Short/ tl;dr Post:
Yes you can remove classes & levels, sort of.Everyone can be set to level 1 for the entirety of the game and everone can be the same class but you would never have see them or have them affect the game (That's how my game works), and you can make new stats or alter how you use the default ones. As to how, plugins or variables, through either eventing or (other plugins)
Also everyone must be set to a class & level but you can make them obsoulte by making everyone the same class, that has no traits or effects and set all it's stats to 0 (you need to edit the classes.json to set it to 0, or just set it to one through the editor), and set the min & max level to 1.
Long Ranty Post:
Changing the battle system depends on what you want to do. The change I have is done through a
plugin aka STB. While weapon and armor giving skills are default, I used a
plugin to make those weapons and armors ammo for skills.
If you don't know plugins are codes/scripts written in JS (javascript) that alters what the engine can do. And can be added through the plugin manager.
RMMV in the most simplest of terms is like an old Final Fantasy/JRPG type game. where you gain a bunch of experience and level up and then through level up you gain stats.You can also just straight up earn stats through eventing, using items or by gear. There's different classes, that can affect how you gain exp and skills. By default through leveling, Though other defaults include through items, gear, events and other skills. But this the default system, and with eventing or plugins you can have systems that do any of that but something completely different.
Now onto your system:
If you want no leveling then all you have to do is set the actor levels to 1 for min and max. You can also make it where enemies don't give out exp, as that is how RMMV hands leveling by default.
In terms of stats, are you going to use the default stats ie Max HP, Max MP, Attack, Defense, Magic Attack, Magic Defense ,Agility and Luck?
What I mean is HP is your health resource and MP is your magic resource (TP is an alternative resource to MP and if you use this
plugin you can make Max TP in to a resource where it grows, ala the other stats).
However Attack, Defense, Magic Attack & Magic Defense are pretty useless in my eyes when it comes to the engine default it self. As they aren't really used by most developers outside of the whole let's used them in damage formulas for skills.
Agility is used by the default engine, to determine turn order, the exact math is " the battlers agility plus a random number between 0 -4"; where the order is highest to lowest.
While Luck is used to determine the effectiveness of states, buffs and debuffs hitting you.
(This can be change with simple edits to the code)
One of things that tend to annoy me when people jump into making new and different stats(either through variables or plugins), I want to ask is are they using all the default stats that can be change, if they are then go right ahead and keep on looking for plugins that give new parameters. However if not using the default stats, then what are you going to do with them?
Ignoring them doesn't really help and since the maker can use them by default, why not rename and used them.
Also how many stats do you want/need for your game? What kind of stats are they.
Do you need HP (a health resource, that can grow and shrink) or would you prefer something more like a lives system? How would you set that up with a party/team that has more than 1 character?
Do you need MP or TP, your skill resources (if your skills uses them)?
Agility determines turn order and luck can affect stats/buffs/debuffs, but do you want them to? Would you like to use them for something else?
And the other 4 stats are for messing with damage formulas but are you going to use all of them? Could they be used for something else.
And that's not gettting in exparams and sparams, are you going to leave them alone or are you going to mess with them as well?
Now on to classes, do each class get different skills that can affect growth of stats and attributes are, is it more everyone has skills that are picked by default.
Also how do classes affect stats and attributes, is it the warrior has a starting of say 100 power while a mage has 25, and then depending on how you use skills they gain stats. Or do you want something where at the beginning of the game you can give each character certain stats but not other, like you get say 50 stat points, and depending on the class, it's detemined what stats get boosted and which don't. So like a warrior can increase power and defense but not say MP.
Also how do you want skills to affect stat growth, like is it going to be where if say a warrior uses his lance ability a bunch of times he gets a boost in attack and this happends in battle, or is it more of on map system, like say if you mine enough times you increase attack stat.
Also how many characters can you have? If you have more than one I'm assuming they are all affected by the same system. If you go about doing an on map system. and have multiple party members, how do you want to make it where say mining affects them. Do you want it where only the party leader is doing it and thus every single member has to mine to get say an attack increase or is it more where every one who's not the leader just gets a smaller amount.
Before just diving into a game what do you want to do?
How many party members do you have?
What do stats do and how are they used?
In my game Attack determines the strength of all skills, and defense gives damage reduction. While HP is standard JRPG HP ie you need to keep it up or else you die and TP in my only magic resource, as most skills use it.
Agility determines turn order. Magic attack, magic defense and luck, I've made useless. And I've remove luck from affecting state/debuff/buff rate
You need to first determine what stats you need. Then go to the engine and see if those stats can do anything, and determine what to do with the unneeded stats.
For me I made 1 stat that determine being alive, 1 that is used to use cast skills, 1 determines the strength of spells delt, the other determines the strength of spells receive and the last determines turn order in battle.
All the other xparams and sparams, I've made it where everything the same for everybody (both enemies and actors). Expect for a few but those are magic cost rate (how much skills cost), tp charge rate (how much tp you gain, by doing certain actions), experience rate (which I'm using with
JP to determine how much JP players get), and HP and TP regeneration to make skills that change how fast HP and TP grow per turn, like a poison state that drains HP over time.
Do you have to buy/sort out stats before the game, like give them a default starting position or is it based on what it is for the class?
You also need to determine how skills work in your game? Do you have a battle system? Are said skills used in this battle system? Are Do you want intractable events? Like mining and solving puzzles and use skills that way?
How do classes work? Do you get to pick classes for your character(s)? Are they randomly giving? Do they have inherent skills?
How do they affect stats?
Like I said before in my last post, What is that you want in mechanics? Saying anything is possible with RMMV is true but not exact. You need to know how you want your system to work in your game (and I mean excatly how you want). From there it may be possible with work-arounds or complete doable or maybe not at all. But there's to say for sure unless you either go straight and make your game, with trial and error or actually sit down and plan out, in as much detail as possible how you want your mechanics to go, and then ask is this possible with MV.
A lot of people don't plan out and instead go with trial and error, or don't give enough description of exactly what they want when they ask for help, so when they find a way of doing something or using a plugin that does it, it may work a little bit but not say go far enough. Or when the question gets answered it doesn't answer, gives an answer that doesn't help. (I've seen this a couple of times when people ask for ways of renaming HP, MP and TP, where either the person means the want the names to vary based on class or they just want to literally rename HP, MP and TP to something else, and they get the wrong answer even though both are possible.)
I'm not trying to be mean(this is a mistake, even I still make form time to time) or too wordy, just to make a mechanics system, the way someone wants with disappointing them is very hard to do without knowing exactly everything they want. It's why I'm hesitant to say anything is possible with RMMV, in theory that's true, but in practice without knowing exactly what a person wants to do it's honestly impossible to say.
And that's not even taking in the account that people try to use games to reference what they want. (Typical give a detailed description and a a video with some time stamps of what you want are the best ways to bridge the "I've never played/hear/know of that game gap") Which compounds the problem as many people may not know the game, but may have the answer for you.
