Design: Strategy RPG Create-A-Class

One idea I had for strategy RPG's was to have a system where, instead of your characters' classes being chosen from a group of classes, you could instead choose to create your own classes that had unique combinations of abilities. This is explored somewhat in some systems - final fantasy tactics, for example, has a system where your primary ability is determined by your current class, but your secondary abilities are determined by a class you had previously trained in. But what if you could craft your own classes to choose from?

For example, for each class you wished to create, you could choose from the following abilities:

Magic
-Thunder
-Fire
-Ice
-etc.
-Negative Status-effect causing
White Magic
-Healing
-Negative Status-effect curing
Stealing
Different Weapon Techniques (a la Disgaea?)
-Archery
-Swords
-Axes
-Nunchucks
-Dual-Wielding
-Guns
-etc.
Buff Spells
-only to self option
-only to others option (more expensive than only to self)
Monster Capturing/Transforming
-Monster Magic (Blue Magic)
-Summoners
-Pet Class (a la hunters of WoW)
-Morphing into monsters

For example, you could choose to make a Ice-Centric Mage who also used Nunchucks (perhaps uses spells through his weapons?), and dabbled very slightly in self-buffing spells. Or, instead, you could build the ultimate monster-centric caster - he could learn how to use certain monster-casted spells, learn to summon monsters to aid you on the battlefield, and learn how to straight-up transform into monsters. Obviously, the point system would have to be very complex for a system like this - adding certain abilities to a class would cost more, and stat growths would probably be controlled to some extent by the same pool of points. For example, in addition to abilities, you could buy high critical strike chance, or enhanced mana regeneration. Additionally, you could make very specific choices about certain things - for example, if you wanted to pick up a subset of ice magic, you could, but for an only slightly reduced price - like I said, point balance would be tricky, and definitely not linear. After all, hand-picking your abilities from a vast pool could be extremely powerful to a skilled gamer.

Also, there would be default template classes, such as White Mage, Black Mage, Fighter, etc. that you could either straight-up copy or modify to your own needs. Not too many, though - part of the point is to "force" creativity but still provide an out for those that don't feel like diving too deep into the system. Alternatively, you could have many standard classes, and provide the create-a-class as a nice extra for those who feel like using it.

I'm convinced that this could be an interesting and unique system, if done right. The trick is, like all things, doing it right. There's so many things to consider when you try to innovate, especially in something truly complex like a class system. Sometime later I'll post a larger game design that incorporates this system - try my hand at the task. I could see that spanning several updates, when I get around to it - depending on how much detail I decide to put into it.

Oh, and next week I'm switching to a Tuesday/Thursday update schedule, rather than two posts on Tuesday.