If you're familiar with the GURPS system, think of people with certain dispositions but you can develop them however you want. Firing a rifle, if not trained, would default to Dex -8, or Pistols skill -2 (because related knowledge can really help). A fencer would be very good with a lot of swords but probably barely above untrained with an axe (which relies on momentum and constant motion). Training related skills also is much cheaper than training unrelated skills. Lastly your base skill levels are based on base stats, so the high dex character will have a far easier time getting his crossbow skill up than the intellectual.

You'll never hack a computer without computer skills, so there are limits. Your GM (in GURPS at least) can allow you to trade in a certain amount of experience in exchange for a one-time success at something your character would normally not be able to do very well (subject to the GM agreeing it's not going to fuck up the game).

So, I don't know that this is the only way to implement a classless system, but it is one way.

Pimp.... Adept in the use of staffs(staves?) like a wizard and slings.Spells and abilities are based primarily on Charisma with minor emphasis on Willpower & Dexterity and they get a speechcraft bonus when talking to females (of all species.)

Special abilities and spells include:

Bitch Slap- Adds a 70% bonus to Critical hit chance

Summon Familiar- Always some form of female humanoid.

Dismiss Familiar- When you dismiss your 'lady' you get a regular but small income.

Dominate Entity- Works only against females but of all species.

Throw Money- Lose some gold in exchange for X turns (based on level) of stun to enemies within a 15ft radius. Does not work on creatures uninterested in the acquisition of wealth.

Bling- Sacrifice some Gold to 'bling' up your weapon or armour, effectively making it +1 (stacks with inbuilt bonuses.)

Well I did think a different class from "traditional" rpg-classes. I doubt I could think up anything tryly original. : D

Is there no unbalancing way to make wizards not squishy (look up "squishy wizard" on TVTropes if you dare)? Freakin' Gandalf had a sword, man.

Tormentfan: Who said anything about being good at everything? I just don't like silly restrictions. There's absolutely no physical reason why a wizard can't pick up a spear and point the sharp end at something he dislikes. Should he be able to use it as well as a trained soldier? No. But there's a difference between incompetence and total inability, between doing something badly and doing it not at all.

The skill based system found in Fallout, Deus Ex etc. is a nice alternative to classes. I think someone already mentioned this too. You end up investing a very limited amount of skill points into areas that you will focus your play style. It does require the game to accomodate flexibility in solving its various problems (which these two games did very very well)

I am not totally against classes though and I think its good to have a variety in different games. If all games became skill based then that would also become dull.

You can easily make non-squishy wizards that are balanced. The problem is that in most settings, wizard = oodles of magic all the time, and magic in most settings is "I can do anything, bitches!" If magic is built around limitations, instead of just screwing the rules and doing whatever, it's perfectly possible to have tough guys casting spells without it being game-breaking. However, "squishy" and "wizard" are so heavily linked that part of the reasons magic is so powerful is BECAUSE wizards are so physically weak, so they NEED the magic to be strong just to keep people from punching them to death. If magic isn't game-breaking by itself, then tough mages aren't game-breaking either. A good example would be Armstrong from Fullmetal Alchemist, who is basically a Muscle Wizard. He's very strong, tough, and has good magic, but he's definitely not the strongest character in the series. Scar is essentially a Muscle Wizard as well. See the attached picture for reference.

Really, the issue isn't the toughness of the spellcasters, it's that the magic itself is too powerful. In D&D, and in almost all D&D-inspired settings, magic is so incredibly overpowered that it's very tough to compete against any sort of magic-user. Because if there's anything you can do well, you can be guaranteed that there's a spell out there that will let someone else do it better. In this regard, 4e (for all its flaws) actually did a really good job, because it made nonmagic classes quite good at things, instead of being totally worthless in 3e/3.5/Pathfinder. The same sort of thing even plagues the TES games... why be a thief-type if you can just use illusion spells instead? Particularly in Oblivion, that one spell school can entirely replace the thief archetype, and for strong magic-users it's just a bonus rather than a lifestyle.

In settings where magic follows a strict set of rules, and has limitations (like everything else in the universe) these sorts of things aren't nearly as much of an issue.

I have to wonder though: how many rules can magic have and still be magic and not...science?

God

Standard-bearer:
No magical powers, no particular martial prowess either. His ability is to raise and plant banners, flags and standards in the ground during a fight, which inspire his fellow party members through positive buffs, or terrify his enemies with negative ones.

