by Galloglaich » Sat Jun 29, 2013 7:23 pm
That was basically the approach I took when I ran my Baltic campaign, I used a lot of multi-classing to try to get some characters which were at least in the ballpark of something historical (since all of the historical examples of characters that I was looking at seemed to have a wide variety of different types of skills and abilities), but I ran into several problems. One was that I was combining the basic adventurer PC classes (Fighter, Cleric, Rogue etc.) with the NPC classes, and found both lacking. Fighters get almost no skills (they don't even get 'spot' or 'search' or 'bluff'), clerics, sorcerers and wizards have too much magic for the kind of campaign I run (low magic and / or historical) rangers are based on a larper idea of two-weapon fighting and so on. But it was the NPC classes which had the most problems, I was using aristocrat, expert, warrior and commoner, but those classes are all too weak and lacking in many respects. This is especially compounded by the way you level-up in DnD.
There are also some balance issues with unlimited multi-classing, because you really get a 'bump' at first level with a lot of those classes. So, especially if you de-emphasize magic a little, and are using the Codex combat system instead of the standard DnD vis a vis number of attacks per round etc., a 2nd level Fighter / 2nd level Rogue / 2nd level Ranger / 1st level barbarian seemed to come out as a tougher hombre than say, a 7th level Fighter or a 4th level Fighter / 3rd level Rogue. So the incentive for PC's was to just keep getting another 1st level in a new class every time they leveled up (this is what the players did in the last campaign I ran)
And there was no way to really incorporate the "civilian" NPC classes (aristocrat, expert, commoner), even if they were improved a bit, unless you are making pre-made characters, because a PC is going to want to max out his options and the NPC classes just don't have that much to offer.
I had done the lifepath thing as a computer game years ago, and always had the intention of converting it into paper and pencil, but it's so much work to finish on the schedule that I want to have a character generation book and a magic book so I can kind of close the loop on the Codex as a complete game. I do want to revisit lifepath, partly because it will make codex more accessible to those non DnD people who can't seem to get past the idea of a class as such. But I'm going to have to get back to that later, the current book will have the lifepath rules only for the burgher artisan class.
So I decided to take a two-tiered, class-based system. There are "PC Classes", and there are "NPC Classes", but both types are viable for PC's. (Maybe I should change the names actually). PC classes are more specialized, and provide something like skill packages which people have been asking me to do for the codex for something like 5 years. They get a lot of Feats and special abilities, but you are on a more specific path in terms of what you learn (WF Lance at 3rd level and etc.). The NPC classes are a little bit weaker, but they are more flexible (and possibly cost less in experience points, though more on that in a second). Rather than specific Feats they get bonus feats for example as you described. Each NPC Class is associated with one or two PC classes, and the two can be combined. So Burgher goes with Artisan and Patrician, Mercenary goes with Knight and Soldier, etc. The NPC class acts as the basic template and there will be room to grow by adding new specialized classes later on down the road (such as for different campaign settings, Viking, Samurai whatever)
Finally, the classes are also kind of divided between pure specialist classes, like the Knight (a heavy cavalryman), and more civilian classes like the peasant or the artisan, who can earn some kind of income and have ties to a support system such as a guild or a clan.
A couple of questions I am still pondering:
Should the number of experience points needed to level be a universal number, like in 3.5 DnD, or should it vary based on the class, like in AD&D? I kind of like the latter version, where you can get a couple of levels in a less specialized class a bit cheaper.
I kind of want to mimic the E6 approach somewhat, in that I am not really interested in the PC as Superhero concept, and don't really know how to make good game mechanics for that sort of thing (since Codex relies so heavily, probably more heavily than is even readily apparent, on historical sources for all of it's balance and so forth). So I want experience point cost for leveling to be relatively easy up to level 6, then get much harder, and levels to max out at level 10.
How should I handle henchmen? Historically, they were extremely common and necessary. They were a staple in the original DnD. But you don't see them so much in more modern games and can be kind of hard to handle as a DM. I found them helpful in the Codex Baltic campaign we ran, partly because due to the deadliness of the Codex combat system, it was helpful to have some 'red shirts' and the PC's took over some of the NPC characters when they got themselves killed.
I'm still not certain how to balance class vs wealth vs status. A knight for example can be an aristocrat or he can be an outlaw or he can be a serf in the service of a Lord. A courtier may be the very powerful servant of a king or a duke but untitled, and facing poverty if his patron falls from grace.... whereas an aristocrat might have an important title and a lot of land, but so little money as to be embarrassing. Both were common situations historically.
I was thinking of borrowing an element from my lifepath system where you randomly determine the class and Estate of your parents, and that would give you your own class and estate, and I'm putting wealth to some extent into the characters (where some characters earn a living automatically). Wealth and status confer major advantages, so balance is a tricky thing. You could balance it by making richer aristocrats weaker in terms of combat, which is often the case historically... but by no means always. There were also quite a few very wealthy, high - status aristocrats who were strait up gangsters. Bad mother f'kers.
So is it fairer to make this a random die roll? Or will people just fudge those die rolls like they used to do so often on character stats where everyone has 18 strength and 17 charisma... and you end up with campaigns where everyone is an archbishop or a Duke.
G