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[In Exile]

That's the obvious takeaway from playing a PnP classless system. But a lot of CRPG players probably think of TES games, where the PC really can get good at everything. Morrowind outright rewarded you for training in skills you were never intending to use, for instance. Nothing much to do with classless, though; it's just a specific case of the general design intent.

 

That's an interesting observation, because the TES reference is exactly what makes me think of a classless system. The other issue is that you can easily trivialize the game with gamebreaking combinations. So you run into issues on the difficulty curve side. 

[Sylvius the Mad]

I played it for a bit but quickly got bored of the generic world and the combat. There was hardly any interaction with people and I think it was focused more on the combat system than story. The idea of dynamic fights with large creatures was interesting, but past that there didn't seem to be much to it.

Pure gamist design.

For people who play these games for the combat gameplay, that's a good design.

[Sylvius the Mad]

That's an interesting observation, because the TES reference is exactly what makes me think of a classless system. The other issue is that you can easily trivialize the game with gamebreaking combinations. So you run into issues on the difficulty curve side.

That's a ruleset problem. Such a thing really shouldn't be possible.

I don't recall anyone ever doing that playing GURPS.

[Sylvius the Mad]

That's the obvious takeaway from playing a PnP classless system. But a lot of CRPG players probably think of TES games, where the PC really can get good at everything. Morrowind outright rewarded you for training in skills you were never intending to use, for instance. Nothing much to do with classless, though; it's just a specific case of the general design intent.

Morrowind (and worse, Oblivion) handled that terribly. Oblivion's system was so breakable I did it by accident with my very first character.

I never played Fallout and Fallout 2. Did they suffer the same problem?

[straykat]

Morrowind (and worse, Oblivion) handled that terribly. Oblivion's system was so breakable I did it by accident with my very first character.

I never played Fallout and Fallout 2. Did they suffer the same problem?

 

The whole nature of Fallout is better, roleplaying wise, just because it makes sense for a character to know a little of anything. Pretty much the case with any sci-fi or modern setting. It's just dictated by SPECIAL/raw stats (Intel, perception, strength, etc).

[AlanC9]

I've only seen synergies become a problem in a game with a heavy combat focus in character builds, which FO1 and 2 really aren't.

I think you also need a fair amount of "points" to play with. Champions can fall apart fast if the GM isn't paying attention, and from what little I've seen GURPS Supers is worse (the rulebook actually confesses that the psionics rules are completely unbalanced), but I don't think the low-power settings of those rulesets have the problem. (Never played enough GURPS Magic to see someone really try to break the system.)

Sylvius, you really ought to try FO1, at least. FO2 is OK, but it has some serious world-building issues which you might not enjoy looking past.

[Sylvius the Mad]

I've only seen synergies become a problem in a game with a heavy combat focus in character builds, which FO1 and 2 really aren't.

I think you also need a fair amount of "points" to play with. Champions can fall apart fast if the GM isn't paying attention, and from what little I've seen GURPS Supers is worse (the rulebook actually confesses that the psionics rules are completely unbalanced), but I don't think the low-power settings of those rulesets have the problem. (Never played enough GURPS Magic to see someone really try to break the system.)

Sylvius, you really ought to try FO1, at least. FO2 is OK, but it has some serious world-building issues which you might not enjoy looking past.

In older editions of GURPS, each successive point in something cost more than the last, so trying to be a generalist as severely punished.

 

Most rulesets have weird holes you can exploit - trying playing Paranoia with a mage who doesn't fear paradoxes - but my experience with GURPS was that it worked pretty well.

[Seraphim24]

Fallout was most certainly breakable, intellect, agility, and perception were vastly superior to the other stats, for instance. Intellect and agility in particular.

 

Many games are "break able" that doesn't really definie their difficultly, per se, in fact, it can be a reward for adequately planning and thinking. As Sylvius said, if you find yourself suddenly doing it by accident, that's when it's not so good.

 

I "broke" Morrowind by carefully building a thief character that became extremely good at sneaking and stealing, and then proceeded to steal lots of glass armor and other powerful items,  used the "Creeper" merchant trick to make tons of extra cash, and then trained a bunch of other skills extremely high rather than build them up naturally.

 

Before completing a single main quest, I had pretty much all the most powerful items in the game and was fighting Vivec for fun.

 

That changes the difficultly, but it's a fair use of the game rules, and it's not really a super obvious route to go either.

 

In some ways, the absence of "breakability" is what makes the game rote, tedious, and game wise simple and then "easy" because it just sort of levels everyone who plays the game, like Minecraft coerces you pretty heavily into just patiently mining, experimenting, etc.

 

And Dragon Age certainly has "breaking" tendencies due to the power of magic, Crushing Prison is more powerful than any spell in any TES game I've played, the game is pretty much over once you get that thing.

 

But likewise, that does not immediately mean anything in particular, so what? It's not necessarily super obvious that it is powerful, the first time Morrigan had all these points in shapeshifting so it was that direction, it doesn't really mean anything on it's own one way or another.

 

Oh, and that can be for a given side quest in different ways, i.e., the, oh I paid attention in the dialogue now I don't have to fight the hard to fight golemn enemy etc.

[Seraphim24]

I wish you could talk to random NPCs as just part of the ambiance and to flesh out the world rather than having every one of them be a quest giver or reciever.

 

Guild Wars 2 has quite a bit of that for whatever reason....

[BansheeOwnage]

Class provides more immersion, some personal traits of the character linked to abilities they use.

I disagree, I actually think it's less immersive, because it's very obviously "game-y" and pretty arbitrary. And if you want personalities developed from abilities, you can't beat a classless system.

 

I like classless games, but there's too much narrative emphasis on magic in this setting for it to be available to all. It needs to be have it's own roleplaying path. Otherwise, I like crafting a character's story/personality through sheer skill. You lose a lot of this with a class.

You're right about the magic, which is why I mentioned the idea of "Mage" and "Mundane" as the 2 classes in DA.