Races and Classes Pt. 1

I am fond of classes and levels in rpgs. On the plus side it's way easier to keep track of experience and do improvements to your character all at once than keep track of every niggling skill point and such.

There is some concern that characters are placed in a strait jacket by their classes and not allowed to be individualized. I decided to alleviate some of this in Microlite20 when I run it. Instead of your primary class skill having an initial +3 and all skills increasing 1 per level characters start with 8 skill levels and may add up to 3 + their level to any one skill. So if you want a swashbuckler type fighter put some skill levels into subterfuge (good for feints and dirty tricks of all kinds) and communication (because hey smart ass remarks while waving swords around is required.)

Characters will also use the optional fourth stat: Charisma (CHA) because I like social combat (and will probably write up something about it in a future post.)

Besides the plain vanilla classes of Fighter, Mage, Rogue and Cleric I'm going to include Monks (which I liked since reading about the Bloodguard in The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.) I'm also including an archer type. Stats are as follows:

The Archer

Wear light or medium armor. They have a +2 bonus to physical and add +2 to attack and damage rolls with ranged attacks. This increases +1 at 5th level and every five levels on. They are +1AC vs all missile fire. They may take a double shot at -2 to each attack. 

Monks are as written on page 62 of The Microlite20 RPG Collection vol. 1.

I also gave a little more pizzaz to fighters. As written a 1-4 level fighter only gets +1 to hit over other classes (this increases to +2 at 5th level, +3 at 10th etc.) which doesn't seem enough. So in addition the fighter can attack Level/3 opponents each round of half their level or less and receive the Cleave ability. When a fighter kills a foe in melee he may attack another adjacent foe. Killing people quickly you see is a power all its own.