Character Class

Character classes indicate the form of training and instruction that a levelled character has obtained, whether in fighting, spellcasting, meditation or nefarious activities. Character classes should be viewed more as a repository of knowledge and skills that an individual can apply to a wide range of professions, rather than being confined to a single specific vocation.

Classes serve as a foundational framework in the realm of role-playing games, providing players with a structured way to define their characters' skill-set, abilities and other characteristics. These classes not only contribute to the diversity of gameplay experiences but also offer players the flexibility to shape their characters' destinies within the game's narrative world.

Class Training

In most cultures, young persons are selected for their aptitude and ability stats to train in culturally recognised character classes and sage studies. This manifests variously as youths — the age varying due to race — taking leave of their families at the age of 9 to 11, at considerable expense, to enter an academy, college, monastery or apprenticeship, where they'll be trained to know all they need to become fighters, bards, monks, clerics, mages and so on. Thieves often learn their skills in a less structured manner. With some races and classes, such as dwarven clerics, training doesn't begin until well into middle-age — for no reason except this is how things in those cultures are done.

In addition, often before training starts, characters will have spent a significant portion of their lives engaged in their family's profession before embarking on formal training.

Costs

The majority of parents lack the resources necessary to provide their children with this type of training. Those in affluent and prestigious professions can easily afford it, but for many, the only viable option is to pursue an apprenticeship. Still, such apprenticeships are highly coveted and challenging to secure. For this reason, many characters belong to a somewhat privileged elite, who had the means to pay for their training.

Nonetheless, even the children of farmers, labourers or washer-women may have such aptitude that they obtain the good wishes of a mentor, benefactor or indeed, a whole village who join together to assure that enough coin is raised for the character's full education. None of this is meant to obligate a character to act in a certain manner, or dedicate their lives in a certain way — but it does provide some meaningful background to player characters who have come from poor families but are, nonetheless, paladins, illusionists or druids.

Training

Depending on the class, training lasts from between 5 and 30 years, the lengthier periods being most common for illusionists and mages. The casting of this sort of magic is so difficult that it can be 4-7 years before the student can manage a cantrip. An entire language, and not an easy one, must also be learned. Most become apprentices after their principle training, which requires about 8 years. Thereafter, they may remain apprentices well into adulthood, until they crack the difficulty of casting spells sufficiently well to become levelled.

With thieves and assassins, the training is often scattered and inconsistent, with much time spent as layabouts or minor criminal participants. Time in gaols, if not prison, or in poor houses, will account for the time it takes to become one of these classes.

Bards, too, will be distracted, commonly acting as an apprentice, then a journeyman, with plenty of practice before finally reaching levelled status. It is not uncommon for them to spend time in a guild or a troop before setting out on their own.

Druids and Monks, after a different fashion, will each receive their training after 6 to 7 years. Thereafter, they must contemplate what they've learned for five years or more. Each of these classes requires a moment of enlightenment before the level is actually obtained; this last step cannot be trained, it must be perceived.

Clerics are trained in seminaries, where they will be given a diploma after 7 to 8 years of training. From thence they will join a church or temple, where they will participate as curates, assistants, associate deacons or in some other formal capacity for as long as 7 or 8 years. When they are ready, they will receive a dispensation from their religion to seek their own path, but they remain an unattached part of the organisation that trained them, and may appeal to this organisation later in life if they wish to obtain greater status.

The easiest training is given to fighters. Children will take between 5 and 8 years; but veterans who already have combat training and have acquired experience directly from battle, either as comrades or soldiers-at-arms, can receive the training necessary to become levelled in as little as one year. Many, however, are seriously injured or even killed during this training. Nevertheless, this explains why there are so many fighters compared to other character classes.

Rangers and Paladins learn their fighting skills in the same amount of time; but much of their additional training involves considerable meditation, walking in the footsteps of wiser persons "in the field" as it were, and establishing a mindset that will eventually allow the casting of druidic and clerical magic.

Ability Stats

With adults who receive training, their ability stats are nearly established. Class training will improve an adult cleric or druid's wisdom by +2. Fighters, paladins and rangers will have their strength improved by +2 and their constitution by +1. Mages and Illusionists will have their intelligence improved by +2 and their dexterity by +1. Thieves will improve their dexterity by +2 and their intelligence by +1; this applies to assassins as well, who will additionally improve their strength by +1. Bards improve their charisma by +2.

No additional stat bonuses are given to adults who start their training to become 1st level monks.

With children there are considerable changes to their ability stats, related to their growing to maturity. A set number of dice are rolled each year that a child grows, both prior to and after training; after training starts, these rolls are more selective to ability stats the student needs. If, during the course of training, the student does not acquire sufficient ability stats to meet the class minimums by 15, then the student fails and can only become levelled through training they receive as an adult (and almost certainly as a fighter).

See Also,
Character Creation
Knowledge Points
Player Characters
Sage Ability