At the heart of the player experience in RPGs is the Player Character. One can argue that the rules surrounding PCs can make or break a system, with those rules being what ties the player into the game at the table. I wouldn’t argue that notion is wrong, though it might not be the whole of the measure. The ins and outs of PCs, however, do a lot of work in a game system.

Help Define the Setting

What character classes are available for play provide a look at the setting, the game world. The archetypes and expressions of those archetypes provide information on what goes on in the setting, and what is important to how the world operates. OD&D’s three possible archetypes –fighting man, cleric, and magic user– tell us that the world has lots of fighting, religious orders that also fight, and a community of wizards who actively seek out new information and materials. These archetypes are lightly defined, leaving it to individual tables as to whether fighting men can be knights or mercenaries, light foot soldiers, heavily armored troopers, and so forth. This allows for the GM to provide guidance to players to get PCs that fit the GM’s world.

So, while the system rules don’t offer much in the way of defining the setting, the GM can certainly do so by informing the players what sorts of fighters can be played and tying them into the world. The GM establishes the flavor of the world by offering horse archers, light footmen, heavy infantry houseguards, lancers, and so forth.

Tools For Play

The character classes provide players with tools to use in play. Each ability possessed by a PC is a tool the player can use in overcoming challenges. This isn’t to say that the PC abilities should be providing simple solutions to challenges –proverbial EASY buttons– but provide the type of abilities to bring to bear that such a character would. The abilities shouldn’t provide immediate answers to challenges, just tools that can be used with ingenuity in addressing those challenges.

As mentioned above, a class provides abilities available to the PC/player to use to overcome challenges in play. A class definition limits what abilities the PC is best at to those that serve their role in the setting, and thus in the game. Fighters are good at fighting to some degree, better than those PCs who aren’t fighters. The magicians wield magic, which the other classes don’t. There are sub-classes with abilities to sneak around more effective than other people, while Paladins are more effective at battling and destroying undead than everybody else. A key element is that characters are better at what their classes do than characters who belong to other classes. I look to make each class both qualitatively better and quantitatively better at their specialties than those who aren’t of the same class. That also indicates that characters of other classes can certainly do at least some of the same things –sneak around, fight undead, hunt critters– though not with the same competence as the specialists. 

Consider a snoop, for example. A snoop is quite competent at breaking & entering and sneaking around in dark places to find items without being detected. So, when it comes to climbing a rope or wall, a snoop is less likely to fall –a quantitative difference– and able to also move more quickly than others –a qualitative difference. Players are able to have their PCs attempt actions outside their specialties; it’s expected as a normal part of play.

In My Projects

In my projects, I’m using character class constructs in exactly these fashions. The range of character sub-classes offer insight as to how the world operates. There is no generic fighter, for example; there are multiple sub-classes that fill roles in the societies in which they arise. There are experienced soldiers notable for their capabilities, the Stalwart. There are Troopers, the mounted cavalry. Barbarians come from less-“civilized” lands and are adept with both melee and missile weapons. Rangers are specialized hunters of monsters. Paladins hunt undead and lay them to rest.

These last two sub-classes highlight that monsters are a common issue in the setting that has to be dealt with, to the point where specialized roles have been created and there are people who step into those roles to protect the lands of the human (and human-like) peoples.

Even among those sub-classes there can be further differentiation via character kits. A mobile light infrantry skirmisher is different than a soldier of the line is different than a member of a noble’s houseguard. Different weapons, armors, approaches to combat, and different organizations they operate in can provide a myriad of ways the character is tied into the setting.

There are also Scouts of more than one type. Delvers, often derided as tomb robbers. Snoops for hire by the wealthy to spy on rivals. Hunters who know their local landscapes well and trade in furs and carcasses. Guides who know the routes connecting the settlements and lead caravans and expeditions.

There are then magicians of varied sort. Witches, who draw on primal powers and work within the weave of the natural world. Wizards, who take a more scholarly, abstracted approach to working. And Enchanters, who create illusions and draw out horrors from others’ minds.

Each of the three projects underway offer up these three classes and at least most of the sub-classes. Two of them also offer an assortment of Raconteurs, with priests, friars, bards, and other performers available to provide characters better-suited to social interactions.

I’ve already posted a draft of a Witch class (https://osrpgtalk.net/first-look-at-a-witch-class/) and have sketches of other classes underway.