Job System

[Shield Wolf]

I would really like to make a game wherein the characters are able to swap jobs similar to how it was handled in FFV. I'm not too sure on how to handle this though. It leaves a huge problem with balance, as one player could potentially stick with one class the whole time where another may swap jobs repeatedly, having several options but none at a level equivalent to the player who sticks with one job.

I had thought first of doing it as more of a subclass system akin to FFXI, wherein each player has a crystal they can invest a portion of their experience into to level another class/classes. This would grant them abilities as they invested in the crystal, but would slow their own growth. I ran with this briefly for a game I did, and the group seemed excited about the prospect and one guy began plotting every way he could abuse the system to break the game. I tried to balance it by saying that levels in crystal did not add to HD, BAB, Saves, etc, and only would provide MP as having a character with no MP pool unlocking a Mage in the crystal would leave them unable to cast the spells they just learned. The player that wanted to try to break the game was a Ninja, and the first class I provided unlocked in the crystal for this Ninja was Black Mage, giving him the spells, cantrips, and MP pool of a 1st level Blm. If he then chose to invest exp into gaining spells as a 2nd level Blm he would only gain more spells, Elemental shield, more MP, and the Mage Talent, but no HP, no increase to saves or BAB. He would therefore have to strike a balance between leveling Ninja and investing into the crystal. Let's say the other players didn't feel the need to invest in the crystal, and instead put all exp into their base class, they would outlevel someone investing in the crystal pretty quickly.
I also have tinkered with the idea of instead of it being an exp investment that instead new unlocks would be given as boss rewards or blessings from the world crystals themselves as the game progressed, so when the crystal was first obtained they would have gained the class held within the crystal, and when the next "boss" was dispatched they would get an arbitrary reward, "boss soul" or something that would allow them to level the class they already have unlocked, or to unlock another class. This keeps the players around the same power level and leaves it more to the GM to set when and how often new abilities can be unlocked...

I've since decided perhaps I should start a group off as NPC classes, commoner, noble, expert, etc to reflect the basic freelancer like FFV, foregoing the whole crystal scenario above, then unlock new class options for the players as the game progresses and allow the players to change their class entirely, so a 2nd level commoner could in essence start over as a first level White Mage, thief, fighter, or whatever. The player could level the new class for a while, decide to swap out again and go from thief to fighter or another class. This leaves the issue of a party of 4th level Heroes suddenly ending up with a partymate who is much lower in level and much less useful. So how would I maintain balance if players are constantly shifting in level, and how would I be able to work out the varied feel of being able to use abilities from one class while actually being another much like in FFV?

Should I allow the 'freelancer' to access ALL abilities from all classes the player has leveled, so that a person who has leveled Black Mage to 10 and Fighter to 10 would be able to do anything a Black Mage 10 / Fighter 10 could do? Should I instead say that the 'freelancer' represents their character level, while job levels are seperate, so HD, BAB, saves, etc are static?

Any thoughts, opinions, insight, or experience in similar endeavors would be appreciated.

[NeloAngelo]

Yeah doing this has always been a hard topic. Due to balance and whatnot that you've spoken of. I wanted to run a Tactics game but a friend wanted me to set up a JP system for them to swicth and im damn lazy.

I don't want to suggest into any of those because complications. If it was me id do something along these lines:

1: Grant a Job Crystal every so often as such but they can change to that job and retain all XP gained. SO a Ninja gets a Black Mage crystal. At the start of the day he can spend and hour with the crystal to switch to that job and lose his Ninja Job. becoming a straight black mage. Only allow it once a day and takes an hour to cast or so yadayada.

2: Do a semi gestalt or (subjob) ive done this before as a player long back. This works more like FF11. They have a main job and choose a second job as a sub job. gaining all its class features and half any MP from that sub job. (But no BAB HP Saves etc.) However their sub job is always half they main jobs levels. So a 1st level nin would have a 1st lvl sub job black mage. 2nd level/1st level. 4thlevel/2nd level. (you get it)

3: Ive had an idea along the lines of FF13-3 (Here comes the hate.) Give them three jobs they start with however they can only be in one of them at a time and even change them on the fly as a full round action that provokes, changing gear in the process.

