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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6846932" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, I hadn't really touched on this point, but I think the FUNDAMENTAL flaw with the whole point buy concept is this one. 4e already has tons of options and detail, so much that ordinary casual players don't find it to be an easy game to access and use, particularly without DDI. I cannot imagine that such a point buy system would HELP with this. Not only would it be likely to 'help' the most casual players to make suckier characters, it would likely add little to their experience of the game, except a creeping feeling that they were 'doing it wrong' or lots of hand-wringing about how to make Hoppy the Axe Wielding Dwarf, which IMHO should be basically a "pick this one option and done" kind of concept (and a LOT of people want that kind of play).This is a lot of the reason Essentials was invented, as it tended to (if you used NOTHING but Essentials) greatly streamline the whole process. Now, obviously point buy WOULD eliminate thousands of powers, BUT it would have to replace them with MANY, perhaps thousands, of even more granular options in order to produce the same range of powers that exist now in 4e. In fact I'd venture to say that, without relaxing the 'crunchiness' of powers, it would be virtually impossible to implement most of the more interesting 4e powers as pure point buy. Many of them have weird and rather corner-case effects. So, you'd end up with a system that produced much more generic power effects. It might just be simpler to eliminate all but the most generic powers from 4e and just leave it at that. The end result might be pretty much the same, and have less downside. In my design, and I know I've said this a few times, I've got the power list down to around the size of the old 1e PHB spell lists, roughly 300 powers. I did this by reducing the number of classes, moving a lot of powers into source lists (as was suggested above earlier as well), made all powers scaling where appropriate, cut back to 20 levels, and aggressively pruned out redundant powers. With just a few classes and somewhat heavier-weight themes there just isn't the need for the vast numbers of powers. Feats simply don't exist, as such, in my game either at this point, though in effect its still possible to achieve the same result with boons. The upshot is powers can still be quirky and unique, but its now VERY easy to find what you want and run with it. Most characters also have under 6 powers ('Epic' characters might weigh in at a dozen, but that's still WAY better than high level standard 4e).</blockquote>

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