Anyone who has played any kind of tabletop RP knows that there are a plethora of classes (or types, for those non-versed) of characters to play. You can sometimes mix and match, take on a more specialized class, or completely wreck anything that class is actually intended for, but some are more fun for others. For example, I am AWFUL at any kind of spellcaster that requires me to prepare my spells the night before. I just feel cranky having to pick spells, or needing a spell at a particular moment, but derp, didn’t pick it “last night,” so now we have to wait for me to rest 8 hours. I also haven’t ever played a straight fighter, so I don’t know how well I’ll like playing one. I’ve also been dabbling in the d20 Future stuff (no matter how derpy it is at times), and have an idea on my favorites there too.

To begin with, my baby. The girl who started it all. The one who had two wanted posters out for her at the same time, one labeling her human and female, the other half-elf and male. I’m sort of an archer-fanatic, so I guess it isn’t a surprise that my first character was a ranged Ranger (yeah, it’s a thing), who eventually became a modified-from-3.0-into-3.5 Deep Wood Sniper. I really liked my near invisibility status and the ability to almost take down a minotaur single-handedly with two arrows fired at the same time, thanks to their tips being poisoned and him failing most of the Fortitude checks. The animal companion aspect didn’t come into play much, but that’s another story. I also never really had a use for my spells, but then, we had a cleric in the party most of the time, and the rest of the time I couldn’t be hit so I didn’t care. The only real downside was when I was hit, I was nearly killed far too easily. And then don’t get me started on how low the will saves for rangers/deep wood snipers are. It’s sad, and led to much brain washing on my part.

Another sort of mixed feeling class is my Favored Soul. On one hand, I love playing Anna, and when I came into this campaign, I sort of accepted I was going to be like 60%-75% health battery. I discovered I much more liked the way I can just cast any spell I know, and her stats, at least in the early days, weren’t completely sucky. But for those of you who haven’t looked at Favored Souls, about level six (if I’m recalling right), things get ugly. You stop getting almost any bonuses for leveling up. Now, this is done on purpose. Those are really the levels where your DM gets to step in and start doing things to your character involving your deity that’s favoring the character, giving them the power boost that way. Only, my DM wasn’t. And he was doing a “I level you when it’s time for you to level for story reasons, rather than by experience,” way of things, so I was stuck in one of those sucky levels for what felt like forever. So there is my word of warning. I would take Favored Soul over Cleric, and I think it can be a fun class. But make sure you have a DM who knows where your levels of suck are and how to help your character not get vastly over powered by the others in the process.

My favorite class so far has got to be War Mage, but that might be because of how pseudo-overpowered it feels to me. You get all of the offensive spells, you auto-know them when you level, so no worries about picking out huge lists of spells, and then every few levels you get to pick out a new spell to add to your repitoire. You also get to do more damage based off of your Intelligence score, and then, as if that isn’t enough, you can add more with feats. Best part though? No squishy wizard affect! That’s right, war mages get to wear light and then later medium armor, and can go all the way up to heavy with another feat. Or you can do what I’m doing and get a heavy armor made out of mithril so it only counts as medium and just say, “Screw ALL ya’ll!” The saves aren’t great, but they aren’t awful either, and while you don’t get a lot of skills or skill points, what skills you do get are relevant to the character, and it’s still easy to really make your character your own. Yun has been a ball to play so far, and I don’t see that changing.

As I said at the beginning, I’ve been dabbling in the d20 Future. And while the first campaign crashed and burned, the second is setting itself up well enough that I think I’m going to like what I’m doing. The key I’m thinking is that while I have technically picked one particular type of Hero Class, I was able to toggle with both my ability scores and my starting occupation (and take some cross-class skills) to give my character traits from a different one without taking multi-class levels. And really, I think that might be the best way to play this version of tabletop RP. Yes, pick a class and take everything it offers to you, but also take bits and pieces that lets you round out so you aren’t so heavily specialized that all it takes is one situation and you are screwed. I’m so excited to play Birdie, and I know some of that is me getting to surprise my fellow RPers and the fact I get to be more than just my starting class.

Now for the bad side of the coin. One of my least favorites was actually a gestalt character, a combination of Ninja and Wu Jen that was oh-so-fondly dubbed, the Wu Jinja. While the character herself was both a pot of crazy and a lot of fun, I gotta say, I hated the classes. By themselves, the ninja was like playing a low-level wizard after he ran out of spells, and the wu jen WAS a low-level wizard, and we’ve already talked about my feelings on that kind of spell caster. They sort of saved each other enough that I no longer hated them, but I definitely wouldn’t pick them again unless I knew there was going to be a large party to help protect my character’s scrawny butt until she got more powerful spells/abilities.

So, let me throw this out there. What are some of you guys’ favorite classes, or least favorite? What do you like about them?