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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kannik" data-source="post: 8955253" data-attributes="member: 984">Excellent!  We can reminisce and share together!Thinking more about what I'd written earlier, I think it could work quite well with 4 main bits:  Ancestry (physical origins), Origin (background/culture of growing up), Theme (profession/other things theme was used for), and Class.  Both Origin and Theme would have a description and would/could act like a trained skill in the situations (some of which are detailed in the description) where a DM wants a roll for something where it could apply.  Oh, if we're going approaches... I'm all in, a la FATE Accelerated!  (Also been using Approaches + Roles + Distinctions in a game we're running in Cortex Prime and it's been awesome.)  Hmmm, it's interesting that you see the skills as the approaches, and not the attributes, which I think is how I had it in my mind.  Plus the skills are kind of all over the place, like how would the knowledge skills be an approach?  But also the attributes themselves don't all line up well with approaches.  (Though that brings up an interesting idea to get rid of skills and go with a d20 Modern-ish approach where you get trained in a particular attribute and forgo skills entirely -- doubt that would ever fly with most players but its an interesting thought).  I prefer broad skills that can be applied in different ways, and I have no problem with them being broad as a player can always say "my character is no good at this" if they want to limit it.  We give you the keys to the kingdom; what's interesting is where you limit yourself to create character.  Even if the attributes in D&D are not that great as a bunch of distinctions, under this model the approach is the attribute, and the knowledge/training/area of expertise are the skills.  If going with the reverse, I'd say that firstly everyone should get enough skill picks to allow them to make an interesting set of choices and mix (allowing a flat pick of 4-5 skills per character seems to be a popular 4e house rule), and secondly there needs to be some crossover between Acrobatics and Athletics given the artificial way D&D handles the STR/DEX divide. (From my experience as a rock climber, martial artist, and etc I would assert they are much more closely related -- you may use more power or more finesse to do something, but the somethings you do are quite similar.  Plus, it makes for the funny reversal situation that many rogues end up being poor at climbing walls, despite that under 1e they were the only class that could do it!)  Perhaps;  I didn't dig too deep into the MC feats after the PHB came out, so there may be more stuff in future books that are serious imbalances.  At the time (prior to deep system exploration) it seemed like it could create some fun distinctions, but since it didn't super mesh with the rest of your class abilities it mostly provided some flexibility rather than power.  Absolutely.  More than once when I was DMing I'd casually suggested a hybrid idea to a player who ran with it and who then, later, would foil my plans or current action, and I'd jokingly say "Who told you to play that character?  Oh, right, I did...."  Loved it every time.  <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" /></blockquote>

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