Crazy Idea - Classless Armargeddon

[Pariah]

What if the world existed as we knew it but classes didn't.

Everyone starts out as a nobody, and you have every skill at novice.

Then you just live your life and if you become a crafter you become a crafter, If you become a warrior who one day gets sick of being a murderhobo in the byn and wants to retire and build wagons in his spare time, go for it.

There have been a few classless muds out there and they always had a downside of no lore or history to the game really.

However, I think Armageddon would be awesome in that regard.

It would eliminate the class sniffing because literally anyone could do anything with enough practice.  Could keep the timers in place of course to stop people from twinking too hard, but that would be awesome to be a person and learn abilities like a person would, through practice and roleplay.

You could befriend that ashlayer and learn how to cast invoke death on your foes if he taught you.

I know it would be a bitch to balance, but let's be honest there isn't a whole lot of balance in the game right now.

Whatchu guys think?

(I know this is just pissing in the wind and will never happen, but it is okay to dream right?)

[mansa]

These always sound great, but they just wouldn't work.

What would happen is 75% of the people would pick the set of skills that lend them the optimal advantage in any given situation.  The backstabbing, disarming, fireballing, sneaking/hiding, poisoning uber character would become the template of choice.

People then retort "Well, there's be certain skills people could choose from large pools which would make them make some choices so they couldn't have everything."  Yes, and those are called guilds or classes.

Armageddon's guild system is about as classless as it gets while retaining some built in "checks and balances" against people creating "super guilds".  You aren't forced to "train" certain skills and the ones your character works upon are the ones that are improved upon.  If you REALLY feel like your character needs a skill that the guild doesn't normally provide, you can always submit your request to the Imm Staff and see if they'll allow it.

If it's not something that will completely unbalance the class, I don't see why they wouldn't make a concession.  (i.e. substituting a weapon skill for another weapon skill, changing a craft skill with another, etc...)  The kinds of requests that likely wouldn't be approved would be ones that asked to give a warrior backstab, or an elementalist a weapon skill, etc...

Besides, skills shouldn't be the driving force of your play.  They should provide for you a sturdy backdrop upon which you drape your character.  They lend credence to the actions you take and provide a tangible reward system for time spent practicing ICly to improve yourself.  The subclasses were built in as a way to help people meet the exact need that you express.  To have a few more "skills" that aren't normally associated with the class to help round them out a bit.

I don't see how a classless system would improve anything.

-LoD

[FlamingFox]

I am actually really glad this was posted and Mansa replied because I did not know we could actually request a certain skill if it would make sense for the character to have it. I've just been living under the assumption that what you have is what you have.

[racurtne]

I think most of the time these are spec apps and not during play.

[Agent_137]

I say we need less time investment and not more since this is permadeath.

Going from the old guilds to the new classes was great because it boosted starting skills. Being classless and starting from scratch just sounds like everyone would get nowhere fast and die to scrab and scorps or have to grind that much longer in the Byn. No thanks.

[Yelinak]

It could work just fine, but it would require some pretty major changes to character generation. I doubt it's something the coders would consider taking on, but with the right checks and balances, it'd work just as well as it has on other RPIs. Picture this:

1) Skills are divided into three categories: major, common and lesser (or some other words that fit).

2) You have a total maximum of skill points based on wisdom. Each point learned in major skills take up three points from this total, medium take two, and lesser one.

3) Apart from the ones picked at the start, new skills can be learned in the course of play, through unskilled use or through teaching, but also count towards your total skill allowance. Skills can also be flagged as "dumped" and will diminish by a small amount each day, though if used to the point where you would have gained a point in that skill, there's no shrinkage for a day.

Major skills:
Backstab
Sap
Archery/crossbows/blowguns
Steal
Pick
Poisoning
Sense direction

Medium skills:
All weapon skills
Most crafting skills
Throw
Skinning
Hide
Sneak
Bash
Disarm
Kick
Riposte
Hack
Climb
Hunt
Scan
Listen

Lesser skills:
The crappier crafting skills (basketweaving, clayworking, etc.)
Ride
Sleight of hand
Forage
Armor repair
Whatever else I forgot

So if you want to be really effective in combat, your character might resemble a fighter with not much besides combat skills. If you want to be a crafting god, you can't get much in the way of combat goodies. A mixed character can pick and choose to some extent, but they'll have to be frugal with their combat stuff. And it would make wisdom more relevant to everyone.

[Halaster]

It could work just fine, but it would require some pretty major changes to character generation. I doubt it's something the coders would consider taking on

Pretty much this.  It's fun to theorize and think about, but there's a zero chance of it happening with ArmageddonMUD.  It'd be neat to build a new MUD with this in mind from the beginning, so you could base all the other systems with it in mind.

[creeper386]

The idea of starting the game with no skills would not be that interesting. Then you are pretty much just starting as a child and seeing where things go from there.


Now would I like more skills open up to the whole, with practice you could learn it? Sure. But I think that'd end up needing either a cap on how much you can learn per day(so someone can't just practice all the skills every day), and perhaps a total limit to how much a character can learn, perhaps through skill degradation.

All of it seems like it'd just be an OOC excel nightmare keeping track of everything.


Maybe some option of everything getting to pick a crafting skill or two through practice and being able to do that would be interesting.