Ah here. Page 8, M&M: "Other Character Types: There is no reason that players cannot be allowed to play as virtually anything, provided they begin relatively weak and work up to the top, i.e., a player wishing to be a Dragon would have to begin as let us say, a "young" one and progress upwards in the usual manner, steps being predetermined by the campaign referee."

Quote from: Benoist;415726Multclassing rules and the opportunity to make your own classes in OD&D (the part talking about how you could potentially play a dragon if you'd want to at the beginning of Men & Magic) are part of the same continuum, then.

Multiclassing, I agree. Making your own class seems like a substantially different issue since you're working out something at the same level as the other classes with your DM.

Of course, on their respective levels you can make your own kits, PrCs, etc!

Quote from: Cole;415728Multiclassing, I agree. Making your own class seems like a substantially different issue since you're working out something at the same level as the other classes with your DM.

Of course, on their respective levels you can make your own kits, PrCs, etc!

:hmm: OK. I agree. I was thinking of the "customization" aspect of Stormy's post.

Quote from: Benoist;415731:hmm: OK. I agree. I was thinking of the "customization" aspect of Stormy's post.

I would agree with Cole.  While I wouldn't throw it off the spectrum, it would definitely be on one of the far ends.  The difference between modification and creation is how I would look at it.

Point taken. I think this is a good way to look at it.

Quote from: StormBringerWell, in that 'builds' are not as strongly supported by the rules like kits were, I agree. On the other hand, 'builds', 'kits', 'templates' and 'prestige classes' fall along a continuum of customization within a class based system, as you appear to note.

I'm talking about 4e "Builds" which are extremely dialed in to the game. If you take the "Artful Dodger Build" then not only do your base class features change what stats they are based on (Strength to Charisma), but there are a bunch of power selections you can make that not only tweak off the stats you presumably took with the Artful Dodger Build, but only provide their real benefit if you have the Artful Dodger Build. That sounds an awful lot like a Rogue "Kit" in that making that selection changes your abilities and presumptive attribute assignments and changes how you interact with advancement options.

The later builds are even more kit like. If you take the Knight or Slayer "Builds" for Fighter, you use a special advancement chart that doesn't interact at most levels with standard Fighter advancement. Further, Knights and Slayers simply get different abilities at most levels that are not available to other fighters or to the other build. They aren't even assigned the same "Combat Role". If that doesn't quack like a Kit, I don't know what even could.

Yes, people independently talked about "character builds" in 3rd edition. But that wasn't a game term, that was people describing how they would go about putting together various options within the system to represent certain things (whether it was to emulate a specific fictional character to be very good at some fighting style or whatever). In 4e, "Build" is a game term and they use it to mean "a package you take at first level that transforms your character into being very nearly a whole new character class, but still leaves the same character class title on your character sheet and possibly inherits some things from the class as originally written and conceived." And that, is a fucking Kit.

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415823I'm talking about 4e "Builds" which are extremely dialed in to the game. If you take the "Artful Dodger Build" then not only do your base class features change what stats they are based on (Strength to Charisma), but there are a bunch of power selections you can make that not only tweak off the stats you presumably took with the Artful Dodger Build, but only provide their real benefit if you have the Artful Dodger Build. That sounds an awful lot like a Rogue "Kit" in that making that selection changes your abilities and presumptive attribute assignments and changes how you interact with advancement options.

The later builds are even more kit like. If you take the Knight or Slayer "Builds" for Fighter, you use a special advancement chart that doesn't interact at most levels with standard Fighter advancement. Further, Knights and Slayers simply get different abilities at most levels that are not available to other fighters or to the other build. They aren't even assigned the same "Combat Role". If that doesn't quack like a Kit, I don't know what even could.

Have you ever seen a 2e kit?  Because it certainly doesn't sound like it.  99% of kits provided a single special ability or single alteration to existing class abilities, provided at level 1.  They made no changes to how the class advanced.  They didn't change which stats were good for a class.  They left the vast majority of the class that they modified unchanged.

