Core D&D part 2

The core loop of dnd, in my eyes, is one of struggle that brings advancement, or at least change. You go into the dungeon, you connive your way into treasure, and then you turn that treasure into experience, levels, ability, equipment, and possibly even property. If hp is the resource you spend when you fail (or, more abstractly, when you have any situation where failure or conflict is an option), then experience is the resource that you gain in success. The simplest expansion of that loop is tying differentiation between characters to gains in experience (if you wanted, you could probably go further and have advancement happen at loss of hit points as well; we can even go whole hog and gain experience equal to loss of hitpoints), where every level one would be allowed to make themselves tougher, faster, stronger, or more skillful, which seems to take the place of the classic class system as we know it.

Still, there are other things that the classes bring with them, so we should suss out if those features are important enough to warrant the added complexity.

Clerics

Easily the most schizophrenic of the classes, I've always had a hard time getting past a lot of the baggage clerics bring to the table. I've never liked the distinctly christian nature of them, and turning undead didn't make sense to me until someone told me that it had something to Van Helsing being able to turn Dracula. They're a thematic and mechanical jumble, but that doesn't mean they cant be fixed or they shouldn't be there; of course, our question isn't whether they should be present, but rather if there is a way to handle their features in a different way.

Firstly, the religious bent can easily be taken over by wizards, if only in the sense that the cleric spells could easily just be regular spells. Their ability to wear heavy armor was really a problem disguised as a class feature, as it left thieves and fighters alike as second-class citizens, so that can be thrown out. They usually have pretty strong saves, but saves could easily be generalized to ability checks, so thats not an issue.

When all is said and done, the cleric doesn't really seem to have a leg to stand on, so we cut them out and be done with it.

Thieves

Wizards make sense, sort of: the idea that only a certain kind of person is able to use magic is a common one to point of tired trope. Thieves (or specialists, as LotFP calls them) never really passed that test, as most things a thief does are things that normal people have the capacity to do, be that move quietly, fiddle with contraptions, look for traps, etc. All of the skills that thieves/rogues have gotten, to me eye, can be handled as ability checks, especially if those ability checks handle saves as well. Outside of thief skills, the thief is just a lesser fighter, so lets get rid of them as well.

Wizards

The wizard is where the rubber really hits the road, since this is the place where we have to decide how to handle magic, spells, and spell like abilities. Really, its a taste thing; i find the idea that people cant choose to be wizards a bit daft when viewing dnd as a game, though i will admit that born-wizards can be and have been handled in incredibly interesting ways. Moving past that, most of the discrete wizard rules focus on how many spells they are able to cast per day, how spells they can memorize, and where and how they can research new spells (depending on your edition, they even have the capacity of making or finding scrolls). None of these need be attached to wizards per se, since most of them are just procedures of handling magic itself. With those removed, as well as thieves and clerics gone, that leaves wizards with nothing special related to their magical natures, so they are gone too.

Fighters

Not much to say here as fighters have always been the simplest class to play; all of their 'complexity' had been in their superior saves, bonuses, and equipment. With no special features, and no other classes left, it seems to be that the class system is out the window.


With no classes, there doesnt need to be such an emphasis on to-hit, saves, and armor class as those were really just hybrids of HP and class features, we can probably replace all 3 with ability checks with bonuses that have something to do with the ability modifier or level; I guess I'll talk about that in the next post.