Character classes are archetypes that modify attributes, abilities, and role of a game character. A class typically includes a thematic aspect, for instance a Demon Hunter class, suggests abilities for tracking and fighting demons and implies a world where demons exist and can be hunted.
Many RPGs invite you to choose a class before starting the game to determine what abilities are available to you during play.
Where Did the Character Class Idea Come From?
The answer is always Dungeons and Dragons. However classes do stretch back a little further into D&D’s wargaming roots. Light vs Heavy Infantry, an Archer vs a Pikeman, for wargames these roles are set at the start of the game and the characters in battlefield do not `switch from one class to another. The idea of class also permeates our daily lives, words like class and caste divide humans into types with different social abilities and attributes.
A tabletop RPG game is an environment that calls out for the concept of class. Players want their adventurers to have something special and different about them and D&Ds roots meant it was naturally inclined to satisfy this want.
A Persistent Trio
The first three classes in Original Dungeons and Dragons were:
- Fighting Man
- Magic-User
- Cleric
In these early days the phrase “character class” wasn’t used widely instead you’d see just the term class or perhaps character type, character class came later. Fighter Man eventually became Fighter and Magic-User, Mage or Wizard.
These three original classes were passed down through generations of game releases. Over 20 years later in 1995, Hexen, a fantasy Doom shooter, was released and gave the player the choice of three classes:
As time passes the Thief class becomes a popular replacement for the Cleric. The Cleric was always the odd-ball of the original three and a pure D&D invention.
The D&D Origin of Clerics
The Cleric is the class that’s most uniquely D&D’s invention. There are few warrior priests or cleric types wandering around the fantasy literature of the day. The class draws on a mix of influences from both Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson, the two main creative forces behind D&D. Below is one part of the origin story for D&D Clerics.
Here is how I heard the story from my friend William Crolley, one of Dave Arneson’s original players.
Ahem. I was there.
In CHAINMAIL there were wizards that functioned as artillery.
Then there was Dave Arneson’s first miniatures/roleplaying campaign. Some players were ‘good guys’ and some players were ‘bad guys’ and Dave was the referee.
One of the ‘bad guys’ wanted to play a Vampire. He was extremely smart and capable, and as he got more and more experience he got tougher and tougher.
This was the early 70s, so the model for ‘vampire’ was Christopher Lee in Hammer films. No deep folklore shit.
Well, after a time, nobody could touch Sir Fang. Yes, that was his name.
To fix the threatened end of the game they came up with a character that was, at first, a ‘vampire hunter’. Peter Cushing in the same films.
As the rough specs were drawn up, comments about the need for healing and for curing disease came up.
Ta da, the “priest” was born. Changed later to ‘cleric’.
The bit about edged weapons was from Gary’s reading the old stories about Archbishop Turpin (Odo), who wielded a mace because he didn’t want to shed blood (“who lives by the sword dies by the sword”).
Hammer Film Productions was a British movie company that made classic monster movies in the 60s and 70s, including a series of Dracula movies. Pictured below is the 1970s Hammer Horror “Taste the Blood of Dracula” where the hero is brandishing a glowing crucifix towards an off-screen vampire.
Peter Cushing played the vampire hunter Van Helsing, pictured below, in many Hammer Horror movies about vampires. In these movies, like the books, Van Helsing was a polymath doctor with a knowledge of the occult but he’s only human with no supernatural powers. Dave Arneson built on Van Helsing by adding magical abilities including “Turn Undead”. Turn Undead was the act of brandishing a holy symbol to force undead creatures to shrink back and flee.
Gary Gygax further transformed the Cleric class into something-like a Roman-Catholic warrior saint that called on god to grant miracles, chose not to use bladed weapons for religious reasons but was still more martial than the Magic Users of the game. Bishop Odo and Friar Tuck were listed as inspirations for the class by Gygax, as well as Father Shandor from Hammer Horror.
Here’s the original description of the Cleric from original D&D.
Clerics: Clerics gain some of the advantages from both of the other two classes (Fighting-Men and Magic-Users) in that they have the use of magic armor and all non-edged magic weapons (no arrows!), plus they have numbers of their own spells. In addition, they are able to use more of the magical items than are the Fighting-Men. When Clerics reach the top level (Patriarch) they may opt to build their own stronghold, and when doing so receive help from “above”. […] - Men and Magic Book, Original Dungeons and Dragons
Practically the class functions as an additional melee class that can provide healing and support and as a bonus is very effective against undead. For D&D, this class has the most world building built-in. It also make it an excellent example of what a good class should be, it’s not boring and it’s not simple.
The Magic User
The Magic User is the ranged glass-cannon class. It can dish out a lot of damage but can’t take as much as the other two. The quality of magical powers that Magic User has access is also rather different than the Cleric. Below is quote that expresses the different sources of magical power quite nicely
Cultures of the Mediterranean world appear to have made the distinction between theurgic and natural magic a long time ago and stuck with it for quite a while. Magic tended to be understood as falling into two classes: (a) magic that you did with the assistance of gods or spirits and (b) magic you did by manipulating the forces of the universe through an occult understanding of its natural laws.
The magic system used in D&D - spellbooks, memorisation, spells being used and resting to recover spells are inspired by the system from Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series of novels.
