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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Victim" data-source="post: 872240" data-attributes="member: 78">I disagree on most matters.A system should be all about mechanics.  Otherwise you don't have much of a system.  Mechanics are generally expressed in numbers.  You can inject personality and life into characters whether they have a detailed list of quantified abilities or not.Actually, I really don't like background feats.  Feats, while new and cool, aren't the only tool for developing a character.  You don't need feats for everthing.  In fact, using feats to represent things can hinder character growth, because you may have to wait several levels for a feat slot to open up.Maybe the reason no one takes Atheletics is that they don't feel that climbing and jumping ability is important to their character, don't often use climb or jump, don't need an additional bonus because they can climb or jump anything anyway, or because they feel that their good physical stats and skills already represent atheleticism.  You can be plenty atheletic without taking the feat after all.  On the other hand, you can't usually fight effectively with 2 weapons without taking a feat.  Without weapon or fighting style related feats, the fighter isn't really using the optimally, is he?  A character with extensive training in a weapon (feats, possibly stat arrangement) will display far greater mastery than a guy who who just grabs it and starts going to town.  Just looking a human War 1s for simplicity, consider an archer with dex as a prime stat, point blank shot, and rapid shot.  Then imagine the knight (in training, depending on campaign standards) with some other prime stat, and mounted combat feats.  Yeah, he's a real bow expert.  The problem with fumbles is that doesn't really seem be a good way to include them.  A reflex save means bards and rogues are better at avoiding fumbles than fighters.  There isn't really a base attack check, which seems most appopriate.Grouping all cleric spells by domain wouldn't be so great either.  Either most clerics would have very few spells, or you'd have to waste tons of space listing many common spells repeatedly.  Also, you run into lots of implied flavor text based on how closely you see the gods being tied to their portfolios.  The default view seems to be that even outside their areas of influence, gods are still, well gods, so they have a broad range of powerful abilities.  So clerics drawing upon divine power get a broad range of effects.  It might make just as much sense to limit arcane casters to only one school, or only one type of element.WP/VP, IMHO, seems to have the same basic flaws as normal HP but with some more complicated effects because of its pseudo realism.  After playing Spycraft at 10th level, I don't really see the benefit.  Our soldier had more twenty WP, IIRC.  Weapon damage is such that he could take multiple crits from small arms.  In fact, most characters will be able to take a small arms hit and remain okay.  However, because of the rarity of crits, fights usually work out the same as if HP were used.  Shoot enemy guy, deal VP.  Fly by enemy so that he's in the arc of a helo rotor -> VP.  Crash copter on enemy -> more VP.  Etc.  Enemy runs out of VP, then shoot him and kill him.  You could apply the same flavor text to normal HP and have pretty much the same effects.  Sure, crits can be more dangerous, but most people playing DnD don't seem overly concerned about orcs with greataxes, even though they'll kill many mid level characters outright on a lucky crit.Poison and disease are most effective against low level characters because those are the realistic ones.  High level characters are larger than life.  They aren't normal.  When surronded by lots of soldiers, normal people don't think "Hey, now seems like the perfect time to test out my Bladed Whirlwind sword technique."  Customizeable, scaling class abilities, like the rogue's special tricks starting from level 10, are cool.More campaign advice, from low magic, to same magic but fewer items, to more magic, etc.  I think that a DMG should have lots of DMing advice and fewer random tables.There's already support for your XP changes in the DMG.  Alot of the sections are headed with variant though.</blockquote>

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