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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 6474122" data-attributes="member: 4937">Eating, paying taxes, and managing your life aren't usually problems that require a lot of rules.&nbsp; They are more about style of play.&nbsp;&nbsp; &quot;Slice of life&quot; style play can be fun with the right people, but my experience is that not everyone is into it and it doesn't really work well if you have more than 2-3 players.&nbsp; The more players you have, the less attention you can pay to any of them individually, and the more those vignettes start to seem like pointless book keeping to the players and the more they detract from the story everyone is committed to rather than interesting character development.&nbsp; Even so, you're mistaken to think that those things will prevent min/maxing.&nbsp;&nbsp; Instead, if they are mostly color, they'll be ignored.&nbsp;&nbsp; If they are critical to success, one member of the party will designate his or herself the party clerk, and sacrifice combat ability for fantastic ability to manage finances, barter with merchants, do the taxes, and smooze the bureaucrats.&nbsp; Better yet, the party will simply do as my current PC's have done and hire an NPC clerk to manage the books for them. &nbsp;As a practical matter, classes usually do the opposite.&nbsp; Consider a case like the D&amp;D wizard, and suppose that you could build classes by buying features by spending points.&nbsp; A true optimizer encountering such a system would spend nothing on buying BAB at all.&nbsp;&nbsp; If a D&amp;D wizard could advance his BAB not at all, or at half the rate, it would be generally worth it.&nbsp; Whatever points would have been spent to gain any amount of attack bonus could be better invested in broader spell use, or more spell slots, or extra feats, or unlimited cantrips, or even higher HD.&nbsp; The penalty of never having a bonus 'to hit' could be easily averted by just avoiding attack spells that required a to hit roll.&nbsp;&nbsp; Similarly, since skills are generally weak in 3e D&amp;D especially compared to spells, and since intelligence is the Wizard's forte to begin with, a truly optimized wizard would want to spend the minimum amount possible on the number of skills the class had access to or the number of skill points they had, and again investing the savings into something more useful to its spell use.&nbsp; Only a few skills are truly essential and those could be easily covered by the character's intelligence bonus.&nbsp;&nbsp; And so forth.&nbsp; I see classes proposed like that in the house rules forum all the time, and I have to tell them the designer the same thing every time: &quot;It's not balanced.&nbsp; You are trading away things that aren't essential for things that enhance your core strength.&nbsp; Wizard is already a tier 1 class, and you are just building a better wizard.&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; Much of what is great about a well designed class system (and I'm not saying that 3.X is actually all that well designed) is that it forces the player to 'spend points' on things that an optimizer might not spend points on, and thereby having a more well rounded character.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 6474122, member: 4937"] Eating, paying taxes, and managing your life aren't usually problems that require a lot of rules. They are more about style of play. "Slice of life" style play can be fun with the right people, but my experience is that not everyone is into it and it doesn't really work well if you have more than 2-3 players. The more players you have, the less attention you can pay to any of them individually, and the more those vignettes start to seem like pointless book keeping to the players and the more they detract from the story everyone is committed to rather than interesting character development. Even so, you're mistaken to think that those things will prevent min/maxing. Instead, if they are mostly color, they'll be ignored. If they are critical to success, one member of the party will designate his or herself the party clerk, and sacrifice combat ability for fantastic ability to manage finances, barter with merchants, do the taxes, and smooze the bureaucrats. Better yet, the party will simply do as my current PC's have done and hire an NPC clerk to manage the books for them. As a practical matter, classes usually do the opposite. Consider a case like the D&D wizard, and suppose that you could build classes by buying features by spending points. A true optimizer encountering such a system would spend nothing on buying BAB at all. If a D&D wizard could advance his BAB not at all, or at half the rate, it would be generally worth it. Whatever points would have been spent to gain any amount of attack bonus could be better invested in broader spell use, or more spell slots, or extra feats, or unlimited cantrips, or even higher HD. The penalty of never having a bonus 'to hit' could be easily averted by just avoiding attack spells that required a to hit roll. Similarly, since skills are generally weak in 3e D&D especially compared to spells, and since intelligence is the Wizard's forte to begin with, a truly optimized wizard would want to spend the minimum amount possible on the number of skills the class had access to or the number of skill points they had, and again investing the savings into something more useful to its spell use. Only a few skills are truly essential and those could be easily covered by the character's intelligence bonus. And so forth. I see classes proposed like that in the house rules forum all the time, and I have to tell them the designer the same thing every time: "It's not balanced. You are trading away things that aren't essential for things that enhance your core strength. Wizard is already a tier 1 class, and you are just building a better wizard." Much of what is great about a well designed class system (and I'm not saying that 3.X is actually all that well designed) is that it forces the player to 'spend points' on things that an optimizer might not spend points on, and thereby having a more well rounded character. [/QUOTE]

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