I present to my readers, my critiques, my fellow litrpg enthusiasts and system breaks alike... THE SAX SYSTEM.

Yes it sounds like i'm just saying its a saxaphone system. It's an acronym. Short for Synergy, Achievement, XP system. It even has a pretty nice bold font style of motto going for it if you want it as a sort of marketed concept for a game story featrure.

"Hello, and I am the CEO of Hyperware Untamed, Leon Sveltum, and I would like to introduce you to the world of Calynthim, home to our latest project at an immersive simulated world. We can't quite ramp up to an interstellar level just yet, but I am proud to say our servers can handle the entirety of Calynthim, and even quite possibly twenty billion simultaneous logins, and then, we really pushed that to the limit. The server finally crashed from our rigorous DDOS testing, after fifty billion simultaneous attempts... it finallt crashed. Give or take a couple hundred thousand... And then we improved upon it. I hold no doubt in my mind that the entirety of the human race could login all at once, and STILL get our quality level of login speed, provided you use our patent protected hardware and software to do so.

But enough flexing about keeping out malicious attempts at crashing the game. You came here to find out all about our game at this Expo, and I won't let you be dissapointed.

You see, unlike the standard mmo or rph formula, we went another route somewhere in the middle, between the importance of gear, and the importance of stats. So it's not a gear treadmill, and it's not quite a level grind fest either. Its not even a data sheet about what class has the best growth and such. Oh no. We introduce the SAX system, with a focus on three things, culminating into one point, that is the players free will to be whatever they want."

Leon walks across the stage as projectors raise from the stage and begin a 3d hologram projection, phasing in from the left side of the stage to the right like an old powerpoint fade in. It all culminates into one moment when Leon stops on the right side of the stage, and as he turns back, is covered in gold accent polished silver armor with a red and gold trim cape fluttering behind him.

"As you can see, I look like quite the knight, ready for justice, to swing my blade, and slay monsters and villains!"

As he speaks, he brandishes a longsword in hand heroically, before walking down the dirt path superimposed over the stage.

"But that doesn't mean it's my class. My class is actually Scholar, and while this armor does increase my defense, thanks to the first part of our three part focus, this armor actually increases my MP bar. I present, Synergy. certain items will have various effects, sometimes even curses, but! Every item has a use, a good use is another question, sometimes its just a necessary ingredient in something else important. But this item for me, is a ring. This ring has the enchantment power to turn my gear into not only a magic reservoir, but also a magic absorption shield, all without causing an actual drawback to my armor unless i run out of magic IN my equipment. And by that point, I'm effectively out of magic anyway. But it works better to saturate my equipment if it's metal, effectively a major bonus to magic knight style characters."

With a swing of his sword he sends a fireball launching into the wings, dissipating as it leaves sight.

"Now you might think I was a Magic Knight, after all, the build works for it splendidly yes? And you would be correct to assume as such. It is my currently applied Class. But classes aren't exactly easy to get, oh no, thats not how it works. You can't just waltz up to an adventure plate, slap your hand against it, and be a warlock supreme!" fitting actions to words, a stele of stone rises in the middle of the dirt path, illegible writings ordered neatly from top to bottom, his hand technically not hitting it, as it was a projection, but being just far enough away to barrrely touch it with his knuckles.

"No, this is where our Sexond focus comes it, the Achievement part of the system. The most basic of basic classes are easy to get, and are even freely spread about by just about every npc on how to acquire said classes. You picked up a sword, you can be a warrior. You figured out how to feel your mana, you can be a wizard. You prayed to one of the gods, congrats, you can be a priest. the achievements get a bit harder from there on out. Swinging a sword ten times to become a knight, Two swords for a Duelist, been on a boat, with a gun, and a melee weapon of some kind, some sort of pirate or buccaneer. A spell is cast ten time, specification of the wizard class. This also applies to crafting classes. Though often relegated to a tertiary slot as opposed to the sub class, or second class slot, this one gives XP boosts while performing specific crafting actions, but mostly to the skills involved, as opposed to base class xp."

With a wave of his hand his guantlet dissolves into motes of light, and then spreads to the rest of the hologram.

"And so we get to the third focus of our system. Xp. Now I know I said we don't have a level grinder like other games. This is true, because we speak of a different kind of experience. We speak of the Human experience. Finding new places, facing new beasts, trying new things. Yes, killing ten of the wolves in the plains around town in a basic quest to get you to level two or something, but the game isn't designed for you to sit holed up around some restock point. It's designed to give you something to explore, to try new things. To learn new things. The application to gameplay is simply that, for every new thing you try, if it gives xp, it will give more than it typically would otherwise. But the more complex a situation is, the more xp gained as well. Because the entire point of this three part system focus, is enjoyment. So once again, ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls and everyting in between and out beyond, may I present to you... THE SAX SYSTEM.

Remember, Synergize, Achieve, EXPERIENCE."

The crowd gives applaus as the lights dim and he walks offstage, the presentation complete.

if you just wanted the story bit, its over now, now it goes into a little more detail and technical stuff about how i THINK it would work, at least for me.

The Sax system is a very freeform plot flexible system based on having items, stats, and being in places.