Magic-Users may arm themselves with daggers only.
Original D&D rules are quite open to interpretation but for this article it’s enough to acknowledge that classes are being used to both restrict and enable what a character can do as they play the game.
The Fighting Man
The title “Fighting Man” is more fun than fighter or warrior. For D&D this would have covered everything from knights to Conan-style barbarians.
Fighting men can use all weapons, including magic weapons and wear armor. However they cannot cast spells. They get higher starting hit points.
The Roads We’ve Taken
Hundreds of CRPGs releases since the 1970s have played with the concept class. Let’s take at some innovations.
Strict or Loose
D&D started with strict character classes. You make your choice and you’re given an ability space to grow into. There’s no flitting between classes. A loose class system is one where you might choose a starting class but you are not locked into certain abilities, any ability or spell is available to you through gameplay. Dark Souls is a recent CRPG that has a loose class system, you choose a class but it only impacts starting equipment and stats, you can find any of that starting equipment in the game and you’re free to modify your stats as you wish as you level up.
Daggerfall and many of the other Elder Scrolls game employ similar loose systems. The Elder Scrolls progression mechanic tends to follow the pattern “the more you do an action the better you get”, so if you want to increase your magic you cast spells, if you want to get better at jumping you jump more. Ultima Online also used a similar system.
Then there are shades of grey. Later versions of D&D allowed for subclasses, you take 5 levels as a Fighter, then 1 as a Wizard and so on. These still retained some of strict features - after getting to level 5 as a Fighter, taking the next level as a Wizard means you’re only a level 1 Wizard and gain access to abilities at that level. Levels in D&D are capped so you cannot access every ability and spell.
Class Progression
Games like Final Fantasy tactics allow players to gain levels in different classes and those levels can then be used to grant access to “higher level” classes. In this game the classes are called “jobs”. It’s not that unusual a system many games have class progression; seeing a player proceed through warrior classes, to knight classes, to sword master and so on. Each class grant different benefits and makes for a power curve that stretches a bit further for longer games.
Here’s the job map for the first Final Fantasy Tactics game:
As you can see it’s quite complicated and accessing each those classes has certain requirements.
Party vs the Solo Adventurer
Strict class systems work best with a party of characters. The first CRPG, pedit5, was based on D&D but was singleplayer and therefore it removed the classes entirely and allowed players to access the abilities of all the D&D classes.
In a single player game you choose your class at the start and then you don’t have a chance to see what any of the other classes were like unless you start a new game. This means there’s potentially a lot of developer effort going into making game content that few people experience. In the tabletop world it’s common knowledge that a human fighter is the most popular character class for people to play. That is why many single character games don’t have a strict class system. Single player class games work best when you’ll replay the game a lot i.e. something like a Roguelike.
In a party of character system then choosing the classes of your parties is choosing the skills and abilities the party as a group is going to have. This mix of classes can change as you find more characters and adds an additional layer of strategy when considering who to take on an adventure. A mix of classes also gives combat more tactical depth; each character had strengths and weaknesses.
Classes Aren’t Uniform
There are other things about types of classes that are interesting. A warrior class is something that that character conceivably self-earns, they fight, they get strong thus they are on the path of the warrior. Whereas other classes are more of a gift outside of the work of the character. The Cleric derives power from the their god and if they anger that god their powers might disappear. This is similar for the Warlock,introduced in later editions of D&D, they have a pact with some powerful entity and if they stick to the laws of the pact they have powers, if they break the pact those powers are stripped. Paladins are somewhere in-between they have power from their god but also a degree of self-earned martial prowess. When designing classes this distinction between powers given and powers earned is one to consider.
A similar thought is the class of a Knight. What does it mean to be a level 0 knight? Are you just some guy on the street who’s a bit strong with knightly ambitions? It might be better to have a system of titles, a little like Final Fantasy Tactics jobs, where you’re on the knight track but you don’t earn the official Knight title until you reach a certain number of levels and before that you’re a Squire or Cup Holder or something.
When To Use Classes
The highest law of the land is you should use classes if you think they’re cool.
If you’re making a party game then you’ll want a way to distinguish the party members, a class system is one possible solution. And if you’re making a D&D inspired RPG then adding classes is a no-brainer.
These are pros of adding a class system to your game:
- Encourages roleplay and buttresses playstyle. If a player likes playing a wizard, or a thief, or a warrior they’ll appreciated being given the option to choose what they enjoy.
- Classes provide structure to your game design. Player characters have a class but they can also be used by NPCs and enemies so that way they’re a useful to define encounters and balance combat.
- They can help with world-building for instance the Star Wars 1987 had “character templates” like Gambler, Failed Jedi, Retired Imperial Captain and so on. These choices are giving player a taste of the world and it’s possibilities even before play starts.
These are the cons
- They may restrict playstyle. If you’re playing a warrior you’ll never get to use any of those cool spells you find.
- For a single player game you may be making a lot of content that is seen by few players.
- Like almost everything in CRPG classes are an abstraction. People in the real world don’t have classes, they have roles or jobs and they’re not as completely defining. This might an abstraction you don’t want to add to your game.
I hope that’s given you a better feeling for how classes can be used in games and if it’s a system that fits your vision.