Greetings, RPGSite! I've been lurking the forums for a while now and have since I got intrigued by OSR and their old-timey roots. With some experience under my belt in Tabletop RPGs that has been 90% as a Forever DM and extensive homebrewer for 5th edition D&D, I have the idea of one day forging a tabletop system that has classes, but the classes themselves not being the end-all-be-all of a character's progression.
While the discussion may get heated and crass sometimes, my overall impression is one of relative openness and good-natured interaction, with many individuals being of a creative bent and having published their own works. As such, I would love to hear thoughts on what I currently got.
What is Path of Heroes
Path of Heroes is intended to be a Skill-based dice-pool fantasy system inspired by some mechanical aspects of Shadowrun (dice pool with successes as well as attacking and defending being contests) and relative lightness and malleability of D&D 5e.
Conflicts are dubbed Tests and a character's dicepool must roll enough 5's or 6's (6's count as 2 successes) to pass. The system in of itself has a more heroic bent, and it makes use of a Momentum system dubbed a Potentia Pool. Whenever the character rolls a 6, they can stockpile the added success and use them at later tests to automatically add a success- The pool has a maximum of 3 that can be stockpiled. Using it on successful Tests adds Degrees of Success that cannot be gained in any other way.
It uses 4 Attributes (Might, Agility, Spirit, Knowledge), and each attribute governs a set number of skills, forming a dicepool of attribute and skill. Attributes have ranks from 1 to 10, Skills from 1 to 5, making a maximum dicepool of 15 at its highest. Each Attribute has one Magical skill, and the Magic system is going to be involved in all four attributes in some way, and as such. mages and casters will also be focused much like their 'mundane' counterparts rather than having all the power and flexibiltiy to boot.
The main aspect of the system is the Sliding Class system. A 5 x 5 Grid with 5 classes on either side and 5 total diagonally connecting opposite ends (an image will be provided down below). The cornerstone classes are your traditional 4: Warrior, Rogue, Priest, Mage, and between them are the hybrid classes that are a mix of both to degrees of 1/3 and 1/2 respectively. A prospective character gains levels and chooses to assign them to one of the four classes each time, thus sliding towards one of the corners with the caveat that their movement along the grid is limited by their position on it. For example: a Spellblade (class between Mage and Warrior) is limited to picking either Warrior or Mage as they are linked to them.
Classes have a starting package of one ability with a basic upgrade, proficiencies (weapons, armour, etc.), starting gear (Equipment, weapons, etc.), and Aseets (monetary abstraction). Additionally, a class has a trinket - a starting reusable item that is inspired by the League of Legends inventory system (The character also has 6 slots of 'active' items they occupy), and these trinkets range from the Warrior's Healing Flask, Rogue's Scrying Orb and so on.
Their abilities are extraordinary in nature, not limiting even the supposedly mundane classes like Rogue and Warrior to acts of fancy with the intent to provide a wide breadth of options for many character concepts.
A class also determines the character's base health and mana they have, multiplied by their respective attributes. Warriors have less Mana than Mages but more health, for example.
Mana also acts as fatigue (ala Arcanum), and being reduced to 0 knocks the character out. Armour acts as a buffer for damage rather than a constant Damage Reduction or a threshold the damage must go over. Instead, it is a separate health pool.
The magic system will be diverse with a Sphere-like system from D&D.
If this system intrigues folks to want to know more, I'll gladly add more, as I don't want to bog down you guys too much right off the bat.
Hope to hear from you guys soon, and thank you for giving the opportunity to post!