For example: the assassin kit:
Requires a minimum str 12 dex 12 int 11 (such high stat requirements!)
Allows any weapon proficiency
Requires trailing and disguise non-weapon proficiencies
+5% to find traps, -5% to read languages (again, huge changes here)
And, here is the big new ability the assassin kit gives you ... the ability to identify poisons, with a base 10% chance at level 1 (ooh, ahh)
-4 reaction penalty with non-evil races.

And that's it, that's the complete set of changes the assassin kit makes to the thief class.

How the fuck does this sound like a 4e build?

Quote from: 837204563;415833Have you ever seen a 2e kit?  Because it certainly doesn't sound like it.

Yes. Yes I have. In fact, I have the Complete Book of Rangers open right now.

Quote99% of kits provided a single special ability or single alteration to existing class abilities, provided at level 1.  They made no changes to how the class advanced.

That is not how I remember it. And since I am in fact right now reading the Complete Book of Rangers to refresh my memory, my memory seems to be pretty good. The Seeker trades in your ability with weapons, changes how you buy proficiencies at chargen and later in life, and gives you a different and faster spell progression. The Stalker has their weapon list truncated and gets a bunch of bonus skills, and subsequently their follower progression is reduced, but they get better advancement in stealth and interrogation abilities, and at higher levels picks up improved detective abilities . The Warden has limited secondary skill choices but draws a salary that increases as his level does and garners a number of social bonuses and penalties that are likewise scaled to his level.

In short: you're wrong. Kits totally change how your class progresses, that's one of the major things they do.

QuoteThey didn't change which stats were good for a class.  They left the vast majority of the class that they modified unchanged.

The Seeker has his special class features based on Wisdom. The Stalker has his special class features based on Intelligence. The Warden has his special class features based on Charisma. You were saying?

-Frank

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415837That is not how I remember it. And since I am in fact right now reading the Complete Book of Rangers to refresh my memory, my memory seems to be pretty good. The Seeker trades in your ability with weapons, changes how you buy proficiencies at chargen and later in life, and gives you a different and faster spell progression.

That's one of the "later generation" kit books, from the sound of it. (Bard and Paladin are the books that stand out in my mind as part of this subset.)

The first generation books really didn't make you trade in anything. The kits there gave you a power for a supposedly equal (but often trivial) weakness, and gave you bonus proficiencies as icing on the cake.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415837In short: you're wrong. Kits totally change how your class progresses, that's one of the major things they do.

Except for, you know, the kit I quoted to you out of a book.  And all the others around it.  But yeah, except for all those kits, kits totally change how your class progresses, and never make minor tweaks to its abilities.  Exactly like 4e builds.  You are starting to sound like someone who started playing D&D with 3e, who only understands the earlier editions in a passing and superficial way based more on what people have told you about them than actual experience.

If anything kits are the predecessor to 3e's feats.

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;415840That's one of the "later generation" kit books, from the sound of it. (Bard and Paladin are the books that stand out in my mind as part of this subset.)

The first generation books really didn't make you trade in anything. The kits there gave you a power for a supposedly equal (but often trivial) weakness, and gave you bonus proficiencies as icing on the cake.

Yes, Complete Fighter and Complete Thief were the first two and I'd say were the most conservative - maybe just since they were first, or it could be just that fighters and thieves didn't have many actual class abilities to trade in. One special ability, one special hindrance, 1-2 bonus slots and possibly a couple of thief skill modifiers was standard. Offhand the Swashbuckler thief kit has warrior THAC0 progression, but progressions largely don't vary much.

On the far end, Ranger and particularly Bard kits were very variant from the core classes.
Bard kits usually swapped over the bard's standard 3 or so bonus non weapon proficiencies for other choices and had up to about four special benefits different to the four benefits of the 'core bard', as well as having different allowable multi-class combinations, ability requirements and even allowed races. My personal favourities here were the Blade (offensive spin, ambidexterity, defensive spin, but slowed spellcasting) and the Gypsy (free wild talent psionics).

