le Redoutable
Ich bin El Glouglou :)
Yep! 0-levels are just 0-level Fighters
Much of what you are saying here doesnt make sense.
I think the bog-standard approach is that 90+% of the population, the farmers, merchants, etc, don't have a class. Class is only for adventurers.
Some games, especially in the 3.X lineage, might assign a NPC farmer a class, such as [Commoner]. But, this would almost always be at the metagame layer; no one in setting would recognize a farmer as a level 4 [Commoner]. In fiction, they're just an experienced farmer, who could probably fight off a goblin if one tried to steal their cow.
The question is, if we assume that [Class] is actually present and noticeable within the fiction, and most everyone acquires a class, what sort of classes would be appropriate for a farmer? Do we build a setting where class is always a combat functionality, as Yaarel suggests, and farmers simply use their gifted abilities to farm? (This is the path I was leaning towards in my OP.) Or do we make a setting where [Farmer] is something that can be chosen and progressed, just like a [Druid]?
Well, I would probably have way, way more than 13 classes in such a scenario. I'd love to implement something like Wandering Inn with its class consolidation and unique classes for high-leveled characters.The problem I have with the first approach is that it flattens everything. If everyone can only have one of 13 sets of abilities, then I would think the narratives get much narrower of what you can do. At that point, you really have to ask what you are accomplishing. I know this may sound silly considering the context of a omniscient system, but it feels far more artificial to have such a low-limit to the possibilities.
And if you make a world where farmer is a class that can be progressed like druid, while you will end up with a world that does not resemble tolkien fantasy... I think you end up with a very very interesting world. People start being able to have strange abilities, geo-politics may be influenced by the King being good friends with a high level [Sailor] who has abilities that allow them to guarantee trade, or make them able to control storms, but only when they are on a ship. And it may lead to trying to design a flying ship and seeing if that works with how their abilities work. I find there is a lot of possibility in the concept.
Well, I would probably have way, way more than 13 classes in such a scenario. I'd love to implement something like Wandering Inn with its class consolidation and unique classes for high-leveled characters.
A setting like this, where every adult (age 20 or higher) has levels in a class, doesnt require anything weird or supernatural. It means the period of history happens to be unusually violent. Normal people are forced to adapt to survive.
Well, I would probably have way, way more than 13 classes in such a scenario. I'd love to implement something like Wandering Inn with its class consolidation and unique classes for high-leveled characters.