Trimming the Fat: Goodbye Classes, Hello Skills and Feats

It's no secret that I kind of like the bones of the 5e skill system, even if that implementation is flawed. I also think that 5e is a clunky, bloated system, but I do understand its appeal. Making your little Blorbo is fun! Some discussion in the Discord server hosted by Prismatic Wasteland prompted me to expand upon my own thoughts on building characters through skills, stats, and feats, in lieu of traditional classes. In particular the focus of this blogpost will be on how I am for character building to work in my upcoming game Mistwalker (which I have mentioned before), similar to how Josh wrote about his design thoughts while working on His Majesty the Worm.

As in 5e, I do want  players to make their little Blorbos in Mistwalker, but I find that relying on a 5e-style (what some would undoubtedly call "trad") leads to too much overhead, as well as a very prescriptive, and thus limiting, set of character options. In particular when it comes to advancement.

I like the idea of backgrounds à la Into the Odd and its descendents, but personally (and I know that a lot of people will disagree with me here), I could use a bit more mechanical heft to grab onto. Enter feats, or rather Traits, as I have chosen to call them in Mistwalker, because that's what they are, really.

The skill system follows in the tradition of 5e, with attributes and proficiency bonuses and all that jazz, though in reality, I have just stolen the system from Songbirds 3e and given it a coat of paint to fit my world instead of Snow's, with only four attributes and no distinction between their value and modifier.  The skills offer a nice, simple resolution system, but with only that, you are left with either way too many skills, or a too coarse-grained selection: A surgeon and a veterinarian presumably both have a proficiency in medicine, but I know which of them I would rather have operating on me. 

In Mistwalker, this is handled via the Traits, of which some are selected at character creation, representing the background and existing skills, while further traits can be obtained through advancement, ideally diegetically. I have tried to ground all the traits in the fiction, while giving a simple mechanical hook to them, in a way that makes sense. As readers of my blog, you can have a sneak peak of a few selected examples:

Some of these, such as Mystic Premonitions are very mechanical, while others, such as Barkeeper are less explicitly so, but all are intended to help construct a unique character. A little Blorbo, if you will. A trait can be anything - a magic power that can be activated at will, a piece of background that gives some proficiency, a relationship that can be called upon, there are really no limits!

Traits have a few advantage compared to big clunky classes: First and foremost, being bite-sized, they don't bloat your game too much, and with no set advancement paths, they don't box you in. You can mix and match them to your heart's desire! However, the most important to me, is that because of their simple nature, it is very easy for players and GMs to come up with their own. If you want to have some background that is not already covered in the list of traits? Just write a new one! Think about which benefits it would bring and write it down. Obtained a special power from communing with a spirit? There's a Trait! When presented with a broad selection of existing traits as inspiration, it is much easier to expand that list, than it would be to build a whole 5e class from scratch, with various features at various levels, advancement options etc. Just write it down, and give it whatever mechanical effects make sense, and use it to inform the fiction.

Suddenly, it is not so difficult to build a character with a little bit of mechanical heft, but without having to deal with big complicated classes fencing you into complicated advancement. Just add traits as it makes sense!