What Classes Does Your Game Need?
One aspect of Heliosail that has experienced the most change throughout development is the use of a class system. In early development I tried to avoid the use of any class system at all, because I felt that it limited the kinds of characters a player could make. A frustrating experience with other systems I’ve played is that sometimes I want to adapt a character I already have and love, but find that class systems shoehorn them into something that doesn’t quite suit them.
Rather than having classes, I set out in my system by having characters defined only by their chosen skills. Eventually I reached a point where I thought that it might be nice for new players to have templates that they could edit, if the skill list was a little overwhelming. I called these templates “archetypes,” and these eventually became… a class system.
Game design is like that; you restrict yourself from something because of a flaw you see in it, and eventually end up adopting the very thing you were avoiding, when you find other ways to address your needs or concerns. This post is meant to help other designers figure out where to start with their own class systems, and how to design unique classes that suit their game.
Defining “Class”
For our purposes, a class is a subset of abilities in a game grouped together on a theme, and designed to fit a specific experience or style of play. If the game is cooperative it also defines the role in the party dynamic for that particular character.
The 13 classes from Dungeons and Dragons exemplify the first definition well. These classes are so influential in gaming, that variations of them are pervasive in any fantasy game, and to a lesser extent in other genres. The “holy trinity” of damage, tank, and support, given to us by video games, especially of the MMO genre, exemplifies the second definition of a class. We will examine both.
The Shadow of D&D
When designing a TTRPG it can be difficult to escape the conventions that Dungeons and Dragons has set, but that doesn’t mean you need to copy their classes in order to have a full set for your own game. I feel that analyzing how the 13 classes are “balanced” will be helpful to determining what niches the classes in your system need to fill. If you don’t like D&D, you can follow along this process with any other system you like.
First, we must determine what the essential elements of gameplay are. You need at least one class which specializes in each essential element. After studying the classes in D&D, I’ve chosen to brake them down into these four elements: Combat, Utility, Magic, and Rogue Bullshit. If you’re following along with a different system, don’t worry too much about this, the point is meant to foster understanding, not create an object model of every possible truth.
Combatants - Characters who focus on the fighting aspects of the game and carry their party during encounters.
Utility - these characters support their friends by healing, providing buffs or debuffs in combat, or enabling their friends to use their own awesome abilities. They set everyone around them up for success, and are extremely teamwork oriented.
Mage - D&D is a fantasy game, and magic is a fundamental part of the world. Magic can be used for any other niche, but since it is a basic “element“ of the world, I’ve set it as its own category.
Rogue - Rogues might be logically utility characters, but I’ve singled them out to be their own category because I feel that they hit on a fundamental aspect of gameplay. Utility characters support their friends, but a rogue can operate alone. In addition, the rogue has changed many times over the different versions of D&D. It hits on something so fundamental to the game that in some versions its very existence is considered to be overpowered.
Niches for creating classes come from two places: different flavors of a single gameplay element, or the overlap of these elements.
The 4 base categories are covered by: Fighter (Barbarian also fills this base niche but with a different flavor), Bard, Wizard, and Rogue. Where they intersect, we have our gameplay niches. The more areas of gameplay intersect, the more powerful the class’s potential is, and it will need balancing to keep it from being overpowered. Intersections of all the major elements would create an OP class which could do everything well. It’s important to note also that the assignment of these categories is a little subjective. Some classes can potentially do a little bit of everything, but we are only looking at where these classes excel.
Looking at the chart, you can see a number of places where there are no classes listed. You may disagree with me about how I have chosen to assign these classes, but regardless of where you assign the classes, you will be left with some gaps. These gaps are niches for potential new classes. WoTC has chosen to fill some of these with sub-classes, such as the Arcane Trickster which I would place in the overlap between Mage and Rogue, but the point stands- this is a way to visualize gameplay niches.
The Holy Trinity
If you've ever played an MMO, you're familiar with this way of dividing up team roles, even if you’ve never heard it called by this name. The Holy Trinity of a combat MMO is DPS (damage per second), Tank, and Healer. It's ubiquitous in online gaming because it is a highly effective strategy. It's so dominant, in fact, that tabletop groups often arrange their parties this way too, at least for combat.
Here is what the D&D classes look like when mapped onto the holy trinity.
Determining Your Game's Core Components
Both sets of roles are fundamentally the same- they are the essential elements of gameplay from which different playstyles are built. In an MMO, the holy trinity is really all you need, since combat is the primary element of the game. In a TTRPG, gameplay spans a much broader set of scenarios. Dungeons and Dragons is still combat heavy, and so the fundamental elements are still combat related, but the same approach works for non-combat games as well.
If you're building a private detective, crime solving investigation game with no combat at all, you would just pick a different set of elements. Perhaps your game has different types of scenarios, like researching, sneaking around to obtain evidence, and interviewing suspects. These could become your core models.
For Heliosail, one of my strongest class concepts from the earliest days of inception was the Courtier- a socialite whose power comes from their network of influential acquaintances. At the time I was trying to de-emphasize combat, and so the categories I've been using as examples so far didn't really map very well to the image I had for my game. In addition, while I would consider a charismatic "face man" vital to nearly every adventure game, it is not its own category for the D&D analysis, instead wrapped up with Utility or Rogue.
