My DM wants to try to cook up a homebrew system for us to use in our game once the current campaign wraps up. I'll admit I'm not particularly keen on the idea; I've wanted to get away from the moar bigger numbers style of Pathfinder for a while now, but I just wanted to sub it out for Earthdawn, not put in all the time and effort of hammering out a whole new ruleset. Which I understand is a conversation I need to have with her and not something you lot can help me with, but in the meantime studying up on some games what handle the genre differently and mining them for ideas hopefully will help a bit, whether in finding a system we like better that we can just tweak to suit our needs or making the homebrew process easier by removing some of the mental heavy lifting.

I know most high fantasy RPGs (or what seems like most) are generally built around D&D's class-and-level paradigm, often for no better reason than Because Tradition. Earthdawn gets away from this to an extent by using sort of a weird class-and-skill hybrid, which I feel works remarkably well for what it is but still carries the baggage of AD&D. Are there any conventional high fantasy games or setting-agnostic systems what take a more or less purely skill-based approach?

The Omni/Omega system found in Talislanta, Atlanta and Hellas is similar to d20 but is effectively a skill based fantasy RPG.

The settings aren't D&D-like. Instead, they are exotic fantasy, sword & sorcery and space opera respectively. But Atlantis in particular can be easily broadened for fantasy generally.

The granddaddy of them all is Runequest and its children (Magic World, OpenQuest, Legend and other d100/BRP games), which are almost entirely skill-based--professions in such games are used simply to determine starting skill access at most.

GURPS. No classes, but templates. Very much a skill-based system, great for fantasy, and has a skill-based magic system. I love it, but it's very not D&D. Weapons can kill and maim characters, and you won't be able to just resurrect your friends each turn, as I hear happens in D&D v5. Tactical combat system, if you want to use it. It is a toolkit system, so you can either embrace it or just mine it for ideas.

Or it's much simpler ancient ancestor TFT (The Fantasy Trip), and its current clone system from Dark City Games, which is approximately the same game. They are classless, very simple to learn (though quite different from D&D) but very interesting to play (if you like tactical games with fairly high risk of death). They each have different but similar systems for skills.

Or Runequest, which came out about the same time as TFT.

Or Ars Magica, which isn't classless but is very interesting.

Burning Wheel is skill-based and classless. Characters are built out of 'life paths', which are real world-ish careers (e.g. City Born, Apprentice, City Guard, Soldier) which give you access to skills.

Rolemaster is class & level and skill based.

GURPS, Burning Wheel and Runemaster (and Runemaster-derived games like Stormbringer/Elric!/Magic World) are way purer examples though.

I'd recommend GURPS.

Quote from: The Ent;828694Rolemaster is class & level and skill based.

Never understood why Rolemaster didn't ditch classes. When RMC II came out with that monster class/skill cost matrix, it seemed like an obvious simplification.

+1 on Runequest, it doesn't have levels and the classes are just skill groups really.

There's lots of versions, depending on your tastes in complexity.
Early Runequest like BRP in today's incarnation.

For more complexity and realism, Legend or RQ6.

but they're all essentially Runequest.

Quote from: fuseboy;828695Never understood why Rolemaster didn't ditch classes. When RMC II came out with that monster class/skill cost matrix, it seemed like an obvious simplification.

The whole skill cost thing hung around classes and spell lists as well.
It'd take big changes to remove classes from RM.

Suggestion Withdrawn.

Quote from: danskmacabre;828698+1 on Runequest, it doesn't have levels and the classes are just skill groups really.

There's lots of versions, depending on your testes in complexity.

Well, I mean, I don't know that mine are particularly complex. There was that surgery when I was a teenager to fix a torsion issue, but other than that...

Thanks for the suggestions, folks, and keep 'em coming if you think of any more. It would seem I've a lot of homework to do.

Quote from: fuseboy;828695Never understood why Rolemaster didn't ditch classes. When RMC II came out with that monster class/skill cost matrix, it seemed like an obvious simplification.

It's a bit Odd, yeah. OTOH, it's one of the 1st gen not-D&D fantasy RPGs and got started as add-ons to D&D basically, and was built around a D&D-like framework, wich could explain that.

OTOH I like the RM classes, Even if some (...semi-spellcasters...) are less good than others, etc.

Another recommendation for Runequest in one of its forms (BRP, RQ6, Legend, OpenQuest, RQII, RQIII, et cetera) or variations (Stormbringer, Magic World, et cetera).

Quote from: woodsmoke;828701Well, I mean, I don't know that mine are particularly complex. There was that surgery when I was a teenager to fix a torsion issue, but other than that...

Thanks for the suggestions, folks, and keep 'em coming if you think of any more. It would seem I've a lot of homework to do.

Lol, at the unfortunate Typo!  

Quote from: The Ent;828702OTOH I like the RM classes, Even if some (...semi-spellcasters...) are less good than others, etc.

I agree, many of the semi-spell casters in various editions were really OP/Broken and many got banned when I ran RM many years ago.