These allow for everyone to have the same XP and no worries about level difference. Just mitigation on what they can do. For you for staying close to FFV id choose option number 1. its simple and its probably the most balanced you might get without going really deep. Maybe even allow them, to retain 1 class ability from each job crystal if they bond with that crystal for so long or just for free. Your always gonna have someone that wants to break the game too. They just like to see a game burn. Hope i helped

[Shield Wolf]

I once worked up a subjob system, years ago. I forget the details exactly though. Maybe I can find the notebook I wrote it in and take a look.

EDIT: Well I couldn't find the notebook, and I've moved a couple times since I came up with it, so chances are the notebook is either gone, or buried in a box somewhere in storage. If I recall correctly, I think each player would have chosen a second class at character creation, for the sake of continuity we'll stick with a Ninja, and say he chose Black Mage as his secondary. At 4th level he would gain his normal Ninja abilities and the abilities of a 1st level Black Mage, including an MP pool. Every 4 levels from there he would gain another "level" of Black Mage, ending up with 5 levels of Black Mage to augment his Ninja abilities. This would give him access to third level spells, and actually kinda mimics how Ninjas in FF1 could cast limited Black Magic.

Had I implemented this system into a game when I wrote it I would not have allowed multi-classing, except to take levels in a PrC if they were able to qualify. The sub-class though would never change. So let's say a Fighter chose Red Mage as his sub-class he would actually not be able to qualify for Ruby Magister or even Paradigm Shifter, as he would never gain access to 3rd level Rdm spells by the time he reached 20. If the same character had instead chose Rdm as primary and subbed Fighter though he would be able to qualify, changing his primary to the PrC and still gaining the Fighter abilities at intervals of 4.

The other issue I ran into with this system though was how to handle BAB, Saves, and HD. In a true gestalt game you take the better of the two classes, so would a character with sub-fighter then get the higher HD, Fort save, and BAB for that level of Fighter compared to what he would have gotten as a Rdm? Or would I simply ignore those aspects as this is only gestalt-lite?

[Zwordsman]

Hum.
I might suggest taking a look at this sorta detail.

Make basic slate stats. "Phsycial" "magical" "sneaky" "balanced" At the beginning of the game they chose one of those.
This sets their BAB, Saves, MP/HP amounts. Then when they get exp, those progress as per the sltes, but they chose a class to level up. They start with one job, but then via Quests they unlock other ones, maybe also gift them an extra class at specific levels.. maybe just the normal 5 10 15 20.

this way their jobs all level up as they progress normally. and can switch the jobs once per day, in the morning sorta like the normal spell/extract/ability resets. Takes half an hour attuning to the crystal in the morning rays or something.
You could even have prestige class crystal auto unlock for them as they reach those points.

So level 10, physical base slate, and have classes. Fighter, Black mage, Dark Knight. The cahracter would have high bab, but low MP-even as a black mage their MP would lower. You could either have them only have as much MP as the base slate. Or you could give them a class MP boost... say 1/2 the MP the black mage job would normally give. That would be harder to balance with the physical classes though. but I bet you could figure out some sorta bonus to every class. MP, HP, or saves wise.
This would represetn the job progression pretty well in terms of FFT. YOu have their base stats, augmented by their jobs. So you could end up with a black mage, with very little casting stat or MP, but enough HP to stand in front if they wanted to. Or you could end up with a fighter, with tons of mp and little hp. But makes up with it with some sorta side skills.

Also adopt a VMC kind of deal, perhaps free depending on your ability to adjust the game. Take each class find their defining feature and give a free progression. This represents their ability to "tack on' an ability. LIke in FFT you could attached Jump, or magic to a fighter if they learned it from a different job.
You will want to limit them someway of course. I don't know how and it would have to be per job..
IF you do that, then you really should have some sorta bonus whle in class. I.e. the thing i mentioend above about an MP bonus while in a mage class, hp or save bonus while in a physical class etc.

So basically. Base slates to choos from, have each job also give a little extra bonuses of som kind (some sort of fractional bonus to MP, HP, BAB, saves or skills depending on what the class itself represents), and have weaker adhoc sorta VMC skills from one class.

This would icnrease the power level of all your characters though, so be sure to adjust accordingly.
If done right, this honestly would be pretty damn amazing to play and fun, modular and unique. and terribly customizable per player. Even two players with same classes, might have different base slates..
Two fighter/mages wit hdifferent slates could play very differently. ONe uses magic to buff themselves/subsitute for HP and one uses magic as their ranged weapon. THey're built similiar but their end products are unique to the players.