I started by just making a list of the strong concepts I already had, and what I thought would be fun to play in the game. I came up with something a little like this:
Face man
Drone controller
Hacker
Space magic
Healer
At first glance, I strongly felt that I was missing the Healing utility. I didn't know yet what my space magic was going to look like, only what I didn’t want it to look like, and I didn't know if healing was going to be something that worked with it. I also felt a little bored by the concept of a squishy magic casting healer. I opted for healing to be a skill that any character could take, but as a skill only it felt a little lackluster. I ended up adding a healer to the list a little begrudgingly.
This list eventually became my first 4 archetypes: Courtier, Engineer, Astromancer, and Bioscientist. (I ended up setting the concept of a hacking archetype aside for later.)
Since the Courtier was my strongest concept, it was also the first archetype I really tried to build, including determining what skills would best suit the Courtier. Skills in my game were already sorted by ruling Attribute: body, mind, or social, and the Courtier's skills were almost entirely Social in nature.
Rather than trying to use an outside model (like trying to emulate the class niches of dnd) to make sure I had a "balance" of archetypes, I decided to use my game's core attributes to create a model and reveal possible niches. Here is what it looks like.
Bb- Pure Body. This class would rely only on Body skills and would probably be tough and “tanky” in a fight.
Mb/Bm - These classes would be a combination of Body and Mind skills, but with different skills dominant depending on the precise niche they were filling.
Sb/Bs - These classes would combine Body and Social skills.
Ss - Pure social. This is the Courtier.
Ms/Sm - These would be the combination of Mind and Social skills.
Mm - A Mind-only class.
Putting it all together
This is the general process I use when building new archetypes for Heliosail.
Core Concept
The concept of the archetype is something I need first. This is the general vibe and playstyle. I find a good way to develop a solid core concept is with a "wouldn’t it be cool if" statement. There's no rules here, don't worry about whether it fits your game or not. For Cardsharp for example, my statement would be "wouldn't it be cool to play a gambler who gambles with the mechanics of the game on a meta level?" Ok, so it's not very punchy, but that doesn't matter. It's a cool idea, and cool ideas are worth their weight in gold.
Skill roundup
I picture a basic character, the kind of character I would play if I was playing with that core concept. Then I go through all the skills listed in Heliosail and make a list of every skill that I think a character like that might use. In the early days before I had built up the skill list, I just used my imagination for this step. (In fact, that's a big part of how I built up Heliosail's skills.) Again, there are no rules here. No skill limits, nothing but raw ideas.
Count 'em up.
Hopefully I have a lot of skills in my list. If I have only a small number, it's sign to me that my core concept might need a little more thought. Now is the time to introduce some rules and restrictions into the process, in order to pare down this list. I try to focus on the skills that every character of that archetype should have, eliminating anything that I think could be a variation of the archetype, or up to individual characters. Any skills that are still a good fit, but not so essential as to make the final list, I put in a separate list off to the side, and I try to reduce the skill list to 4 to 6 skills.
I count up how many skills of each type (body, mind, or social) I have, and determine what the dominant attributes are. An archetype that fills the same niche as one I already have is not off the table, but if I can alter its niche to fit something I don't have yet, that's better. For example, Astromancer was originally a Mind dominant, Body prominent archetype, filling the same niche as Engineer. However, by trading some skills around, I was able to turn it into a Body dominant archetype instead, giving it its own niche.
Reassess
At this stage, it's time to bring it all in line with the game at large. I look over everything I have and consider 2 questions:
Does the core concept align with the themes and vibes of the game?
Does the skill list still fit that core concept?
There is often some refinement work to be done in this area, which I consider a positive thing. Making sure the core concept fits well with the themes of your game might mean changing it a little, which in turn might mean changing up the skills, but each pass is a step closer to a fun and well rounded class.
The defining ability
Each archetype in Heliosail is centered around a unique mechanic, a defining ability that changes how a player approaches the game. This must be a strong concept that cannot be replaced by a combination of other abilities. Broadly speaking, I've discovered that these fall into 3 categories:
Companions. These give the player an extra resource to control. The premier example would be the engineer and their drone.
Situational Bonuses. These don't sound exciting, but they heavily reinforce roleplaying, and they can be extremely powerful. The Courtier's reputation is a situational bonus.
Magic. These are effects that cause an immediate change in the world. The Astromancer is the obvious example, but actually the Bioscientist's core ability is considered magic as well.
This is where that core concept comes in again. Whatever this central ability is, it should be the thing that makes that concept work, makes it fun and something that people want to play.
Supporting abilities
At this stage, the archetype is mostly complete. All that's necessary now is to fill out the rest of the page with enough supporting abilities to give the archetype a similar amount of content as the others. Although this stage seems the simplest, it actually takes the longest.
Hopefully this has given you some insight into how to determine what classes you "need" in your game. I also really encourage you to read a lot of different TTRPG systems and see what their classes look like, if they use them at all. The bottom line is, you don't need to make sure every niche that DnD covers is covered in your system, and same for the MMO holy trinity. Copying the niches someone else is using might give you a starting point, but the key to getting really good, unique classes that fit your game is to figure out what your game actually needs.