Quote from: BSJYes, Complete Fighter and Complete Thief were the first two and I'd say were the most conservative

That is true. The Amazon Warrior was incredibly simple. You got a bonus to sucker punch low level warriors from misogynist cultures, and a corresponding penalty to get taken seriously by low level people from misogynist cultures. Also, you got vaguely Greek starting equipment, and I think that was pretty much it. The later ones went apeshit. The Priest's book? Holy shit, that opened with a rant about how the PHB Cleric was totally over powered and the specialty priest kit was a point-buy system to make your own class virtually from scratch. Every kind of progression was on the table, including bonus special abilities later in life and spell progressions.

Bottom line of course is that the guy with a bunch of numbers in his name is wrong. Quoting some of the early conservative kits to try to show that kits didn't have far reaching implications in your character's advancement shows that he either has very limited experience with 2nd edition AD&D, he has extremely hazing recollections about 2nd edition, or he's being deliberately disingenuous. There is no option 4, because the reality that kits existed that fundamentally altered class progressions is verifiable objective fact.

-Frank

Quote from: Caesar Slaad;415840The first generation books really didn't make you trade in anything. The kits there gave you a power for a supposedly equal (but often trivial) weakness, and gave you bonus proficiencies as icing on the cake.

I agree. The comparison between builds like the Slayer and the Knight and kits in 2e seem like a stretch to me. If anything, the Slayer and the Knight remind me straight of alternate classes like Ranger and Cavalier as sub-classes of the Fighter in ye olde Dragon.

Quote from: FrankTrollman;415823Yes, people independently talked about "character builds" in 3rd edition. But that wasn't a game term, that was people describing how they would go about putting together various options within the system to represent certain things (whether it was to emulate a specific fictional character to be very good at some fighting style or whatever). In 4e, "Build" is a game term and they use it to mean "a package you take at first level that transforms your character into being very nearly a whole new character class, but still leaves the same character class title on your character sheet and possibly inherits some things from the class as originally written and conceived." And that, is a fucking Kit.

-Frank

Sure, Frank, no one would dispute that 4e builds are quite tied to the rules.  But we are talking about 3.x in comparison to AD&D.  In 3.x, a 'build' was just a more or less agreed upon set of multi-classing options that opened a set of feat trees, as you mention.

Quote from: StormBringer;415894Sure, Frank, no one would dispute that 4e builds are quite tied to the rules.  But we are talking about 3.x in comparison to AD&D.  In 3.x, a 'build' was just a more or less agreed upon set of multi-classing options that opened a set of feat trees, as you mention.

Well, I was enjoying the tangent...

1st ed: lots of character classes
2nd ed: few classes, lots of kits
3rd ed: lots of character classes
4th ed: few classes (though more than 2nd), builds.

I'll qualify that when I mean 'lots of character classes' for 1e, I have to include all the wacky Dragon content which had classes like Sumotori (two different versions), Escrimador, Swordsman, Merchant, Archer, and so on.
In 1e, your mechanical options for customizing characters were quite limited so whenever a concept was found that an existing class didn't quite fit a new class got created (ito use Frank's term, classplosion!)

In 2e, they decided they didn't want that because (I'm guessing)
-the chassis for classes was much more standardized anyway (i.e. you inherit most of your features like hit dice, save and attack progressions from the class group anyway, so they wouldn't be creating classes with 2d10 at 1st level like the Knight of Solamnia, or that needed 6000 xp at get to 2nd level like the Barbarian)
-it was easier.
So they had kits. I do agree with Frank at least to an extent, that these are analogous to 'builds' - at least in function, though I like the roleplaying depth of 2E kits more). There's perhaps a parallel with 4e in that the first kits did little while later ones were more extreme - compare 4e PHB builds with the later Essentials builds, which can change actual 'role', don't have dailies, and so on.

Then in 3e, customization via feats came in so 'kits were thrown out, except they still needed to sell books so there was, again (like in 1e), an explosion of classes.

In 4e you have again fewer classes, I'm guessing just because writing out 50 new powers to make a functioning class would be really annoying to do. Therefore, builds to customize characters. The key difference to 2nd ed being that you can sometimes pick up two build feature in 4e e.g. wizard Dual Implement Mastery whereas having multiple kits is (I think) mostly illegal in 2e. I have to qualify that since each book has its own set of Kit rules, and they don't all say that specifically, so it might be possible to squeak through a multi-kit character with some effort.