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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5726180" data-attributes="member: 54877">It might be useful to think of these abilities like Lego blocks--or more accurately, the base Lego blocks that everyone used to get in a basic set before everything got so specialized. Let me be almost completely abstract here for a moment: Character abilities come in blocks. Picture these as the Lego blocks with the "dots". That is, your basic block is the "thick" one (about 1/4" high) with a 2x4 array of dots. You can also have a half, thick block, with a 2x2 array of dots. And then you have a few niche blocks that are 2x1 thick, and the "thin" ones (1/3 of the thick one) in 2x1, 2x2, and 2x4 configurations. For illustration purposes, that's all we have.  Classes are distinguished by the common colors: Fighter is red, wizard is white, cleric is blue, and rogue is yellow. You put one of the less common green blocks on a cleric, you get a druid. Put the same block on a fighter, you get a ranger. There are, of course, all kinds of embellishments you can make on this, with the sets that have more specialty pieces. But assume that each "dot" on a basic dot represents the approximate worth of that block. (Or if you like, that a "toughness" 2x4 block has about 8 related abilities on it, though I don't mean it that exact.) So a bland but workable starting fighter is to grab three red, 2x4 blocks and stack them. But you can also get two red, 2x4 blocks and two red 2x2 blocks. It might even be that two particular 2x2 blocks more or less replicates a particular 2x4 block, but that's ok. Not all of them do, and presumably that 2x4 block is so popular they went ahead an included it as one bigger block and two smaller ones.  I think one of the reasons that the "feat" terms seems a bit off is that we think of "feats" as more the specialty pieces, used to customize once the basics are there. You'd like to have some basic "blocks" that are the foundation, and then embellish from there--or not, if that is the way you want to play.  Anyway, hope that twist helps somehow, from someone who also knows what brainstorming means ... <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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