[Shield Wolf]

So it sounds almost like you are suggesting a more d20 Modern take on starting, Strong Hero, Fast Hero, Smart Hero, etc and then layer class features over that? I'm not familiar with VMC, so I'd have to look into that a bit more.

I know one thing for sure, if I were to implement this at any point, it would be a lot of book keeping for everyone involved. A separate sheet for each class/job, tracking which class gets what exp, keeping up with changes in HP, MP, Limits, etc...

[Zwordsman]

I don't know anything about D20 modern.. so it could be simliar. If so that would be a good way to see how well that works.
I got the idea from some old video games from the 90's haha.

Yeah. tons of bookkeeping always.. but pretty hard to avoid

[Viladin]

I had an idea for a FFT d20 system, but I had scrap it early in the development. I used to have notes for it but I can't find it. I do believe that all classes had 10 levels, and they were quicker than normal leveling.

[Shield Wolf]

I don't know why I didn't think of this before, but I could treat the crystals as Materia of sorts, using the MXP rules in place for the leveling of the subclass. Require an hour of meditation to attune to the crystal, and it would gain the 10% of any combat exp gained. Give multiple crystals for another class, so while my example Ninja would have Blm initially, perhaps at a later point he picks up an Archer crystal and by attuning to it would lose access to the Blm abilities, and instead gain Archer talents, with this crystal gaining MXP (or CXP) unlocking more Archer perks...

[Zwordsman]

So would the class have access to the entire class features of the attuned crystal? Like a pseudo Gesalt sorta thing.

[Shield Wolf]

That's pretty much the idea, obviously not at the same level as a true gestalt game, as the abilities of the second level would grow at 1/10th the rate of the base class, but it gives options. The group I have going right now is a Gunner, an Archer, and a Ninja, with a Knight possibly joining later, so no healer or mage in the group at this point. The crystals would allow then to still have some magical options... almost like learning spells from Magicite in FFVI

[Zwordsman]

Sounds useful indeed. and fun to play.

[What's in the box?]

It wouldn't be as powerful but you could use the variant multiclassing rules with the mareria/crystal system.

[Shield Wolf]

So I found my notebook with the original notes for my subclassing system. Turns out I was recalling pretty well correctly, except I had also added that the character would gain skill points equal to half of what the subclass would normally gain per level, and could only spend those on class skills for the subclass.

I wrote an example skill set up, stating that if the base class gained 4+Int and the subclass gained 2+Int that the character would gain the usual 4+Int for the base class, and 1/2 of the 2+Int. so a 14 Int would gain 8 skill points, spending 2 of those only on class skills for his subclass. So a Rogue, sub-wizard would spend his sub-skill points on wizard skills, likely spellcraft, or Know(arcana). Other skill points could be spent as desired of course.

I also made sure to specify that duplicate class features, like the 3.5 Monk or Ninja AC bonuses, do not stack. Also added a restriction that a sub-wizard could not add to his spellbook until he had reached 4 to unlock his first level of Wiz, even if the character bought a second-hand spellbook prior to reaching level 4.

The variant was meant to give players (and NPCs) more options, such as a Rogue who dabbled in arcane magic, or a Fighter who had a strong enough devotion to his chosen god to gain some divine abilities without having completely overpowered gestalt characters. This way the Rogue would still very much be a rogue, the Fighter would very much be a fighter, but they could also supplement those basic abilities with something a little extra. It adds opportunity for Roleplay as well, like said thief stole a spellbook and taught himself, or perhaps a Wizard who is sub-sorcerer could potentially have practiced certain spells so much that they no longer required him to prepare them, accounting for the spontaneous spells he gains on the multiples of 4.

[Zwordsman]

Oh suppose random side note.
Could create Materia that echo specific class abilities.

Like an AIM materia. Chosen WEapon (that fighters ability), stuff like that.
If you wanted to go with a FFT feel, where you get to chose specific aspects of another class.

In theory you could even easily custom build materia by what players traied for in game.

[Shield Wolf]

I'm wary of introducing Materia as I know at least one player has provided me with ample warning that he WILL break the game if I allow Materia. So to remove the temptation I'm just not going to run Materia as is.

[Zwordsman]

True. Though it would be a pretty decent base framework for the Crystals. Remove the "materia spawning" stuff. and basically assign specifci abilities and allow it to level up to get better at the skill.


At least that player gave warning about that.