Imaro
Legend
Sure, but then you have all the flaws of 3.5. There will always be something missing, and knowing that you _could_ expand your system relatively easily and it might even happen eventually anyway is more attractive to me then the having a system with fundamental flaws.
Why is this true? My philosophy is if you don't have enough of a game, or it's not fleshed out to the point of your previously released edition (talking core only here)... you should really reconsider releasing the new edition until you do have enough material to make it equal to your previous offerings. Case in point Exalted 2nd edition actually had more in it than Exalted 1e and while I have since stopped playing Exalted 2nd, I don't feel like I wasted my money on it. 4e not so much.
The question is which flaws you percieve, which of them can be considered fundamental and will most likely not be overcome without rebuilding the system? This isn't always a clear-cut system, otherwise we'd all play one edition.
I'm a little lost on this logic but I believe my answer above encompasses this questiion as well.
But aren't you just causing the system to break down if you want this? "I have Thievery +9, but I really want to emphasize on lock-picking, so I take this feat that adds me +3 to it for picking locks. But then another one comes and says "but there are different types of locks, and I find it important my character is best at picking Dwarven Treasure Locks,so I pick this feat to get another +3" - at some point you break the "ceiling" of expected bonuses, and this will be a problem. And if it doesn't cause a problem, the fact that you were able to mechanically diversify your character here will probably also not matter for the actual game effects, so you could just cut out the entire game mechanics and just say "I am best at picking Dwarven Treasure Locks!" and still use the same Thievery +9 bonus for it.
Uhm, no...You see by breaking the skills down in a more granular way (Heck even just having the ability to specialize) yet creating a blanket rule that a skills total cannot go above a certain number...you can avoid this problem. If the average range for skills at 1st level is a +5 to +8 total, you make it so that no one can have a total skill bonus above +10...no matter what they stack. Thus someone who wants to be really good at a specialization has that option without it being an infinite and uncontrollable number.
If you're only interested in one specific subsystem, pick the game that does this one best. But if you notice that you also need others, and the system with the best subsystem offers bad others, you have to make trade-offs.
Huh? The designers at WotC stressed how good the skill system they created was going to be, and how it was going to be leaps and bounds beyond 3.5. Yet, IMO, it's the same skill system with extended rolls now (something other game systems have been doing for years, and much better than D&D) with less options of what skills to use, because it's been cut back so much.
For someone who wanted to be better at a specific aspect of Thievery for instance and not another, it is pretty easy to do. If your trained in Thievery (as I assume one would be if this was part of their character concept). Then the +5 for Trained I would simply only count for when that aspect of Thievery is used, for everything else use the Untrained number. Fairly simple.
This isn't being "better" in a specialization of thievery...it's being sub-par in everything but your specialization in which your the same as an average individual who was trained...there's a big difference.
And exactly which ones are the "adventure" tasks? The problem is that "adventure" has been redefined as "dungeon crawling", and there are many more things that make up for a good story (and a good game, too). Haggling with merchants, running keeps or domains, equipping and managing militia men for an upcoming orc invasion, womanizing between fights, hunting and foraging while traveling... I like to have these things reflected in my games, and I don't see the reason why these should be "just winged up" and combat should be played to the lesser minutiae, blow by blow.
If I want a detailed system, I want the same level of detail for everything. If I'm playing make-believe, I don't want to slow things down with a battlemat and miniatures when combat comes up.
QFT, this is why people make the claim that D&D 4e has less roleplay. While not correctly stated, I get the gist of it. I think it's more 4e has less trappings, mechanics, and tools, to mechanically represent the effects of those things I wish to portray through my roleplaying, As opposed to those things centered around the pure game aspect of the rpg (mostly combat).