@MikeHeydon, @nola369 : Just thought of a suggestion which may satisfy your classless fetish
You get to decide how to scale it. Crate doesn’t have to do anything. And it’s a freaking simple solution.
I dunno, I’m kinda for the idea and I’ve never even bothered to try classless yet. What’s the harm of sneaking a little, out-of-the-way button on the mastery selection screen that when pressed locks you out of all masterys and auto-converts skillpoints to attribute points and health/energy…
…no balancing or support needed beyond that. It just becomes a, “Hey, you pushed this button, now deal with it.”, kinda thing. You basically just added 3 (4 if we count Veteran) new difficulty tiers to the game without having to do anything more than that.
The only checks I can think that you’d have to have in place would be for if they already had selected and specced a mastery at level 2 and then they decided at the level 10 selection to go this route would be to have the button also essentially wipe and convert everything they’d already might have picked. Oh, and of course the opportunity to “Undo” until they close the screen entirely, just like the other mastery selection options. Other than that… smooth sailing.
Or you could let it ask you twice at 2 and 10 with the second time picking it cementing you in to full “classless” or if you picked a mastery once and then choose classless the second time you are now a single mastery. BAM - you just made an easy fix for both these types of requests people have been asking on and off over the years.
The meat of it really that people that go these routes want is “something” productive being done with the unused points just laying there.
The reason these builds are appealing is precisely because they’re not supported - that’s what makes them fun. Self-imposed challenges make people feel accomplished when they beat the game because of the lack of official support for these builds.
There’s enough build variety in GD anyways, it would be way too much effort to attempt to support every gimmick, gimped idea that comes along and flies in the face of the game’s basic premises. I could make a build that wears no armor below the belt, and I could call it “Winnie the Poo”, but there’s no way in hell a dumb build like that should get officially supported. And yes, I’m implying that classless builds are dumb (but fun)
Maybe? Then again the only people asking FOR these things are the people that are actually DOING them. 
Deciding to wear no armor below the belt is an entirely different thing from wanting to be single or no mastery and I’ve always felt that the latter should be supported at least *minimally as described in this thread. Not wearing armor below the belt tho… that’s on you. Here’s a trenchcoat, you creeper.
*In an OFFICIALLY the support is in there buuut don’t expect anything more kind-of-way.
Should car designers support drivers who want to use their feet to accelerate Flintstone-style? I don’t think so. Why would Crate support something that’s based on a self-imposed challenge and it’s not the intended way to play the game? Should they also support itemless or devotionless runs because some players like that kind of challenge? The people who play like that are a minimal fraction of the player base anyway so focusing on supporting mastery-less runs would be a complete waste of developing resources and time.
I could write a laundry list…
As soon as it’s officially supported, it has to be…well…actually supported. It needs to be balanced for.
Nevermind the tech costs of implementing such a feature.
Any modder can add 1 more mastery that don’t influence class name and have only 3 passive skills: +8 to physique, cunning or spirit per level.
But for What?
That is a great suggestion, I had not thought of that.
Glad to be of service mate. What I would suggest is maybe having a “bank” of attribute points.
That way you wouldn’t need to quit out of the game every single time you levelled up.
May take a bit of selfcontrol though to not splurge it all 
hey man, would you mind going into a bit more detail on this? i have a chaos based character but dont really have a lot of RR, and i did take reaper lol
When I say reaper, I mean the nemesis…are you maybe referring to revenant?
Sources of chaos RR:
I’m sure there are a bunch of others I’m forgetting.
oh ok! yeah i meant revenant. i probably have to review my devotion choices, alot of stuff i didnt knew about stacking and what not when i build the character. thanks for the tips!
My man.
This is a cool idea, would be really fun. I love your passion about this stuff man! We can dream.
I have to say though, aside from the previously listed cons to this scenario, we also have to understand that if there was classless support, it would cheapen the experience and cause it to become far less of a novelty. Before you know it, a bunch of people would be trying it out. Then the criticism of going classless would start rolling in, and I think that’s the realism behind the inevitable balancing that would suddenly be demanded from players who were going classless.
I like how it is right now. Hardly anyone is doing it, so it makes my own adventures feel all the more unique and original, and it’s so much fun to be part of a niche group of players doing this. The kid gloves must stay away. It must remain punishing and grindy. This will keep the group of players who actually do go classless much more dedicated and passionate about the journey and reduce the potential of player complaints, as it is self imposed.
That said, I would never complain if one day the option showed up in an update, and it would be one more cool as hell thing you suggested that I would thank you (and Crate obviously) for.
Same here 
It’s nothing that’s going to make or break me on GD… but I feel it would be nice “to have”.
