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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scurvy_Platypus" data-source="post: 4388335" data-attributes="member: 43283">Interesting.Would you care to expand on this a little? Here's why I ask...As I said, an awful lot of the problems people have with point-buy stuff is a combination of balance, along with their own personal biases in terms of gameplay.For example, BESMd20 refigures how much is calculated because the author felt that mage types were overpowered in regular D&D. BESMd20 got a bunch of criticism for it, although these days people seem to be perfectly happy to say mages overshadow melee-types.The nice thing was, in this particular case the author explicitly noted his bias and then went into the calculations for figuring the cost of magic.If the author of something wants things to look more like Conan than Avatar the Last Airbender, I personally really want to know this upfront. Too often systems present themselves as being "better" mathematically/mechanically and the "better" part really means "This suits my preferences better" rather than "There's a problem here, and this is what I feel will resolve the problem".If you want an example of this kind of hatchet job? Point Buy Numbers. A riff off of Buy the Numbers. Supposedly the author started out with the idea of using Buy the Numbers for d20 Modern and had to keep making modifications/changes as he went along, and finally decided it was so extensive he should put it out as a full product.He (in my opinion) butchered Buy the Numbers, gave absolutely no indication of what he changed from it, nor did he say _why_ it was changed... it was a really disappointing purchase, and worthless as far as I'm concerned.Buy the Numbers and Grim Tales are both _good_ examples of how to do this kind of toolkit approach. BESMd20 falls down hard on this job because they didn't actually give explicit breakdowns of the core classes using their system, just a point total.Buy the Numbers and Grim Tales on the other hand present the "base" way of doing things, and then note several different approaches that are also possible. They mention the potential ramifications of the choices, without using discouraging language ("If your a powergamer, you might prefer to do this instead...")Some additional thoughts in general about the project.As a fan of point-based stuff, I've been occasionally annoyed or frustrated by projects like these. Too often it seems a product like this is put out, and then there's no "support" for it. I don't mean an endless stream of new products to buy that are hooked into the system. I mean practical tools, examples, and even just answering questions about the darn thing.I hope the project provides a bit of guidance in using the system as a class-building tool too. Buy the Numbers assumes that people using it are looking to go the class-less route. But I'd say there's just as much (if not more) interest in being able to build a class as there is in avoiding classes. Some people really like the ease that classes provide, while others are interested in taking a class from another source and "translating it" so that it fits with all the other existing classes.Having all the base classes laid out using the system, as well as showing the progression of said classes through the 20 levels is something I think would be _very_ nice to have for folks looking at this sort of thing.Additionally, make up an entirely new class and show how it progresses along too. Instead of simply doing a standard class ("Ok, lets say you want to create a class that combines the Fighter with some mystical elements...") do something a bit more out there. Like a shapeshifter class. That way people can see not only how standard classes look, but they can see the _actual_ flexibility  of the system.Of course, if you're already in layout it's probably too late to include that. So put it out as a teaser or web-enhancement.Something else that's handy? A worksheet.It could be Excel and help do some of the heavy lifting as far as the math is concerned.It could be a form-fillable pdf. PDFs can do a number of basic calculations, and if you explicitly note that people can use something like Foxit reader to enter and save the values on the sheet, it becomes much handier for the GM.Hopefully you'll be able to get enough people to mess around with it. If there's a place for them to talk about it and post examples of what they're doing, it'll be nice both for people interested in the product as well as the folks that have already adopted it. Then you'll get to see people trying to branch out and do things like include monster abilities as class features and so forth.Of course... if you're just a fan and not actually a representative of Dreamscarred Press... ummmm... well, I guess I just listed out a manifesto of sorts in case anyone decides to take their own stab at doing such a thing. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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