I took a run at bullets in one campaign and the concept worked well. Players used it to customize aspects of a character that they deemed important and ignored the rest.
My rogue, for example, plucked immunity to surprise from alert and ignored the Init bonus. It made sense for his character...
From your writing, it looks like you are interpreting my plan as similar to the DMG alternate rules, wherein players have to train and meet XP requirements to level. I'm not suggesting that at all.
I would like there to be avenues for players to customize their characters without sacrificing...
As a player, I never liked the way feats where problematic because 1) the "optimal" feats represented suc an immediate power increase, and 2) "roleplaying" feats came at too high an opportunity cost. As a DM, I am looking to mitigate both these issues (and reduce the pressure to go V.Human) in...