain a 3rd. 

• Crafting with the extra crafting downtime but also with a notable penalty 
• Might 
• Weapons 
• Cunning 
• Magic – Divine/Druidic 
• Magic – Dark Sorcery but also with a notable penalty 

I like where this is going in terms of balance and more character options, but I have a lot of work to do on penalties options. 

So now we come back to the question of can vs. should. Let’s assume I come up with good penalty options for Crafting and a few alternatives for Sorcery too. Is this version of the game better than the original 4 class design? 

Pros of classless 

• More flexibility in character creation, more ways to make your character you own 
• That “gain a 3rd” moment has a nice feel to it. I like the idea of really forcing players to focus their downtimes on just two ideas early on and develop a strong character specialization and feel and then the character has a maturing/versatility moment at a later level.
• Allows later game players to invest in areas that are needed after the world has become more settled. 

Cons of classless

• Way less specific class identity. This may muddy the waters a bit but I don’t think it does so too much. This is something to watch for. 
• The advantage of the HeroQuest 4 classes design is people already have a strong feeling for those specific class ideas. Even if you don’t know this specific game at all, people near instantly understand the ideas behind those characters. Losing classes means losing that instant clarity for new players. 

The interesting thing about the classless design is that I don’t think it contradicts the 4 class HeroQuest design. I think you can just add in a 5th class, let’s call it the Vagabond. A character who picked up an odd mix of things as they traveled. I would expect the Vagabond to have lots of crossover with other classes, maybe even identical characters but that is an outcome that is already possible. 

So what would the Vagabond add or remove from the game? 

• A magic and martial hybrid different from the default Elf. Sorcerer penalties limit how good these will be. 
• Crafting and different martial builds. Need a more fleshed out set of penalties applied to crafters to understand any drawbacks here. 
• The Enchanter style character: a sorcerer or healer who is as focused on crafting. 
• That maturing moment later in the game 
• The other 4 classes have great clarity for new players. The Vagabond is messy. 

I think this will be a net gain for the system. Getting the crafting penalties figured out will be tricky because the campaign needs crafters more than the dwarves need to craft. The design choices around the dwarf is a really powerful sleight of hand that I can no longer use, so I now have to either create a balanced integration for it or find a good set of penalties to apply to crafters. 

So I want to talk about one more thing here: the Bard Problem. Having a character that is a jack of all trades and master of none is a very tricky piece of design. In 3rd edition D&D Bards were the worst class. In 5th edition D&D Bards are the best class. First place or last place, they are never in the middle. 

Why am I talking about Bards? Because I think the obvious unanswered question here is: if everything costs a downtime, why limit it at all? Why not let anyone invest in anything at any time. And the answer is because I don’t think that level of balance is possible. I don’t think you can make every choice balanced with every other choice. Very slight imbalances in those kinds of systems lead to an automatic pick option which leads to everyone making the same character or at least very similar players. To take that even one step further, even if you could perfectly balance everything, I think doing so is a bad idea. What I want is different people at my table playing slightly different versions of the same game tailored to the way they like to play. 

Types of players and how this game meets their styles: 

• Helpful to the party: Support magic both provides more complex tactical options as well as feels different at the table than stabbing an enemy with a sword. The game itself is better with them but the individual player may or may not be. That is ok, because some players just like to be helpful and this gives them a clear path to that. Some crafting does this as well but in a more circuitous way. 
• Overpower: Might and Weapons provide players the abilities needed to overpower their enemies. Paired with the push your luck action economy for a more fluid set of choices on each and every turn, this gives player’s their power fantasy options. 
• Out Smart: Cunning and called shots are for players who want to think around situations instead of bulldozing through them. They want to out smart the DM. They want to leverage their game knowledge against specific enemies. Here is a clear set of tools to do so. Some long term crafting options also fit this choice as they are ways to prepare for specific enemies or situations. 
• Seeking the Big Moment: Sorcery is built entirely around this. The overpower melee  also allows for this kind of game play by saving up for the big moment instead of using resources bit by bit. The encounter has to pivot around this big action. These are super satisfying for a lot of players. 
• World Changing: These are for the player who is less interested in any given dungeon or any given villain and more interested in the world as a whole or just the advancement of their group members. There are parts of crafting that lean into this heavily. Things like taming mounts, building keeps, and enchanted items help change the long term status of the game and the characters in it. The devoted smithy slowly and steadily making every Barbarian a full set of armor, one piece at a time. I have not written all the spells yet, but I expect some Sorcery or Divine magic options for long term effects may emerge. Think a network of teleportation circles or sanctifying a temple. 

The problem with the “everything available” Bard option is the style ideas above are not shared by everyone, or to be more precise, different parts are favored by different amounts by different people. To make each idea work and feel good at the table, some may need to have a bit more kick than the others. That is ok if groups are a team of specialists, because there is a need for a bit of everything. Slight differences in the power of styles does not hold up in a more free form system because if some options are just a bit more powerful those options now mathematically become the “best” pick, thus an automatic pick, and thus a mandatory “choice”. 

So the balancing challenge now becomes selecting between two different choices: 

1. trying to balance each option within each style to be fun against similar options 
2. trying to balance each option within each style to be absolutely equal to every other option in every other style

Given those two choices, I lean to option 1 which does not work with the everything system. I would much rather have more fun options within a style than a perfectly balanced system across styles. If this was a computer game, I would have more faith that an option 2 balance could work. That is because you can reasonably do things like fractional damage, track lots of complex bonuses, or make minor game play changes like a 4 1⁄2% increase to swing speed. That kind of granularity and complexity works in the video game space, but it does not on a table top. You can also track the play of 1,000 players down to the smallest detail as part of your alpha test. Video games also have sound effects, VFX, and other animation tricks to make an ability or spell feel impactful in a way that a table top just does not have. 

The Bard problem leads me back to one of the points I made at the start: make sure you understand what your characters/classes are not. By determining what they can’t do first, you remove the automatic pick option because different skill mixes will have different pros and cons. Designing from a negative space instead of a positive space is a bit trickier but worth the effort as it can produce some interesting ideas and is a great way to ensure a diversity of options is being pursued. It can’t produce a Bard but it can produce a Vagabond. 

So thanks for sitting through my 3,000+ word analysis of my previous 1,000 word design pitch. Yes, it does often take this level of analysis to answer simple questions like “should I add a 5th class that is a hybrid?” For some designers that is a “why not” question but for me I want to make sure it actually has something worth adding to the system.