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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 4518399" data-attributes="member: 5435">Tried and true.Even limited to fighters' hands, weapon spec. dramatically increases the damage output of low-level parties. This is a thorny issue.  By giving it to all fighting classes essentially for free, you might inadvertently create a party with a "glass jaw"--to challenge them in combat you need tougher creatures, but the party is too low level to take the damage those tougher creatures dish out.I'm not saying weapon spec. is a bad thing, but it raises a lot of potential problems. A lot of people on the Dragonsfoot forum have suggested delaying its advantages, especially the extra attack; for example, you could say that it allows the character to gain extra attacks as if they were 3 levels higher.I do this as well.Personally, I don't find that level limits ever succeeded in creating a humanocentric party (as was apparently Gygax' intent). That's why I introduced a cost at character creation to be a demi-human. Both could probably use tweaking for your campaign, but don't bother unless someone shows an interest.Psionics are a central feature of my campaign, and I think the rules work pretty well... but a PC who gets "lucky" is usually pretty vulnerable to psionic attack. The added danger of psionic encounters is supposed to be a balancing factor for the character with psionics. Just make sure the players are aware of this. (Although again, it's not likely to come up. Don't bother thinking too hard about it unless it does.)If you're allowing weap. spec., they'll probably need more HP at low levels because they'll be facing tougher monsters. (see above) I would use max HP at first level.  Half HP at first level would be OK for a PH-only campaign with no damage inflation.Regarding weapon vs. AC, you might just reserve it for corner cases: tell the players that if they find themselves up against humanoid opponents in good armor, most small and slashing weapons will get a pretty decent penalty to hit.I could never hold on to mine, either. The new character classes are no loss, I would say, even though I allow two of them. Some of the spells and magic items are pretty good, but you won't miss them. I use something similar based on the character's written background. Skills and NWPs, by giving the PCs specific tools to interact with the world, tend to limit their creativity. Vaguely defined backgrounds are easier to apply in a wide range of situations, and foster a 'can-do' attitude in the campaign. T1-4 is kind of a meat grinder, so I expect your players might not be investing too much time in their backgrounds. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":-)" title="Smile    :-)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":-)" />Cheers,Ben</blockquote>

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