Classes vs professions

[Endorya]

I was building my professions' form when it started to collide with my classes' form. What exactly is a class? Isn't being a warrior, a mage or a hunter also a profession? Maybe I should simply remove classes and stick with professions. Do you have any other ideas or uses for classes?

[mushroom patch]

??

[Endorya]

Yeah. Exactly my thoughts.

[Rickton]

Class and profession are pretty much used interchangeably in a lot of games. What's the difference between them in your game?

[Endorya]

Class and profession are pretty much used interchangeably in a lot of games. What's the difference between them in your game?

I was trying to make use of both Classes and Professions, as in WOW. But I've come to realize that classes are the same thing as professions and I'm going to discard them. Professions make much more sense to me; I was just wondering though if anyone would have a nice idea / reason to keep both.

[Aukustus]

Profession could also be subclass for class. For example fighter as a class with for example templar as a profession.

Or a rogue working as a thief/assassin or mage trained to be a battlemage for king.

Basically class would be larger and more general name and profession more accurate description.

[Z]

And why are there both classes and professions in WOW?

It is also not obvious whether it is good to have classes in a roguelike at all. They restrict your character to a specific playstyle, and good roguelikes are about using whatever you find in innovative ways. In Crawl classes just make you start with some specific initial state, but it's up to you to decide what abilities to specialize on, and I think it works very well.

[Omnivore]

A thought coming from the viewpoint of an oldtime GDW Traveller RPG player.  Professions could be viewed as a looser form of skill grouping than classes.  That is, a class strictly defines what skills are and are not part of the class, while a profession merely defines what skills are a part.  You can see the difference looking at Traveller (profession/career) vs AD&D (class) character generation.

However its pretty much up to you what meaning you give to those terms in your game as they are more or less interchangeable in many contexts and sometimes given special meanings.  A class based system might call a character's way of making a living between adventures a profession and give some small skill bonuses as a result in actual game play.  [Warrior class, blacksmith profession, +1 to repair armor and weapons]

I am rather interested by the concept of professions as a looser form of classes.  Multiclassing becomes irrelevant as an archer might pick up a bit of knowledge of magic along the way without needing to become some well defined Archer/Wizard hybrid class.

[chooseusername]

They are just approximations of your character having a history and gaining skills and experience from it before you came along and added them to the game.  Ever played Omega?  Just sayin'.

[Rickton]

And why are there both classes and professions in WOW?

I've only ever played about 10 minutes of WoW years ago so I might be wrong, but I think the professions in WoW are basically special skills that let you craft things.

[Zireael]

Profession could also be subclass for class. For example fighter as a class with for example templar as a profession.

Or a rogue working as a thief/assassin or mage trained to be a battlemage for king.

Basically class would be larger and more general name and profession more accurate description.

That's what I thought, too.

[Endorya]

I forgot to mention that there are no restrictions in my game, training wise; time and money are the real limiting factors for learning professions / skills. Classes and professions will just dictate initial attributes and skills; you are free to train whatever you want afterwards. This means that having classes feels meaningless because you can alter your character's capabilities to a point that he might no longer to be related to his starting class.

I'll just add professions with families. The families will just be there to help you categorize professions and it will not appear anywhere in the character's description.

[reaver]

Classes vs professions, as-is, is a pointless comparison, as they are ridiculously overloaded terms. What does each one mean anyway? What's the purpose of a profession in terms of gameplay and/or lore? of the class?

I'd say (I guess not being the first or the last) find out first how you want to differentiate your creatures in terms of lore and gameplay, and from those differentiations you can then make sense of what a class, a profession, a faction, a guild etc is

[Endorya]

Classes vs professions, as-is, is a pointless comparison, as they are ridiculously overloaded terms. What does each one mean anyway? What's the purpose of a profession in terms of gameplay and/or lore? of the class?

I'd say (I guess not being the first or the last) find out first how you want to differentiate your creatures in terms of lore and gameplay, and from those differentiations you can then make sense of what a class, a profession, a faction, a guild etc is

As I stated previously, I've already decided to remove classes as they wouldn't serve any real purpose. The only thing they could be used at would be categorizing professions, which would end up being pointless in every way because the player is free to train whatever he wants. Professions themselves dictate the character's lore and the game play style.

[guest509]

I like the idea of race, class, profession being part of the building of a character, instead of rolling stats.

Race can give some stats, maybe an ability. Like WoW.

Then Class can up some stats, give some broad abilities.

Then profession can further refine things. Like a WoW talent tree perhaps?

For example:
-Dwarf: +1 defense. +1 night vision. +1 see traps, find gold.
  -Fighter: Cleave. Hamstring. +1 blades. +1 shields.
    -Knight: Heavy armor, charge, ride horse.