The character creation portion of the Empyrean Age is intended to be organic, and largely revolve around a serious attempt at portraying a character in an open, breathing world. But, without a means of objectively quantifying the capabilities of characters, I have taken the liberty of imposing certain character description features that will help outline the core strengths of characters. Not to limit them in any way, but to creatively, and - in my opinion - organically allow the player unique opportunities to shape a unique character with specific qualities that can be observed by others.

The subject of this post is the Character Class section.

A character's class is a meta-feature which embodies an approach that a character uses to interact with the world around them. I feel like in many games and systems there are only a few approaches to solve a problem, and the classes are divided into a handful of different personas that appeal to certain themes while haphazardly glancing over the approaches of gameplay.

I don't feel this is conducive to good roleplay. I feel it's just a gameplay artifact to make the moments of conflict exciting, while gesturing towards roleplay. And that's not what I want.

Instead, I am viewing class purely as a meta-feature, with no themes, details, or baggage attached. It exists solely as a statement of intent for your character, as you've designed them, with no restrictions or expectations placed upon them. If you do good roleplay, individually, the class system will never come up.

I intend its primary use to be when multiple people are doing the same thing, cooperatively or not, such that - usually when multiple people are doing well - certain characters will get certain reactions because of their innate, regular approach to situations. This previous specification will allow me to flavor which of your skills shine, make note of when you use them, as well as how much you use them, and why.

Example. If you intend to excel in combat, your character has been built around that and conflict situations, then a Fighter is your guy. It's also completely possible to NOT just be a murder-hobo, as again, this is a Meta feature. You are encouraged to do things that make sense, and try to solve things diplomatically as a fighter when it makes sense; it just means you won't be inherently geared towards these situations as another player whose character is intended to excel in those situations - namely, a socialite.

The classes don't exist to stand in place of RP, but to allow specific characters the opportunity to shine amongst others in certain areas for making good decisions without dice rolls.  It's really simple. I hope.