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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sanglant" data-source="post: 346111" data-attributes="member: 7234">Overcomplicating the problem?Jamis,I may be jumping in over my head a bit here, but bear with me.  First, let me say there are tons of great ideas on this thread already.  However, I think you may be overcomplicating the problem a bit.  I'm not entirely certain I can really explain my thoughts on this very coherently, but I'll give it a shot.Think of character as a collection of small entities.  The complexity of the character generation process doesn't stem from the number of entities, but rather from the relationships between those entities.  The relationships create the complexity.  However, if you break down the entities into sufficiently small pieces, you can minimize that complexity.For example, take a character class.  Instead of defining it via traditional means, define it by the incremental benefits.  Take the dragon disciple: at 1st level they receive +2 Fort, +2 Will, d6 HP, +1 nat armor, and 1 bonus spell.  This collection of additions would be grouped under an entity like dragon disciple (1).  Similarly there would be a dragon disciple (2) ... (10) that described the incremental benefits at each level. If there are generic bits that do not change for a given level and class (such as HP for most classes) that information could be cataloged in an additional entity referenced by the individual level entities.Following this type of thinking you end up with a description of a character as follows (each line is a separate entity with a relationship attaching the indented item to the preceding non-indented item):Character|-Class| |-Sorcerer (1)| | |-SorcererLevel| |-Sorcerer (2)| | |-SorcererLevel| |-Sorcerer (3)| | |-SorcererLevel| |-Sorcerer (4)| | |-SorcererLevel| |-Sorcerer (5)| | |-SorcererLevel| |-Dragon Disciple (1)The next important aspect of this is time.  All relationships have a potential time factor.  They could have a start and/or end time (or neither).  This provides for historical snapshots as well as sequential information.The other advantage I see to this entity-relationship model (particularly with a very fine grained implementation) is its ability to go well beyond character generation.  It becomes possible to use the same basic system to describe entire campaign worlds.  Additionally it allows you to build a campaign world in a more logical manner, one entity and one relationship at a time.Since I'm not sure how clear I've been, let me try to summarize.  Basically, anything  can be an entity (e.g. country, city, building, room, character, class, attribute, modifier, class level, item, item type, treaty, organization, etc.) and all of the information about that entity can be described by static data (data that never changes with time) and a collection of defined relationships to other entities.Did that make sense?BTW, I'm very interested in any feedback anyone has on this idea.</blockquote>

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