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I've introduced my 5th ed group to AD&D 2E
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 8706660" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>It depends on just how badly you implement a class or archetype based system. A well implemented one allows for just about any character your can imagine that is also a character that is gameable - by which I mean it is social, balanced, and does things that can be handled at a table. Any system whether skill based or class based for example will tend to have problems with characters that can prophetically see the future, because that's really hard to game.</p><p></p><p>The limitations in free form approaches are typically just as tightly constrained it's just less obvious what those constraints actually are at first. Typically point buy systems also have a limited pool of powers to buy from and although at first you feel unconstrained, the more familiar you become with the system the fewer viable choices you tend to find. Often point buy systems suffer heavily from lack of balance so that spending your points on X is vastly more efficient than spending your points on Y, effectively making Y a non-choice. And typically even more so than in a class based system, you are punished point by systems for spreading your points across different archetypes so that you are vastly less powerful with a complex build than you would be with leaning into Johnny One Trick and putting all your points into that one thing that you do.</p><p></p><p>I'm happy enough with my 3.X homebrew to think my homebrew classes cover all possible characters that are gameable with two known exceptions - a character who has luck as their superpower and "Sherlock Holmes". I have concepts for implementing both, but getting the balance right is really hard and I haven't yet had a player excited enough for those concepts to put in the work to get it right. Getting away from a class based system and having some sort of point buy wouldn't make those problems go away, nor do they necessarily even go away in abstract build it yourself systems based on keywords.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 8706660, member: 4937"] It depends on just how badly you implement a class or archetype based system. A well implemented one allows for just about any character your can imagine that is also a character that is gameable - by which I mean it is social, balanced, and does things that can be handled at a table. Any system whether skill based or class based for example will tend to have problems with characters that can prophetically see the future, because that's really hard to game. The limitations in free form approaches are typically just as tightly constrained it's just less obvious what those constraints actually are at first. Typically point buy systems also have a limited pool of powers to buy from and although at first you feel unconstrained, the more familiar you become with the system the fewer viable choices you tend to find. Often point buy systems suffer heavily from lack of balance so that spending your points on X is vastly more efficient than spending your points on Y, effectively making Y a non-choice. And typically even more so than in a class based system, you are punished point by systems for spreading your points across different archetypes so that you are vastly less powerful with a complex build than you would be with leaning into Johnny One Trick and putting all your points into that one thing that you do. I'm happy enough with my 3.X homebrew to think my homebrew classes cover all possible characters that are gameable with two known exceptions - a character who has luck as their superpower and "Sherlock Holmes". I have concepts for implementing both, but getting the balance right is really hard and I haven't yet had a player excited enough for those concepts to put in the work to get it right. Getting away from a class based system and having some sort of point buy wouldn't make those problems go away, nor do they necessarily even go away in abstract build it yourself systems based on keywords. [/QUOTE]
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