Using the Big Four (Fighter, Rogue, Wizard, Cleric) of 5th edition D&D as our base, let's assign values to each of the basic features of each class. That way we can put a price for each feature for our classless system. It's easiest to compare the Fighter vs the Wizard for this purpose.
The Fighter has Heavy armor proficiency (including shields), Martial weapon proficiency, d10 hit dice, a fighting style, and second wind.
The Wizard has no armor proficiency (no shields), proficiency with daggers, darts, slings, quarterstaffs, and light crossbows, d6 hit dice, and spell casting and arcane recovery.
The Wizard has the very worst armor proficiency, weapon proficiency and hit dice in the genre; every edition of D&D, Pathfinder, 13th Age, all of them. Since you can't go lower the the wizard for these 3 features, it's safe to say these are the base features which every class has and assign a value of zero to each. So no armor proficiencies, base weapon proficiency (dagger, dart, sling, quarterstaff, light crossbow), and d6 hit dice have a value of zero. Also, wizards have access to wizard spell-casting.
Conversely, the Fighter has always had the very best armor proficiency (which seems to include shields), weapon proficiency and hit dice (other than the barbarian) in every edition of D&D. In most editions other than 5th, the fighter is also more accurate with weapons than the wizard at level 1 (+1 to hit).
Extra features like fighting styles, second wind or arcane recovery are less consistent between editions.
In other words, wizard spell-casting is equal in value to best armor proficiency, weapon proficiency and hit dice (and maybe another +1 to hit). Yikes! Wizards pay the sky and the moon to cast their wizard spells!
Let's assign the values for these basic features a PC starts with at level 1.
Weapon proficiency is valued as:
Base (dagger, dart, sling, quarterstaff, light crossbow): 0
Simple: 1
Martial: 2
Armor proficiency is valued as:
None: 0
Light: 1
Medium: 2
Heavy: 3
Or does light armor have the same value as medium armor in 5th edition? At level 1 at least, it seems like PCs with light armor (11+3=14) will have significantly poorer armor class (AC) than PCs with medium armor (14+2=16). Furthermore, heavy armor proficiency seems to include medium and light, and medium armor prof seems to include light armor proficiency. So let's value medium armor higher than light for now.
Hit dice are valued as:
d6: 0
d8: 1
d10: 2
So Wizard spellc-asting is valued at 2+3+2=7, right? Well, maybe. But in editions other than 5E the Fighter also gets +1 to hit. In 5th edition, the wizard gets Arcane Recovery but the fighter gets Second Wind AND a Fighting style. Assuming Arcane recovery and Second Wind have the same value, then it seems like 5E's fighting styles is this edition's replacement for the normal +1 bonus to hit. After all, 5th edition adheres to the principle of bounded accuracy.
Let's look at the 5E's Fighting styles. We have:
Archery: +2 bonus to Attack rolls
Defense: +1 bonus to AC.
Dueling: +2 bonus to Damage Rolls
Great Weapon Fighting: Reroll 1 or 2 on a damage die
Protection: Impose disadvantage on the Attack roll.
Two-Weapon Fighting: Add your ability modifier to damage
The easiest two to bring up are the +2 bonus to attack rolls and the +2 bonus to damage rolls. Each improvement in weapon proficiency (base to simple to martial) improves average damage by 1 point. Similarly, at level 1, each +1 bonus to attack rolls improve average damage by about 1 point assuming around 50% base chance to hit the target. Since these Archery and Dueling give a +2 bonus to attack and damage each, we know that the Fighting style has the same value as Martial weapon proficiency, 2.
BUT WAIT. A +1 improvement to AC (Defense fighting style) has the same value as a +2 improvement to attack (archery) or +2 to damage (Dueling)! 5E isn't very consistent with this actually. Shields improve AC by +2, but the improvement in average damage of a greatsword (2d6; 3.5+3.5=7) over a longsword (1d8; 4.5) is only 2.5, not 4. Furthermore, the Great weapon fighting style only improves average damage by about 1.33 . If you compare a fighter with a greatsword using the GWF style with a fighter using a longsword+shield with the defense fighting style, the greatsword fighter does about 50% more damage but the sword+shield fighter has about 50% more effective health. Mathematically a +1 AC improvement has about the same value as a +1 damage or +1 bonus to hit at level 1. So let's just stick with that for now.
So wizard spell-casting in 5th edition is valued at 2+3+2+2=9 based on our value system. Ick, 9 isn't a very nice number. Because we're about to compare these values to the cleric.
The cleric is very clearly a mix between the fighter and the wizard as far as these features go in this edition. In 5E, the cleric has simple weapon proficiency, medium armor proficiency, a d8 hit dice, cleric spell-casting, and a domain feature. Putting aside the domain feature (which seems to match the second wind and arcane recovery), simple weapon proficiency + medium armor proficiency+ d8 hit dice; 1+2+1=4. So cleric spell-casting is worth the leftover... 9-4= 5. Cleric spell-casting is worth 5, about half of that of wizard spell-casting.
In other editions than 5E, clerics have heavy armor proficiency. In fact in 5E, more than half of cleric domains have heavy armor proficiency, in particular the ever popular life cleric has heavy armor proficiency. It may be more accurate to say that clerics by default have heavy armor proficiency. This would slightly reduce our estimate of the value of cleric spell-casting from 5 to 4. Still about half of that of wizard spell-casting.
(Man, clerics have it good in every edition of the game. They were considered Tier 1 in 3rd edition, and in 5th edition they are really strong at level 1. Cleric spells are worth so much more than half that of wizard spells surely. I guess the game wants to encourage players to use support-based classes)
Anyway, for now we can say that the basic features in 5E are;-
Weapon proficiency
Base: 0
Simple: 1
Martial: 2
Armor proficiency
None: 0
Light: 1
Medium: 2
Heavy: 3
Hit dice
d6: 0
d8: 1
d10: 2
Spell-casting
Wizard: 9
Cleric: 4 or 5
and
Fighting Style: 2
Depending on how much value we assign the "bonus" features (arcane recovery, second wind, domain), we can say the total value classes have to work with totals up to about 10-12.
We'll call these values FEATURE POINTS (FP). So let's say a PC starts with a total of 12FP in 5th edition D&D which he can spend on starting features such as hit dice, proficiencies or spellcasting and one "bonus" feature. We don't have to follow these exactly for our own system if we fiddle with the benefits of each feature (say, how how much extra AC heavy armor grants over medium armor).
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