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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ainamacar" data-source="post: 6121947" data-attributes="member: 70709">Gotta hand it to Mearls for not noodling around in this article. Even some of the vague bits are interestingly vague, rather than just frustratingly so.At the big picture scale, I think making feats the replacement for prestige classes and paragon paths at least puts them into a reasonably clear neighborhood.  More to the point, they are the key features of PCs/PPs, not the little math bits designed to avoid dead levels.  This is the one-stop shop for functional wings, mighty telepathy, soul-sucking, magic imbuing, rules-ignoring awesome.  My rule of thumb under this premise: if a feat doesn't open up an entirely new way to approach problems it isn't doing its job.Of course, the feat vs. +1 ability score choice is still tenuous.  I'd love it if, in terms of functionality, +1 ability score were a pyramid and not a ziggurat.  The most obvious way of doing this however (+1 bonus per +1 score) wreaks havoc with bounded accuracy.   Averaged over many choices it is clear a feat would be more appropriately balanced against +1/2 mod increase, but at any given decision point the choice is between useless and +1 mod increase.  Terrible.  In last week's thread I suggested letting powerful feats raise lower scores, and less powerful feats raise higher ones, which might still work.  A simpler rule might be: When you take a feat you can raise an even score by 1.  Then the non-feat ability score increase option might be to raise one even score and one odd score, with special rules for the all odd or all even corner cases.  (Compared to +1 ability score or feat this would result in higher ability scores, so this would suggest keeping the number of feats in the character progression closer to the 6 end than the 12 end.)For example, suppose a fighter has 16 Str, 14 Dex, 17 Con (and some other scores which we'll pretend don't matter).  The first choice will be either a feat or ability score increase.1. Feat: The character gets a feat and has either (17 14 17) or (16 15 17).2. +1s.  The character has either (17 14 18) or (16 15 18).In either case there is a valid choice between a feat xor +1 ability score mod.After the second choice, things look as follows.1a. Feat->Feat:  The character gets a second feat and has (17 15 17).1b. Feat->+1s: The character still has the first feat and has (18 15 17), (17 15 18), or (17 16 17).2a. +1s->Feat: The character gains a first feat and has (17 15 18), (17 14 19), or (16 15 19).2b. +1s->+1s: The character has (18 15 18), (18 14 19), (17 16 18), or (16 16 19).In any of these cases, the second choice grants either an additional feat xor +1 ability score mod.Additional choices continue this pattern: each is between a feat and +1 ability mod, no ziggurating (new verb!)  in sight.  The only possible exception is when all ability scores are even or all are odd.  This could be handled in a couple different ways, but it should be a rare occurrence and keep the incentives between feat and +1 intact, breaking the deadlock if possible. My first glance solution is: 1) if all odd a feat simply doesn't grant an ability score increase, 2) if all odd an ability score simply grants a +1 to a single score, 3) if all even a feat acts as normal, 4) if all even an ability score grants +2 to a single score and +1 to a different even one.  Only case 1 doesn't break the all same condition (but frankly all odd is not such a bad problem to have) and every single one of these corner case options maintains the feat or +1 mod choice, guaranteeing no ziggurat advancement for any possible combination of ability scores below the cap.On a different note, I dislike having class specific feat/+1 progressions because some tables might want neither feats nor ability score increases.  At those tables the different progressions will mess up balance between characters in the same party.  I don't expect to play in such games myself, but still.  With a consistent feat progression for characters, ignoring both feats and ability score improvements will affect game balance globally, but it does so in the least disruptive fashion.I like what he's saying about proficiencies, but not quite as much about skills.  I understand exactly why the lore checks are presented as they are, and it even does what they want, but it is inconsistent with other uses of skills.  I'm not brimming with better solutions, though, it's one of those situations where the d20 is simply too random for what lore represents.  I have the same ambivalence with skills more generally.  That is, I want them to be on the same scale as attacks (so I can attack with wit or insight just as I would with a sword) while recognizing that I enjoy fairly random attacks, but want skill training to be qualitatively more reliable when used in typical situations.  Capturing all that in a single d20 + modifier is a puzzle to be sure.  Maybe we should avoid skill modifiers entirely (or have trained ones progress slowly and automatically like attack bonus), but set a universal DC that determines whether one exceeds one's basic competency?  For example, rather than give a +10 on lore checks, just set all lore checks within DC 1-20.  A character with basic training in lore always knows basic information, but one that meets the DC gets medium information as well.  In many ways this basic level of competency is just what proficiency is meant to capture, but it rolls it into a lightweight skill system that lets one be even more proficient.  And like an attack a 1 in a stressful situation could be a fumble (success below normal competency) and a 20 could be success 2 levels above normal competency. One could approach other skills in the same fashion.  For example, in the current packet there are DC 10, 20, and 30 checks suggested for swim.  What if all those checks were DC 10, but being trained in a skill determined which result was the baseline (much like a +10 would) without actually fiddling with the numbers.  That might make contests more interesting, keep the math of ability checks more-or-less the same whether skills are used or not, keep the flavor of reliability on typical checks, and generally let us keep bounded accuracy intact for skills.  Thoughts?As for classes, I have no objection to the subclass approach in principle.</blockquote>

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