I am trying to finish my remake of Wizardry and one of the thing I want to bring back is class changing. The idea would be to start with some basic generic class (Think the squire in Final Fantasy tactics), and then when you reach level 10, you can upgrade to a prestige class. But it you retire you prestige class character, you unlock the class to create new characters right from the beginning. That should increase the roguelike aspect of the game.
I have 3 categories of class which are: Warrior, Rogue, Magic-User
I have 4 categories of magic which are: Divine, Arcane, Alchemy, Psionic.
With the old class system, There were 4 magic users, 2 warriors that could do magic, and 2 rogues that could do magic, with 4 remaing classes that could not do any magic at all.
For example: Ninja, was an alchemist+rogue, Paladin as a Divine+warrior, etc. Fighter had no magic.
Now, one of the logical way to manage class progression would be to start as one of the 3 class groups: warrior, Rogue, Magic-User. Then upgrade to an advanced class.
The problem is that each category of magic has a strict spell list, so which spell list will the Magic-User temporarily use before chosing his true vocation? It could be a melting pot of all those lists.
Another way to manage it would be to make 4 basic class based on the type of magic. So that for example, an arcanist, could become at level 10 a mage, samurai or rogue+arcane class. This way, all spells learned as an arcanist are very likely to remain.
The problem with this system is that everybody must be able to do magic. Even the fighter which normally has no spells. In which spell category would a fighter fit into?
Sure I can bend the theme and say that Magic is a thing everybody has access to but with various degree of mastery.
What do you think?
If you have other ideas let me know.
Non-Magic users could have special abilities (like in the recents dragon quests) that consumes MP. Still I was not going in that direction.
Another user on BGG mentioned pooling magic from all the 4 categories giving a kind of try before you buy aspect to the game.
Else the advantage of doing the magic type approach is that it could lead to more creative and unusual class names since they must all use magic.
By the way, Ogre Battle is a game where class changing requires equipment and stats.