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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scurvy_Platypus" data-source="post: 5543110" data-attributes="member: 43283">Sorry, it's not clear to me... what exactly are you asking is OGC in terms of the products? BESMd20? SASd20? Presumably it's not M&M.Like I said, I've got the Stingy Gamer's edition of both of them so it's easy enough to pull what exactly is OGC. Chapter 2 is declared as OGC for SASd20 by not being declared Product Identity; this includes all the PMV stuff.No, I don't miss them... I just have no way of addressing them. At the end of the day, you don't agree with how they've deconstructed it; ok, now what? As I've already said, _all_ point-based systems that are expecting characters to engage with the CR system (like BESMd20 does, but M&M doesn't since M&M ignores CR) are of a fundamental concern to me.As for the Wizards paying more, it _is_ addressed specifically when they're talking about the class breakdowns in the first place. BESMd20 shifts combat to being skill-based. It explicitly says:If they didn't have that, then people instead would be complaining about how you should take the Wizard class if you want to be a fighter because it's going to give you more points for your fighting skills.I don't see BESMd20 being able to win here; no matter what, you're not going to be happy with it I think. Shifting combat from the class/level progression to skill-based is what's introducing this problem in the first place. Going back to the BaB approach will resolve it, although that does have problems itself. *shrug* The decision to go for skill-based combat is... well, it is what it is. It's not my own preference, but some people rage on d20's class/level system and want skill-based, so... pick your audience and realise you're losing others.It _is_ choices like this though that tell me there was a serious lack of d20 system mastery going on. I mean, I don't consider myself to have a particularly high level of mastery, just because I'm not interested in learning all of the rules and the way they've got their funky interactions; but I can still see some powerful benefits to the class/level approach. It's just that many games take a lazy approach to class/level design, staying with the standard D&D approach.Skills-based combat is something that isn't going to appeal to most fans of d20 and ups the complication factor in a system that's already got a lot of moving parts to begin with. Note I didn't say "players" but "fans" of d20; BESMd20 was intended to try and tap into the already existing fan-base, as opposed to trying to bring people over to the d20 system.Yup, nice to be able to hold differing opinions and not have it be a reflection of some sort of personal character failing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />For all that I've presented a differing viewpoint on BESMd20, it _is_ a flawed game. It's not inssurmountable, but using it requires some very conscious choices on the part of the designer I think. I personally choose it for a number of reasons, one of them being that I find M&M to be overly complicated and fiddly, as it moves editions. Honestly, I think Tri-Stat is overly complicated and fiddly too; stuff like PMVs is needless complication in my opinion. Even BESM 2E was shifting to a more complicated framework and Tri-Stat just kinda firmed that up. I skimmed 3E BESM and had zero interest in it period.I think this bias on my part is also part of why I've got little problem making BESMd20 work for me and is another little source of it's flaws. I'm interested in getting at the heart of something and then simplifying it down; I care more about the... principles? foundations?... of the rules than explicit expressions of them.BESM started off as a pretty light system and over time got more complicated (Tri-Stat evolution). Then it made the jump of its overall framework being ported over to a completely new system (d20). I think it kinda needed to figure out whether it _really_ wanted to be a complex rule system or not in the first place, before trying to leverage that framework in the d20 rules.BESMd20 is a diamond in the rough. M&M is a diamond that's been cut and polished. If you need/want to shape a diamond, you're going to have to decide if you want to recut M&M or take BESMd20 and clean it up.Thanks for the discussion Walking Dad, it's really nice to _have_ a discussion where opinions and ideas are bounced at each other, as opposed to an arguement where folks are proclaiming the one way.I'll see if I can dig out the explicit OGC citations from my Stingy Gamer's editions when I get home from Thor tonight.</blockquote>

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