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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 4576194" data-attributes="member: 8461">Before anything else, I want to say that I'm really enjoying Complete Control, and think it's the single best d20 book on the market for creating a character without worrying about classes and levels. NLF, congratulations on improving on Buy the Numbers!That said, I recently realized that the book didn't offer me as much freedom as I'd hoped for when I was initially looking it over. Upon reflection, this isn't really the book's fault, because both issues are ones that are separate from the question of levels and classes. They're as follows:1) I can't design a race the same way I'd design a class.By breaking down classes into various components that can be purchased with XP over time (particularly in regards to constant abilities, since almost all racial abilities are constant), I'm suddenly cognizant of the fact that the same thing could be done for racial abilities and powers, but hasn't been. It seems like it'd be easy enough, since things like stat modifiers are already covered in CC, and level adjustments are discussed as well. The book talks about converting them into abilities, but doesn't actually do so.Really, it seems like the only major problems here would be accurately pricing racial abilities in terms of XP costs, and coming up with a "holistic" list of what falls under racial abilities (e.g. are size and type also purchased for XP? And listing all of the racial abilities for creatures in the SRD that have PC racial information). I suppose there'd be some in-game oddities regarding how a character "learned" a new racial trick, but suddenly gaining darkvision or a powerful build doesn't seem that different from learning how to smite evil or wild shape.2) CC doesn't reduce dependency on magic items.Balancing XP expenditures works to keep CC characters in line with standard d20 characters, but only in regards to those characters without any items - GP values for PCs and NPCs isn't taken into account. While I've heard multiple accounts for how much gear factors into a character's level of playability (the best being Upper_Krust's postulation that gear is one-third of a PCs' strength in terms of calculating their effective level - e.g. a 12th-level fighter with no gear is basically an 8th-level character), there's no disagreement over the fact that characters without magic items are crippled.Without a system that translates GP-per-level values into abilities that can be purchased - the way CC breaks down class abilities purchasable via their XP values - characters are going to still be shackled to the "Christmas Tree" paradigm for how their characters function. Admittedly, this'd be very hard to do because of many factors, not the least of which are the varied nature of magic items, and balance issues regarding how items can be stolen, dispelled, sundered, etc., but it'd be a major break in moving away from prescribed d20 tropes that (N)PCs are currently bound to.Again, I can't really hold either of these against Complete Control, since racial abilities are slightly outside of its purview, and magic items are far outside it. That said, NLF, if you ever want to do an expansion for CC, please consider doing so in regards to one or both of these limitations!</blockquote>

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