Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
[COMPLETE] Looking back at the limited series: Player's Option, Monstrous Arcana, Odyssey, and more!
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Orius" data-source="post: 8538678" data-attributes="member: 8863"><p>Ah yes, Skills & Powers. What a mess. It's not a can of worms, it's a 55 gallon drum of undead purple worms.</p><p></p><p>It was a bold experiment, but a lot of stuff was broken and imbalanced, and it didn't integrate well as well as it should have with Combat & Tactics.</p><p></p><p>Subabilities were a mistake. Too many of them could be minmaxed in broken ways. Strength was the most infamous with one subability that only boosted encumbrance while the other boosted attack rolls and damage. Guess where players dumped there. Intelligence was another one where one subability gave extra CP for proficiencies while the other only affected wizard spell use. If you weren't a wizard, naturally you boosted the proficiencies. And in return, all the subabilities added were more complexity which wasn't worth it.</p><p></p><p>The point-based character building system was broken unless the DM put a good deal of oversight into it. While it could be used to build some good custom classes, there was a lot that could be exploited as well. Racial builds maybe were broken too. The flaws in the NWP chapter are also trouble, since they can be exploited for extra CP while not giving much of a disadvantage to a PC (biggest offender is Color Blindness, which might as well have been called "One Free Proficiency" since D&D doesn't have any sort of penalties for being color blind).</p><p></p><p>So give this book to minmaxers and you get a bunch of hulking color blind dudes who can't carry anything, but hit like Mack trucks, are skilled out the ass but aren't good at learning and have some sickly tricked out class abilities. Okay maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but Skills & Powers can really be abused.</p><p></p><p>The wizard specialties weren't bad, it's just that Spells & Magic expanded on them in more detail.</p><p></p><p>The psionics system wasn't bad, it's just that it was designed for the revised Dark Sun box, and wasn't integrated into the PO material. Worse, the system is broken as written, because the psionic attacks are likely to make the psionicist using the attacks lose more PSPs than his opponent. There was errata to fix that problem later on though, but it definitely smacks of a lack of playtesting. It's a shame because the system is a bit smoother than the Psionics Handbook rules.</p><p></p><p>The book isn't all bad. The NWP rules are much better than the core rules in the PHB. The kits are pretty good and more tightly integrated into proficiencies. It's just that there's a lot of broken material that's highly exploitable.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Orius, post: 8538678, member: 8863"] Ah yes, Skills & Powers. What a mess. It's not a can of worms, it's a 55 gallon drum of undead purple worms. It was a bold experiment, but a lot of stuff was broken and imbalanced, and it didn't integrate well as well as it should have with Combat & Tactics. Subabilities were a mistake. Too many of them could be minmaxed in broken ways. Strength was the most infamous with one subability that only boosted encumbrance while the other boosted attack rolls and damage. Guess where players dumped there. Intelligence was another one where one subability gave extra CP for proficiencies while the other only affected wizard spell use. If you weren't a wizard, naturally you boosted the proficiencies. And in return, all the subabilities added were more complexity which wasn't worth it. The point-based character building system was broken unless the DM put a good deal of oversight into it. While it could be used to build some good custom classes, there was a lot that could be exploited as well. Racial builds maybe were broken too. The flaws in the NWP chapter are also trouble, since they can be exploited for extra CP while not giving much of a disadvantage to a PC (biggest offender is Color Blindness, which might as well have been called "One Free Proficiency" since D&D doesn't have any sort of penalties for being color blind). So give this book to minmaxers and you get a bunch of hulking color blind dudes who can't carry anything, but hit like Mack trucks, are skilled out the ass but aren't good at learning and have some sickly tricked out class abilities. Okay maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but Skills & Powers can really be abused. The wizard specialties weren't bad, it's just that Spells & Magic expanded on them in more detail. The psionics system wasn't bad, it's just that it was designed for the revised Dark Sun box, and wasn't integrated into the PO material. Worse, the system is broken as written, because the psionic attacks are likely to make the psionicist using the attacks lose more PSPs than his opponent. There was errata to fix that problem later on though, but it definitely smacks of a lack of playtesting. It's a shame because the system is a bit smoother than the Psionics Handbook rules. The book isn't all bad. The NWP rules are much better than the core rules in the PHB. The kits are pretty good and more tightly integrated into proficiencies. It's just that there's a lot of broken material that's highly exploitable. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
[COMPLETE] Looking back at the limited series: Player's Option, Monstrous Arcana, Odyssey, and more!
Top