You deserve a knighthood, but I see you are already a SIR 
. I downloaded GDstash for the first time (never done it before as I know it is a powerful tool that can be misused to cheat the game, which is not my prefered playstyle). I selected my CLASSLESS character who is at level 51 and lo and behold, there were the 151 unusable “Skill Points” sitting there.
I set the “Skill Points” to 0 and changed the “Attribute Points” to 151 (which is what my character legally earned in unassignable skill points), saved and my char and skill points now appeared as attributes.
EXACTLY what I wanted In-Game 
I am unsure how the actual game will track skill points after setting it to zero in GDstash when levelling up?
This is not really going to be an issue though as the legal classless attribute points of a character is easily re-calculated using the (attribute points x 1 per level) + (scaled skill points per level).
I will do occasional checks in GDstash. I am hoping that maybe the mechanics will work like “If any points are in Skill, I can just manually zero them out and add them to Attribute”, assuming that now when leveling up will still increase the skill points and the game itself does not reset them to the actual total points for the char level?
The beauty of your idea is that even though we are using GDstash to modify our char outside of the game, we are NOT actually cheating (as long as you maintain your own rules and self control). These converted skill points are actually legally earned by your classless char, but are unaccessible within the current mechanics of the game.
I now consider GDstash as my weird and out-of-game NPC - "My Magic Man, The Wizard"
In the classless world of GD, he is willing to accept my hard earned skill points and refund me with the attribute points that I should have received on levelling.
Yes, it requires a lot of discipline and self control, but this is quite a nice and easy solution for classless builds and does not require any development or mods. Classless and self styled custom players usually adhere to their own code of play anyway.
Once the game settles to a very stable state, maybe some modder can create a mod that automates all the above MANUAL procedures and come up with something like …
MOD - "On my own in Cairn"
That’s really all that is is needed for a mod like this?
It doesn’t keep track. Basically, each skill point you earn is independent of every other skill point. So you could award your self 10000 skill points at level 1, and when you levelled up to 2, you’d get 3 more skill points.
Ditto with devotion points and attribute points.
Welcome to the club. Careful…power corrupts
P.S: Who tf cares if it’s cheating? It’s your game! Play it however you want. I’m sure what I do would be considered “cheating” by many, but whatever man.
Some other things I would recommend:
Maybe, but it seems unlikely if only because GDstash does provide a very easy fix.
Anyhoo, glad it worked out for you!
P.S: Just to give you a rough idea - there’s a maximum total of 248 skill points to be earned, and 107 stat points. However, some of those come from stuff like completing SR, and/or the hidden path, so be sure to complete those things.
So I have been doing this classless thing for a few weeks now. The journey up to level 50. I posted it on the Reddit forum. It’s proving very interesting to say the least. I may copy the whole thing into a thread on the official forums once I’m further into the journey.
I will note that since level 35 or so I’ve been going with all chaos thanks to @sir_spanksalot advice. I’m keeping an eye on his 'equipment list - see above - but so far I still only have 3 bits of my Symbol of SolaeI (arghh). And as to the devotions part, that’s a sincere pain in the ass because without active skills I don’t have anything to bind stuff to. I’ve actually gotten all the way through Dying God but I can’t take the celestial power yet because I can’t bind it!!!)
I have also NOT been taking any mastery skill level attributes and I will just say I think this is the #1 thing that is the hardest about this. It’s a huge trickle down effect.
In order to get my main stats up high enough to qualify to wear equipment I have to choose equipment that also adds to those base stats which in turn keeps me from getting better additions to resistances and on down the line. My Health is terrible, I’ve just moved into epic and even white trash can 2-shot me. HA! I kite a lot. Since I’m not using any Writs for this my reputation is currently in the realm of Respected for nearly everything after getting through Normal. I’ve debated just staying in Normal and doing bounties to at least get to Honored in Devil’s Crossing and a few others but wow is that slow. But that just maybe what happens because it’s slow going in Elite right now because I have to kite EVERYTHING. 
Anyway, I am keeping that journal of sorts and posting every 10 levels. With how slow things have started to get though I may start updating it every 5 levels.
Mate. Redo your devotions and get abominable might first. DG might just make you…well. dead. 
@CaiusMartius: Also most definitely get ghoul
I have ghoul. Also, I actually did not take the node in dying god because i currently only have two things to bind things to and they’re on Fiend and Solael’s Witchblade. However, I have been thinking about ditching Fiend for Giant’s Blood (which binds to a less active skill if memory serves and I need the 3 eldritch, 2 chaos) and then grabbing Abomination first instead of Dying God. Better choice do you think?
Give me a second to look at the GT. I’m trying to apply game mechanics on a classless spec - something I’ve never done before. I’ll tag you when I edit this post with my speculative suggestion.
Emphasis on the word sPeCuLaTiVe
Some questions: