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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 8201302" data-attributes="member: 42582">Frankly I think there's a lot to be said for this.Another option - and I appreciate I'm sketching this at a pretty high level of generality - is to have (say) two bonus dice to start with, and you can allocate them across a mundane profession (which could include gladiator, samurai etc but also swashbuckler, guild thief, forester, lay brother from a priory, etc) or a sphere of supernatural ability.A &quot;fighter&quot; or &quot;thief&quot; would be two dice into the mundane.A warrior-mage or MU/thief and the like is one mundane die and one supernatural die in &quot;arcane&quot;.A paladin or traditional cleric is one mundane die and one supernatural die in &quot;divine&quot; - maybe there's scope to play with dice sizes and so a paladin is d8/d4 whereas a cleric is d6/d6. A druid would be one die in &quot;primal/nature magic&quot; and one die in mundane &quot;forester&quot; or &quot;farmer&quot; or similar.A wizard is two dice in the &quot;arcane&quot;, a cleric/MU one die in &quot;arcane&quot; and one in &quot;divine&quot; (and so less broken than the traditional AD&amp;D cleric/MU) etc.Maybe a two-dice character has to specialise with the second die, which is how a warrior/samurai differs from a warrior/gladiator, and how a mage/illusionist differs from a mage/elementalist.Still staying at the overview level: I think if the game were to be created today and wasn't a cross-over from wargaming, there perhaps would be less reason to envisage the supernatural in terms of long lists of fairly concretely-defined abilities, and more reason to think of it in the way Cthulhu Dark or In A Wicked Age or HeroWars/Quest do, of opening up the fictional space for action declaration (eg an illusionist can declare &quot;I hide&quot; even though there's no cover; an elemental mage can declare &quot;I blow them all up&quot; even though s/he doesn't have a grenade ready to hand; etc). This allows a lean ruleset to cover a wide range of tropes.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 8201302, member: 42582"] Frankly I think there's a lot to be said for this. Another option - and I appreciate I'm sketching this at a pretty high level of generality - is to have (say) two bonus dice to start with, and you can allocate them across a mundane profession (which could include gladiator, samurai etc but also swashbuckler, guild thief, forester, lay brother from a priory, etc) or a sphere of supernatural ability. A "fighter" or "thief" would be two dice into the mundane. A warrior-mage or MU/thief and the like is one mundane die and one supernatural die in "arcane". A paladin or traditional cleric is one mundane die and one supernatural die in "divine" - maybe there's scope to play with dice sizes and so a paladin is d8/d4 whereas a cleric is d6/d6. A druid would be one die in "primal/nature magic" and one die in mundane "forester" or "farmer" or similar. A wizard is two dice in the "arcane", a cleric/MU one die in "arcane" and one in "divine" (and so less broken than the traditional AD&D cleric/MU) etc. Maybe a two-dice character has to specialise with the second die, which is how a warrior/samurai differs from a warrior/gladiator, and how a mage/illusionist differs from a mage/elementalist. Still staying at the overview level: I think if the game were to be created today and wasn't a cross-over from wargaming, there perhaps would be less reason to envisage the supernatural in terms of long lists of fairly concretely-defined abilities, and more reason to think of it in the way Cthulhu Dark or In A Wicked Age or HeroWars/Quest do, of opening up the fictional space for action declaration (eg an illusionist can declare "I hide" even though there's no cover; an elemental mage can declare "I blow them all up" even though s/he doesn't have a grenade ready to hand; etc). This allows a lean ruleset to cover a wide range of tropes. [/QUOTE]

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