Its not that I’m anti-class when it comes to my RPGs. Infact I enjoy replaying games as different characters provided the game has been designed well enough to be played in different ways - And that really is key.

If I were designing a normal cRPG I’d have specialist quests for different classes, but there’s a bit of a problem I have with this new tendency for modern RPGs to omit classes and have an entirely skill based system, and that is I always end up playing the same character - A fighter/magic user who can pick locks
Personally I’d rather play a game that let me into the thieves guild if I actually were playing a rogue, rather than if I just managed to get past all the traps and pick the right locks. I think I’d be more inclined to play through an RPG a second time (or a third) if I knew there would be new quests, new locations and new content that wasn’t available to me the first time round. Also quite often at the begining of the game I’ll not be sure where I should spend my skill points, should I take hide-in-shadows, white magic or detect-traps? If I haven’t even played the game yet, how would I know? So I tend to fudge and become a jack of all trades type. Starting with a basic fighter/magic user type and adding pick locks.

I’ve got a feeling that if I were to pick a character class at the beginning, selecting something from the usual trinity of rogue, magic user or fighter. I’d reasonably assume that the game would be balanced for each type, and offer unique experiences for each. I really enjoyed the way Quest for Glory offered different quests and ways of solving puzzles for it’s three main character types.

But anyway, why won’t Caverns of Underkeep have classes? Because it’s a dungeon romp, theres no real roleplaying going on what-so-ever. Your job is to kill monsters, and to do this you’ll need to be able to fight, use magic and pick locks.

However, I’ll probably steal an idea from Cute Knight (which is a nifty little game) And let the player choose a star sign which their character was born under, this will give various different starting abilities and bonuses/weaknesses.