Thomas Shey
Legend
I'm just going to mention a couple things I found dealbreakers, and not get into the weeds too much. Also, I want to make it clear I am specifically addressing the versions of the system in Numenera and The Strange, since those are the ones I've got.
1. In its graduated experience system, it ends up conflating metacurrancy and experience together. I've never seen a case where I thought this was a good idea, and here is no different.
2. It also baked together its effort system and its damage-taking system. I'm aware you can cook the books a couple ways to minimize the cost from the latter for using the former, but I still find it a pretty terrible idea, most specifically for its warrior types who are fueling effort off the same thing that a lot of (if not most) physical damage is going up against.
Less critical, but still not something I appreciated was the over-focus on the consumables embodied in the cyphers. That was odd but at least made some kind of setting-based sense in Numenera; I thought it made a lot less sense in The Strange, and would probably stand out like a sore thumb in some of the other settings its used for. The completely ad-hoc design of various Foci aren't exactly a virtue, either.
1. In its graduated experience system, it ends up conflating metacurrancy and experience together. I've never seen a case where I thought this was a good idea, and here is no different.
2. It also baked together its effort system and its damage-taking system. I'm aware you can cook the books a couple ways to minimize the cost from the latter for using the former, but I still find it a pretty terrible idea, most specifically for its warrior types who are fueling effort off the same thing that a lot of (if not most) physical damage is going up against.
Less critical, but still not something I appreciated was the over-focus on the consumables embodied in the cyphers. That was odd but at least made some kind of setting-based sense in Numenera; I thought it made a lot less sense in The Strange, and would probably stand out like a sore thumb in some of the other settings its used for. The completely ad-hoc design of various Foci aren't exactly a virtue, either.