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I do find myself wandering to other systems, but it's always been that way for me, not something because of d20. I'm loving Ars Magica 5th edition, am looking forward to GMing some fast and furious Savage Worlds games, and still love GMing the old Marvel Superheroes RPG. I'm not tired of d20...

You'll definitely want to check your the new AU book Transcendance, which is coming out on PDF tomorrow. It's an entire book full of class variants, replacements of class abilities with class-specific feats, and other UA-esque ways of mucking with the system.

In play, I don't find that to be any restriction at all. Most settings have a broad variety of gods, and cleric players just choose a god that is in line with the kind of personality they want to play. So "clerics must follow the edicts of their god" is no more of a restriction than "players...

I agree about the reason for needing revisions, but not neccessarily about your conclusion that one isn't neccessary. I don't want another 'new edition' that's like 3.5, a bunch of tweaks and errata tacked on top of the same system. I could definitely handle a new edition that actually tackles...

My vote is for Druid, especially if you're only talking about core classes without prestige classes. Druids and Clerics are pretty close though. Wizards are also quite powerful at mid to high levels, when they start using all their save-or-die spells. They're very dependent on having other...

It would seem so. Judging from the previews, the concept of "class favored skills" works differently in IL than the way D&D's class and cross-class distinction works. It seems that each IL class gets access to a number of "Skill Groups", and can buy them for a skill point per rank in the...

1. Met and worked with dozens of people who have been tortured (it's my job) 2. Testified as an expert witness in Department of Homeland Security legal hearings 3. Had police officers draw their guns on me and order me to freeze (Friends and I were sparring with foam-and-pvc weapons, and the...

I miss Amber a lot. Many of the best roleplaying experiences I've had were in that game. I also miss playing in the rich settings of Ars Magica and Fading Suns. I'd also say that I miss playing Marvel Superheroes, but that may be a bit disingenious, because I GM it every few months, every...

Besides, they're not limited to 36 powers. The expanded knowledge feat gives them a new power, which can even be a discipline power or psywarrior power otherwise barred to them.

Whoops, I voted for the wrong Baker. I saw "Baker" and clicked it immediately, but clicked Colin instead of Tom. :(

No, I want to turn them into super feats, since that's essentially how they work - either you have them or you don't. But have them cost more than 2 points. Another alternative would be to make the extra ranks do something significant, but that would be difficult to do without shoehorning into...

This, IMO, is related to the problem of front-loaded powers like Invisibility and Incorporeal. Those powers essentially operate like super feats, but if they were feats they would be far too inexpensive, so they're powers. If super feats had a variable cost, then front-loaded powers like...

You could always do what Monte Cook did with his alternative sorcerer. No material components are neccessary, but if a spell calls for expensive material component, the sorcerer instead spends 1 XP per 25gp of the component's cost.

I agree with the general consensus: It's a great setting if you don't try to include everything ever published for it, and the system is a steaming pile of dog poo. The combination of the various city states of the Coalition, the wastes, Atlantis, the kingdoms of magic, Tolkeen, and the Rifts...

Possibly, but I wouldn't count on it, especially for the supplements. But even if SW sales are larger, the Star Wars license is probably extremely expensive, so the profits may be smaller than the other d20 books.

For those of us not in the know, how do magic items work in Call of Cthulhu?

You could even play it like a AD&D1e barbarian or 3.0 forsaker, for a character who refuses to use magic, and has taken vows to that effect. That's my favorite aspect of this game. I don't want another separate game with d20-based mechanics, I want a way to play D&D with more heroic action and...

I prefer it to D&D magic to such an extent that I'm not sure I could play a standard D&D spellcaster anymore. I dislike vancian magic, and prefer the flexibility of AU magic. My favorite aspect of that flexibility is that it encourages characters to ready a few spells that are cool but only...

In addition to the general balance issues and lack of guidelines on how to make balanced characters, what I most dislike is the skill system. Skills are way too expensive. I understand that the game's philosophy was to make characters rely more on Super Ability scores than on skill ranks, but...

In his design diary for Mystic Secrets, Mike Mearls wrote: "I think this ties back into the type of gamer I am. I'd much rather use an existing spell to do something really clever than just make up a new one. When I sit down to design spells, I always have to come up with five ideas for each...