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<blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 6498295" data-attributes="member: 6775031"><p>This is just theory-crafting, but I've looked at a lot of systems like this (and played a few), so they tend to have the same issues. The big thing is that choices mean power, and unless you don't care about power, any freedom is just an illusion, so characters become much less broad than they would otherwise be.</p><p></p><p>Jumping in with the first thing I looked at, Dwarves have a number of interesting racial traits. Stability, Steadfast, and Stonecunning are all very flavorful abilities which make sense for a Dwarf. Unfortunately, anyone who cares about <em>not dying</em> will just pick up +2 Strength or +2 Con (or possibly +2 Wisdom) in place of any of those things.</p><p></p><p>If the Cleric class has some abilities which increase your spellcasting, and some abilities which let you turn undead, then you can expect the vast majority of players to invest points in the former but not the latter. Even if you pumped up Turn Undead so that 3/day you could instantly destroy all undead within 200 feet, it's still putting a situational ability into the same basket as your most-important-and-powerful ability, and asking people to choose.</p><p></p><p>It's incredibly difficult to balance a lot of different options. It's almost impossible to balance them when you ask players to allot the same resources between primary abilities and situational (or flavor) abilities. A method of dealing with this design dilemma is to offer separate pools of resources for primary and secondary abilities. As an example, you could give Dwarves the two primary traits to choose from +1 to a stat, +1 to hit/damage with certain weapons, and Diehard; then, you could grant three more traits to choose from Improved Darkvision, Stability, etc. That way, you can still include both major and minor traits within the system, and both types will actually be taken and used. (The alternative method would be to assign variable point costs to different abilities, but then you have to <em>literally</em> quantify the difference between +2 to your main stat and the ability to judge inclines.)</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="The Crimson Binome, post: 6498295, member: 6775031"] This is just theory-crafting, but I've looked at a lot of systems like this (and played a few), so they tend to have the same issues. The big thing is that choices mean power, and unless you don't care about power, any freedom is just an illusion, so characters become much less broad than they would otherwise be. Jumping in with the first thing I looked at, Dwarves have a number of interesting racial traits. Stability, Steadfast, and Stonecunning are all very flavorful abilities which make sense for a Dwarf. Unfortunately, anyone who cares about [I]not dying[/I] will just pick up +2 Strength or +2 Con (or possibly +2 Wisdom) in place of any of those things. If the Cleric class has some abilities which increase your spellcasting, and some abilities which let you turn undead, then you can expect the vast majority of players to invest points in the former but not the latter. Even if you pumped up Turn Undead so that 3/day you could instantly destroy all undead within 200 feet, it's still putting a situational ability into the same basket as your most-important-and-powerful ability, and asking people to choose. It's incredibly difficult to balance a lot of different options. It's almost impossible to balance them when you ask players to allot the same resources between primary abilities and situational (or flavor) abilities. A method of dealing with this design dilemma is to offer separate pools of resources for primary and secondary abilities. As an example, you could give Dwarves the two primary traits to choose from +1 to a stat, +1 to hit/damage with certain weapons, and Diehard; then, you could grant three more traits to choose from Improved Darkvision, Stability, etc. That way, you can still include both major and minor traits within the system, and both types will actually be taken and used. (The alternative method would be to assign variable point costs to different abilities, but then you have to [I]literally[/I] quantify the difference between +2 to your main stat and the ability to judge inclines.) [/QUOTE]
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