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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DrSpunj" data-source="post: 1523079" data-attributes="member: 994">Right! Thanks. My apologies for leading you in the wrong direction with my statements. While I do believe the formula to be a bit complex, I much prefer consistency when I can have it. With literally everything else in the game rounding down, I'd personally rather go with the formula and round down than your simplified version and round up. <shrugs>ouini and I tried to do that with Familiars when we were trying to go with a point-based/Mana spell system over a year ago. That could certainly work here, but then you have to decide how many points to allocate in that direction. Is 1 CB a fair cost to improve your Familiar level? That should probably be pretty similar to whatever it takes to improve your Animal Companion and/or Special Mount level. And how does that compare to increasing your Bardic Lore level? Is a +1 to Lore checks worth the same cost as improving your Familiar/AC/Special Mount by one level? If not, which would you change?I'd probably go along with +1 to Bardic Lore costing 1 CB. After all, 1 CB buys you 2 SPs at any given level which you could spend on 2 specific Knowledge areas (depth of knowledge), and Bardic Lore is essentially a chance to know something about just about anything & everything (breadth of knowledge).But with that "measuring stick" in place how much should bumping your Familiar level be (given that a Familiar's abilities improve every other level)? How about your Animal Companion level (given that improves about every 3rd level)?And while it sounds like you disagree, I don't think with a classless system like this that it's too much to ask from a player to keep track of how they spent their CBs each level. While it doesn't have to be something they keep on their character sheets for typical gameplay, it should be something that the DM keeps on hand for when they level. I'm already asking someone to keep track of the their fractional BAB, fractional Defense bonus and potentially Half/Full caster level. Writing down what feats you took at 1st level, then 2nd, 3rd, etc. is a pretty easy list to maintain, IMO. Wow! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":eek:" title="Eek!    :eek:"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":eek:" />I missed your edit until just now. You zeroed in on several of the key points immediately. Thanks! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f60e.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":cool:" title="Cool    :cool:"  data-smilie="6"data-shortname=":cool:" />Let me start out by saying that I did the Core classes in nearly alphabetical order (I think I did Bard before Barbarian), so I struggled through how to do the Cleric & Druid before the Paladin & Ranger.With the Bard it was easy to build his magic around Bardic Music. Originally I hadn't thought about the key magic ability score, so Bardic Music was just about the songs. His ability to cast in Light Armor was similar to the Spellsword's ability, so I wanted to do something along those lines but I didn't want it available to anyone because it would become a must-have for all casters. Bardic Casting could just as easily be worded to say "no Spell Failure while in Light Armor as long as your spells have a verbal component".When I hit the Cleric, I also hit a big wall. Aside from all the martial abilities they get, along with 2 Good saves, they get an absolute ton of special/class abilities. No Spell Failure in armor, Spontaneous Casting, Turn Undead, 2 Domains, and their magic attribute is Wisdom. While each Domain and Turn Undead made sense to me as individual feats, No Spell Failure I couldn't put enough prereqs on to keep balanced, and Spontaneous Casting was just...awkward to put into feat form.So that's when I started tinkering with Restrictions. What if all those abilities were gifts from your deity for your worship? After all, in Core if you snub your deity all your Clerical abilities are withdrawn. Shouldn't it be similar in this system? With that in mind I made the first feat a Cleric takes reflect their devotion & worship to their deity. In doing so, I granted them three things: No Spell Failure, Spontaneous Casting, and magic use dependent upon Wisdom. Now, that Divine Restriction feat could just as easily be called "Divine Training" and I've thought about renaming it that since I think it's a better reflection of what the feat represents, especially with the 3 ranks of  Knowledge(Religion) prereq.Regardless, while worshipping a deity gives you access to a lot of cool and powerful abilities, you just saddled yourself with a lot your deity's baggage to get them. That's why the Divine Training costs you zero points (net). While the feat costs 5 CBs just like all the others, you get -5 CBs back because of the roleplaying restrictions you just accepted. That's why this feat can only be taken with the DM's permission, as both of you should be very clear about your expectations about the whole thing.When I came to the Druid I basically just copied the Divine Training feat and renamed it "Nature Restriction" which I'll probably change to Nature Training now. It gives you access to all the cool Nature abilities that Druids (& Rangers) get but brings with it similar baggage, namely the Druid's prohibition against metal armor & shields as well as a devotion to maintain the balance (if True Neutral, assuming you are using alignment like Core) or revere Nature above all other things.When I finally got down to the Paladin I just used the Divine Training feat again, but this time the deal with the DM would include not only whatever your deity required for worship but also the Paladin's Code. Break it and you lose all your divine abilities (since if you lose a prereq you lose any feats higher up in the chain as well).While I did originally separate restrictions into Major & Minor I didn't end up using the Minor restrictions anywhere. The Oathsworn's Swear an Oath ended up just being a variation of the above.EXACTLY! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />I wanted to keep the same CB totals between Core & AU so I could run them together for my campaign this summer. That was also the primary reason I bumped the HD low to a d6 and the SP low to 4/level, so that Core didn't lose out to the AU classes. Keeping AU magic for all classes made that a whole lot easier to balance. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Anyway, while I did certainly use the Core & AU classes as a framework to figure out the balance of the system, you've picked up on the fact that if you're okay with how it works out you don't need classes anymore at all. They're meaningless. It's the feat paths that help distinguish most characters, though BAB vs Skills vs Magic still play a large part as well. I'm not familiar with Rolemaster, so I can't say how close this would be to the mage hunter you're speaking of. Regardless, this PC hits the ground running with Full magic and max Skills. I'm curious what you plan on doing for 2nd level and beyond as you'd be hard pressed to continue with all of that. Keeping Full Magic at 7 CBs is a huge chunk of the 12 you get to spend.And are you looking at the updated sheets? I've done skills differently with the new ones, though you may be using what ouini suggested. Instead of using the Poor/Average/Good progressions from Core & AU I'm going with a free +1 to any save at every level (including 1st), and then 1 CB to get another +1 thereafter. Max (per save) of +2 at 1st level and no more than +1 at all later levels. If you want +2 to Reflex & Will at 1st level that's a total of +4, but the first +1 is free so that only costs you 3 CBs. That gives you another point to play with somewhere.Yeah, that's another limitation of the sheet. If you don't want Defense you pretty much have to zero it out and rebalance the classes accordingly. Same thing happens if you want to keep d4 HDs and 2 SPs/lvl if you're following Core (though the latter's pretty easy to accomodate by leaving the values alone and just changing the labels for SPs/lvl to 2,4,6,8). As I've said before, I made this for selfish reasons. While I'm happy to share it with anyone who wants it, it's got some of my own idiosyncracies about 3.5 built into it. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue    :p"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" />Thanks!DrSpunj</blockquote>

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