What's the basis for deciding the point cost? I'll see if I can explain my thinking...
Absolutely. I'd love to comment on that. And I'll give a short answer followed by a long answer. The short answer is that a complete breakdown of why all the mathematic choices were made as far as determining costs is included in the work itself. So, while a person has every right to agree or disagree with the decisions that were made in establishing the system, all the math and logic will be fully disclosed. The reality is that it's too long to go into here, however.
But, I will try to give a more satisfying answer that doesn't go into all the in-depth rationalization. Basically, what happened was that a non-human generic character was built through each and every level up to the twentieth level for every single class in the SRD, XPH, and DSP material. That took a fair amount of time in and of itself.
Next, each element of a class whas given a baseline point-value. For example, each increase to HD, each increase to BAB, each increase to ability scores, each increase to caster/manifester/channeler level, each increase to spell/power levels known, each increase to class abilities, each increase to saves, each increase to skills, etc were all given a baseline point value.
Third, these statistics were then tabulated two ways. First, these statistics were tabulated in a level-by-level breakdown o each class compared to the XP total that a character would have at the beginning of each level. Then, these statistics were tabulated adding all the classes together to find out what percentage was spent on BAB across the board, what percentage was spent of saes across the board, etc.
Fourth, obviously, the first attempt was not goingto work out perfectly. So, each of the progressions thatdetermined the cost of each independant aspect of character development were tweaked one by one. The tweaks were constantly being watched in terms of changes to level-by-level cost as well as the effects across the board for all classes. This process took quite some time.
Finally, the rules were then written only once a decent mathematical balance was met (and realize that my definition of balance may or may not coinside with another person's definition of balance). The rules came directly out of the math instead of the other way around.
Now, regarding the question to CR ... unfortunately CR is such a touchy statistic that while itwould be great to be able to use, it just isn't practical. I would have loved it to be so simple, but it really isn't.
Instead, I sought to seek balance based on the following principle:
The great balancing factor in 3.x D&D is actions. A character who has great versatility can still only do one full round action per round. {Of course, barring magical aids like haste, etc} Thus, a character can feasibly load up on tons of lower-level class abilities and have a myriad of options available to them. However, each round they only can pick so may of them. And without keeping them each up to their current character level through continued improvement costs - they will begin to become less effective.
On the flipside, a player might only want to buy into a small number of class abilities but always mae sure they are as strong as they can be. In what they can do, they will be more powerful than the first example. But their range of usefulness will be limited.
Is essence, that is why I believe that true balance is ound among character options at hand. If you can balance quantity of options with quality of options you achieve balance in my book.
To use an SRD example, this is why the monk is poorly balanced, a well-built wizard is fun, and many people find sorcerers boring. The monk simply as too many options to really be useful. Compare the monk in the SRD with the pugilist in the preview. The pugilist is built for combat. It has a few options, but not nearly as many as the monk. But the options the pugilist has are all useful as the character goes up in level. Likewise, compare the SRD Sorcerer with one of the caster/power examples in the preview. Those who find the sorcerer boring do so because the sorcerer has two things: Familiar and limited spells known. By scaling back in a few areas and adding in a few class abilities, suddenly te sorcerer is still balanced but also has a few more options.
But to actually get into the number crunching and why the prices progress the way that they do, you'll have to wait until the product is released.
In other words, the preview is a good tool for showing what the book can do, but doesn't effectively convey why someone should buy it.
Just out of curiosity, what would? Each of those builds could easily be turned into a character. The stat blocks wouldn't be that hard to construct. They would need to be given armor/weapons, a race, and feats. I didn't make them stat blocks because variables like weapons/armor/feats are so varied and personal that it seemed pointless to do so. However, it would not be difficult. I hope you can understand why I chose to leave them the way I did, though.
If you would like, though, I would be happy to turn any of those into real breathing characters. If you so desire, pick one and give me a level to build it to. I'll take the example as printed and try my best to accomodate your desire for a stat block. Of course, since the preview is free ... others are welcome to take any of the examples, slap on a race, pick the appropriate number of feats through the level desired, and post it here. I think it'd be rather neat, actually!
Other than actually going into the rules of why the costs are what they are, what else would help you decide if you wanted to buy the product? This is an honest question, because in today's day and age marketability is often everything - especially until word of mouth begins to work for a newcomer to game-publishing like myself.
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