A) You play a humanoid with classes you choose to advance in that determine your overall powers and abilities. Multiclassing very okay and expected.
B) You play one of a number of races, including monsters like Vampires, Minotaurs, Orcs, etc. The race determines your powers and abilities. No classes.
C) Some combination of the two.
Context: I am making a text game and want to see what people prefer.
>>47135646
>C)
I'd like to have basic stats, skills, a number of racial powers, and then whenever a character levels up, they get access to a power within the class they pick.
The more I think about it, the more that sounds like 4E, though.
>B) You play one of a number of races, including monsters like Vampires, Minotaurs, Orcs, etc. The race determines your powers and abilities. No classes.
>Vampire player levels up! She obtains Flight and Mind Control!
>Minotaur player levels up! She obtains Know the Path!
>Orc player levels up! She obtains Smell Bad.
>Vampire player levels up! She obtains Immortality and Create Servant!
>Minotaur player levels up! She obtains Goring Charge!
>Orc player levels up! She obtains Smell Worse.
>>47135646
>C) Some combination of the two.
>>47135646
>The race determines your powers and abilities. No classes.
Regardless of what you choose to call them, these are still classes.
>C)
Because why reinvent the wheel?
>>47135749
The problem with having monsters just layered on top of normal human class systems is that monsters tend to just be... straight-up better at whatever they're specialized in. Minotaurs will always be a better brutish fighter, vampires will always be a better rogue, or assassin, or wizard, or whatever their powers are focused into. Etc.
That's why I proposed a classless race-system like that. Ultimately I just like the idea of being able to play a vampire or revenant or celestial, but it doesn't lend itself well to typical class systems.
>>47135726
Yeah, that's kind of what I figured most people would say. I just wonder what would even be the point of letting people play humans in that case. Like... who, other than LARPing faggots, would play a human fighter when they could be a vampire fighter?
>>47135773
That's fine, I almost said "these races are classes". I played a few MUDs back in the 90's that did this.
>>47135815
>The problem with having monsters just layered on top of normal human class systems is that monsters tend to just be... straight-up better at whatever they're specialized in.
Not necessarily. Have you heard of monster classes? Like in the Savage Progressions web articles for 3.5. The monsters have a base form that is not more powerful (or at least not much more powerful) than the "normal" races, and gain their monster special abilities gradually like a normal class. So you could have a Minotaur and a human fighter in the same party, but the minotaur starts of as a smallish juvenile minotaur and progresses to grow proper horns, larger size, etc. in tandem with the human fighter's increase in skill.
Basically, your system is a solution in search of a problem, caused by your lack of imagination and lack of familiarity with how existing systems dealt with the problem. Your score: C-, see your games teacher after class.
>>47135815
Maybe, you know, you could balance the races against one another?
Or you could make vampires a 'class', so that a vampire would have to develop their powers.
See >>47135913
Or make vampire a condition rather than a class or race, with positives and negatives associated with it, and that you have to go out of your way to obtain and sustain it.
>>47135913
That's a solution that basically turns other races into humans with a different appearance.
>okay, vampires are too powerful, how do we fix this?
>I know, they're fledglings that are little different from humans, but will grow into a real vampire over time!
Just another way of saying the same thing, really.
>>47135976
And the alternative isn't special snowflakery where every PC stacks all the templates you can eat?
You may be right, but it seems to ring of false equivalence as well.
>>47135943
>or you could make vampires a class
Yeah, that's basically what I wanted to do, and what I meant by B. Another way of looking at B is that there are no races, and all the races are now classes. But I made this poll to see what people think. My first instinct was that people would find it very boring to pick a race at character creation that limits them to a linear progression in that race, with no alternative. And whenever I get the instinct that what I want to do might be a dumb idea, I kind of give that instinct the benefit of the doubt.
>>47135646
>C)
Having more powerful races as classes makes a lot of sense to me. If a Vampire gets flight, shapeshifting, super-strength, and a whole bunch of other benefits, having him slowly gain those abilities in the same way another class does works perfectly.
>>47135646
A or C
>>47135646
C
Race dictates 2 things.
First is simple, class selection. Most races will have at least 1 class for all roles, but the variety on a particular role might be different. A Minotaur might have 3 different tank classes, that specialize at different tasks.
Second is stats, but this is a bit harder to explain. Unless your system is balanced around extremely varied stat ratios, as in 10:4:8:15, you can't differentiate races by only stats and a few racial abilities. They shouldn't just be "vague humanoid template with abilities", their biology should make them play completely differently from the get go. A naga race that smells more than sees, handles elevation poorly unless pouncing, and juggles around a poison/poison resist module based around what they've eaten recently.
OR
Race only dictates starting point. Except it very, very heavily modifies that starting point.
From there, strict boundaries exist between classes, but none for class PROGRESSION. You don't choose a class so much as a class chooses you based on how you've grown and what your style is.
