I had a commenter ask about how Class Bonuses worked in Goblin Slayer TRPG. The scenario they presented me with was having a character that was Fighter 1 / Scout 3, equipped with a Short Sword, a One Handed Sword and Light Weapon.

The question they had was this: how do they calculate their class bonus for using this Short Sword?

The Short Answer

The quick answer I gave to them was that you only use one Class’s rating. Exceptions likely exist, and that could make things a little confusing, but the game followed a sort of logic of “Every Class offers something the other typically don’t.”

Then I followed up with something to address the commenters concerns about a lack of detailed examples in the rulebook. It was often worded as “The Class Using The Skill,” implying that only one class rating is used at a time, but anything further was never explicitly stated.

The Longer Answer

I decided to sanity check my short answer by running some numbers. I was looking for if a player character could reasonably take out an enemy of similar level using just the levels in one class.

We’ll start with some stat blocks.

The enemy in question is a Bear, and these are the relevant stats.
Level 5 / Minion / Life Points 30 / Dodge 16 / Armor 4

We’ll use a character that’s Adventurer Level 5, with the following Relevant Stats and Skills:
Lizard Man / Tech 3, Focus 3 / Ranger 5
Skills:
Weapons – Bows (Master, +3 to Hit)
Sniping (Master, Spend a turn Aiming to get +8 To Hit and +8 Power, and 50% Extra Range, Crit on 11.)
Weapon: Crossbow (+2 to Hit, Damage 1d6 + 3)

Our Ranger isn’t exactly optimized for archery, since Lizard Men have pretty weak Technique, but this kind of loadout could easily compensate for their slow movement, and doesn’t use up all of the experience points they’d have at Adventurer Level 5.

Since the bear is a Minion, its dodge is never rolled, so this makes some of the calculations simple; we simply need to see how high we can get this Ranger’s To Hit.

We determine this by adding:
2d6 + (Class Bonus) + (Tech Focus) + (Skill Bonuses) + (Equipment Bonuses)

Normal Fire: 2d6 + 5 + 6 + 3 + 2 = 2d6 + 16
Sniper Fire: 2d6 + 5 + 6 + (3 + 8) + 2 = 2d6 + 24

In either case, the only way they could possibly miss is through a critical Failure. Damage in Goblin Slayer TRPG increases with accuracy, however, so it’s still important to determine how well our Ranger makes their shot.

Normal Fire, without Critting either way, has a range of 19 ~ 27. (Results of 3~11)
Sniper Fire, without Critting is 27 ~ 34 (Results of 3 ~ 10)

Damage is calculated by
(Weapon Power) + (Class Level) + (Skill Bonuses) + (Effectiveness Bonus)

For the sake of simplicity, we assume the average result of 1d6 to be 3.

For Normal Fire this would be
1d6 + 3 + 5 + (1d6~3d6)
11 + (3~9)

Sniper Fire would be
1d6 + 3 + 5 + (3d6 ~ 4d6) + 8
19 + (9~12)

The actual range is much greater, since the amount of d6s gained from Effectiveness varies, especially with normal fire. However, it wouldn’t be impossible for our Ranger to take out the Bear in two normal shots; or even one sniper shot! (A feat made easier if the Bear is distracted or otherwise unaware of the Ranger!)

Concerns Over the Character Sheet

The commenter also mentioned that the character sheet had space for including multiple class levels for calculating attack bonuses, which made them wonder if you were allowed to add different, related class levels together.

So I looked for a plausible scenario where it would make sense to have this information readily available, even if you weren’t supposed to add them together. For this, I reversed the levels they initially asked about, and looked at Scout 3 / Fighter 1 and how different, explicit rules would interact with this combination.

At first blush, being a Scout at level 3 doesn’t change much when you’re using a Short Sword, since the Light Weapon bonus from Scout can still apply to a short sword. However, Long Swords count as One Handed and Heavy – meaning in this case you’d use your +1 from Fighter for a Long Sword, since their bonus is for One Handed Melee weapons.

The more important consideration is this: when you’re wearing armor that a class isn’t proficient in, you’re not longer able to use that bonus for anything involving Strength or Technique.

For our Scout 3 / Fighter 1, this means that they’re okay to keep using Scout’s bonus for a Short Sword if they’re wearing Light Armor; but if they switch to Heavy Armor, they’ll need to rely on their Fighter bonus instead!

The basic idea behind classes in Goblin Slayer TRPG is that every class has at least one thing that the others simply can’t do. Fighters are unable to use Bows; if a player character wants to have some ranged attack options, they need to invest levels in Ranger or Scout, and switch to light armor. (Unless, of course, the Fighter is willing to risk throwing their melee weapon, which is viable in some cases, but very expensive if you end up unable to recover it later!)