Soldak Entertainment - Hybrid Class System

Steven Peeler explains the hybrid class system in Soldak's upcoming "hardcore" dungeon crawler:

Change is becoming a common theme, and now it's time for the class system. In our upcoming dungeon crawl, we will have 6 main, fully fledged classes with 3 specialties, each offering 10 skills for a total of 30 unique skills for every class. So far this is similar to how our first game, Depths of Peril, worked. The major difference is that instead of picking a full class, you can choose a hybrid class!
The advantage and disadvantage of hybrid classes are one and the same- you choose any 2 specialties you want from the 6 main classes. You have a lot of freedom to choose any combination, however, you end up with less skills than a full class has (20 instead of 30). It's the penalty of pursuing two completely different specialties at the same time.

More information.

More character customization is always nice. On first hearing it sounds, with some careful optimization, hybrid classes would be superior to base classes though.

It's possible. There's always some combination in games that is a bit overpowered. With this system it might take people a while to find it though.

I didn't mention it in my blog, but attributes will also play a part as usual. If you pick opposite classes, you will have more primary attributes to support.

Titan Quest had a hybrid system; pick two classes out of nine, and pick which skills from each you want to invest in and which you want to ignore. But my concern with hybrid systems is that they're even more difficult (one might say exponentially so) to balance than a straight class system, and even balancing a straight class system often turns out to be too hard.

Still, balance isn't the end all be all. I'm hopeful for awesomeness!

Sounds interesting. So a warrior mage is possible, but then you would need to balance the attributes. Less points to put straight into intelligence.

I like this idea a lot. In titans Quest it worked out well. It's nice having a bit of wiggle room with what kind of character I can play.

It will definitely be harder to balance, but I already make games that are hard to test so that's nothing new.

I've played Titan Quest. Our system is similar. The main differences are we have more specialties (18 compared to 9), each specialty has less skills (10 compared to 20 if I remember correctly), our specialties change your weapon and armor capabilities also, and you can get 3 specialties if you choose a non-hybrid class.

I also added a new thing today because of this thread. Now each specialty also gets a few bonus skills that increase some of their stats based on their attributes. For example, a weaponmaster gets more attack per dexterity than other specialties.