But you're not just talking about jumping in with a sword and being bad with it. You also want your wiz to pick locks and pick pocket and disarm traps and shoot a bow and sing a song, and then if you want to bring kits into it, you'll want him to wield a katana and other exotic weaponry, then you want him to pick and identify herbs and the some unarmed combat.. etc, etc, etc..

You can't have it all, at least not in anything other than a fucked up munchkin game... Restrictions are there to stop the game turning in to a big pile of shit for discerning players who like a bit of logic, or at the very least a challenge.

It's simply not reasonable to even consider that a book learned wiz who HAS to spend most of his time with ritual and his nose stuck in a book, would find the motivation, never mind time, to learn any other discipline.

Anyway even if it was logical that he could pick up a katana, or a lock pick, or an instrument...all the game should ever do is tell you that you fail, so what's the difference between just not being allowed to do it and just NEVER succeeding at it?

I mean, really, how many polymaths do you know in real lfe? How many blacksmiths who are also glaziers? How many carpenters who are also gardners? Yeah, you might get someone who can throw together a bench and weed a bed, but you're not going to get a cabinet and a topiary out of them. At best they'd be oddjob men... and I'd be quite happy for that to be a class.. but you'd be SEVERELY penalised on your expertise in any one discipline.. I'd let you cast 'torch' and crack a lock with a crowbar.. but that's as far as you'd go.

I with generalripper on this one. I see classes just like sudden leveling [you level up, and then distribute points accordingly, making you suddenly better], obsolete design.

In real life, I know plenty of PhDs, MDs, and even a priest, who can pick simple locks, hit a stationary target at 200 yards with a rifle, swing a baseball bat well enough to be a credible threat to someone without any combat training, and identify some of the local wildlife. Can any of them match a trained safecracker, a Delta Force commando, a racecar driver, a rodeo champion, a sailboat racer, or a zoologist, respectively? No. But how often do they need to?

If you wish to describe real life as 'a big pile of shit for discerning players who like a bit of logic', well, I can't disagree, but I must say it would be much worse if it were class-based in the manner of AD&D.

I used to play an MMO which had quite a lot of nice classes.

It was called... Everquest.

The classes in that game were quite varied and complex and had very nice ways of implementing different skills, abilities and spells.

Look it up if you like. I was disappointed when I played vanilla WoW for a bit, it felt like Minesweeper in comparison.

But in all honesty, I think RPG games could do away with the class system completely and allow people to train skills they want, with only limitations of available "knowledge/skill points", ie. if you spread your skills too thinly you end up with a "Jack of all trades but master of none" which excels in taking out weaker opponents but has difficulty tackling the harder enemies, unless the player is very knowledgeable how his/her character works.

In the meanwhile, some interesting class combinations I just threw together to experiment with:

Fighter/Thief/Illusionist:
Can cast some simple illusions and spells mainly with focus on distracting an enemy to open up weaknesses in enemy defense and drawing the attention away from himself, but is adequate (if somewhat weaker than a pure warrior) in straight-up melee brawl. Can also cut purses and pick some simpler lock types but struggles with the more advanced ones. He is not very agile so if he doesn't rely on his illusions he will end up being pummeled badly.

Monk/Tinkerer/Alchemist:
A master of unarmed/unarmoured combat who can put together traps of simple to medium complexity, bombs and potions(alchemy) and other devices to aid him in combat. He has high evasion and can cause a lot of critical hits due to his monk training but cannot sustain a lot of damage. Can also brew potions to enhance his abilities, but his potions can sometimes have unexpected side-effects that aren't always beneficial to the user.

Necromancer/Priest/Ranger:
A pale, withered man who has been studying dark magic, and some divination spells on the side, and mainly focuses on using one-handed weapons and bows. He is able to summon some undead minions, but usually to just keep the enemies at an arms' length away so that can pelt them with arrows trough the wall of flesh and bone. He has learned a few healing spells, but they are simple and weak, but they can help his allies in a pinch. Sadly his divine magic is fatal to his summons (only works on living, which limits it to himself and his allies), and studying the opposite schools of magic has caused him to suffer of the constant internal struggle of forces of light and darkness. This has made him a little bit deranged and paranoid.

In short, every class should have a drawback, but they should not render the other classes useless. If the character has a party, the party should complement each other, to fill in the gaps to allow/force them to play as a team.

This guy exists in D&D 3.5 in the form of the Assassin prestige class; I would know because I play one myself. Okay, my character has a shitload of dexterity and is also quite capable of opening locks and disarming traps, but they are not strictly required.