Character Classes

The PHB class is a template. It defines what you can do, what you cannot do, how fast you advance, and what you are allowed to become. Every edition of the game after 1st Edition elaborated on this model — subclasses, prestige classes, archetypes, paragon paths — adding layers of template on top of template, each one offering the appearance of choice while narrowing the actual space of what a character can be. A 5th Edition character optimised through subclass selection is a more mechanically specific thing than a 1st Edition character, not a more individual one. The template got more elaborate. The character got more constrained.

Oath-Bound discards the template entirely. What replaces it is the Actor Type model: four broad categories of exceptional actor that describe how a character’s capabilities are structured and how they relate to the systems of the world. Within that category, the character’s specific capabilities — what they know, what they can do, what they are exceptional at — are established through the Competency Profile at Session Zero and developed through play. There is no ceiling on what a character can become, no list of permitted abilities to select from, and no template telling the player what their character is allowed to be good at.

A player who wants a warrior-scholar, a priest with a covert past, a thief who has developed genuine arcane capability through years of study — these are not multi-class combinations requiring mechanical accommodation. They are characters, described by their history and their competencies, developed in the direction the fiction supports.

None of this is free. The template model offloads character definition onto a mechanical framework so that a player can arrive at the table with a functional character and minimal preparation. The Actor Type model asks more — from the player, from the other players, and from the GM. Session Zero is where that ask is met. It is a collaborative ceremony: a structured conversation in which the character is built from the fiction outward, with the GM mediating and the table contributing, until the Competency Profile reflects a person rather than a build. The imagination and engagement that the template model replaced are here put back at the centre of the process. For players willing to bring them, the result is a character that no template could have produced.

The PHB classes are not gone. They are useful archetypes — patterns of capability that the Actor Type model accommodates naturally. A player thinking "I want to play something like a Ranger" has useful information about the kind of character they want. What they are building is a Martial Actor with a particular competency profile. The PHB archetype is the starting point for the conversation at Session Zero, not a mechanical box to inhabit.

There are no classes to select, no class restrictions, no level limits, no prime requisite XP bonuses, and no spell memorisation tables. The entire PHB class framework — including multi-classing and the character with two classes — is superseded.

The four actor types and their PHB equivalents:

The CRM Actor type rules govern how each type functions in play. References throughout this overlay to specific PHB classes should be read as references to the corresponding Actor type.

Actor Types — CRM

Session Zero — CRM

The Rutter — CRM