What that means is, if a fighter swings a sword ten times, he can get the knight class, this can obviously be set to whatever nonsense anyone wants, but like, if you unlock a class, you can immediately class change, in fact, a class once changed into, its permanently unlocked, so it means, if a fighter has three fire spells and walks into a volcanic region on accident, he could get a fire axe class, but because he also has a production class of chef, he could unlock volcanic chef production class, he has those three spells and is a basic fighter, who is also carrying a spear in his inventory, he could get volcanic spearman, as well as fire spearman, and these could have different benefits to them, but once he takes volcanic spearman, until he comes back as a regular fighter with the same items, the other two classes are locked to him, but he can have an inkling of what he needs to unlock it.

changing a class requires a stele, and a subclass can be changed freely, but has no effect on unlocking classes related to it. which would mean that dungeons and dungeon-esque raid zones would have a reason for mulitple trips through it.

furthermore, a class itself has very little purpose, it's till important, but not as all important as many other games would make you think. in the SAX system, a class gives no active skills, and nothing is suddenly learned from leveling up. instead it has a world learning system. if a magician runs mana through water, he might learn some sort of spell depending on the water, and what its doing. primarily it would just be water manipulation at first, but maybe they learn water ball, waterfall, create water if they pour mana into fog, or a cloud, or rain, maybe they can learn some ice spells because its a cold stream on rare chance.

thats not to say a melee fighter is disadvantaged, as they have to be watching natural happenings and use their weapon in conjunction. while the mage build is running mana through the water fall, the axeweildering fighter is staring at the water fall and swinging his axe, after several swings he learns a random attack, maybe its water blade, maybe its waterfall axe slash, maybe its hydrosheath. it gives the author a lot to be creative with.

this means that a character can have any number of skills, but to use them, they need the correct weapon, or activate the proper resource pool, health, stamina, mana, the skill list will naturally collapse into what is currently accessible, with a sort of hotbar system to help, and could be plot assigned to specific weapons, like favoriting a build or something.

but the real important matter of classes is, they give only a couple passives, usually towards specific skill xp gains, or maybe healing passives, or others, but the classes always give passives, never actives. these bonuses differ based on class, from type to what kind of bonus to the amount. say a fighter gets a 3% bonus to strength, and a 2% defense bonus, but knight, a higher tier class, gets a 4% bonus to strength, and a 4% bonus to defense. meanwhile, an even HIGHER tier class like dragon knight gives an 11% bonus to strength, a 6% bonus to defense, and a 8% bonus to magic power.

the other things classes do is, they grant one extra stat minimum, but also typically allocate one more point than they grant, often in a cyclic style, and show the main stats the class would utilize. a fighter may give one extra stat point per level, but also automatically allocate two stats to strength, dexterity, defense, and vitality in a two level loop, a dragon knight may grant two stats, and cycle between all stats in a loop, allocating three stats a level. some classes could allocate three stats, but only give one. and a classless individual gains a base of five stats per level.

moving back to a major important matter is the synergy concept. the main point of the sax system is that accessories are super important, but not necessarily super rare. you can change your armor and even set bonuses as you level for your needs, but an axxessory often has added effects beyond stats to make it so they maintain relevance from level one, to level one hundred. and this is important because its effectively a part of your build. some skills or abilities are not capable of being trained to gain.

for example a ring could have a blessing of thorns. any attack you recieve before defense is inflicted as retaliatory damage against the attacker, thats pretty good for a defense build. but if you combine that with another ring with the curse of the petty, then it could save all that damage up for one singular attack, the synegy between them is, the curse of the petty will store the damage that would otherwise be inflicted on the enemy by the blessing of thorns, and while that could be strong, the curse of the petty can only do a percentage of the damage dealt to you, after all defenses have been calculated. so if before defence, an attack would be 100, and after it may be 10. the curse of the petty may store 2 or 3 damage, but the curse of thorns will immediately send back a full 100 attack. together, the curse of petty thorns build would store 100 damage to be afflicted at a later moment upon the enemy.

up to four, maybe six rings could be used at once, two to four bracelets, a necklace, a set of earrings, all of these can be synergized together, or into separate strategies, to make a competent build. armor itself would give stats, as would most weapons, sometimes they could come with auxilary skills, but said skills are less important because they can be learned, or an equivalent, but most acessories have no spell equivalent, or at least none of similar strength.

this all culmimates into getting accessories to help either get a class, or maybe get to a specific place in hopes of a class, and the various growth around that. respeccing would be possible, but it comes with level drop penalties. but also, it could be some classes are restricted by levels and locations on top of each other. like say, a dragon knight has to be ten levels below the area that dragons are in, but what dragon means could be anything from kobolds, drakes, or wyverns, up to true earth shaking, kingdom ending dragons.

and some classes could require a prerequisite class as well.

so most of the importance and gameplay cycle would be gaining impressive skills, gaining a complimentary skill growth class, and then cycling about various areas at various levels with various equipment to find a class you want for whatever plot related endgame purpose the author desires. which means, a self imposed quest to travel across the game world to get prereq classes for some other class. and possibly having to do so multiple times because of some classes having further prerequisites, and overlapping requirements.

it can be as ridiculously complicated or simple as you want. for me its an idea yes, but its not fleshed out enough on equations for me to want to put into practice, and i would DEFINITELY map out all the classes i could think of, even if several basically overlapped in purpose but with different niches. fire sword, fire spear, fire axe. all gain the same fire magic bonus, but growth in a specific weapon as well.

this system is really about what can you explain as mundane alone, but bring together in a creative mash of exploit.

so, enjoy that if you want i suppose. hope you enjoy.