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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 6500087" data-attributes="member: 907">I completely agree with this. In my experience, and ironically enough, systems that allow large amounts of flexibility often lead to more similar characters - or at least characters with a similar core of competency. In a game like RuneQuest, for example, everyone either starts out with decent scores in skills like Spot Hidden and various athletic skills or they develop them in play, because they tend to be used a lot while adventuring. This is particularly true if you have diminishing returns on buying skills: if you can either bump one skill from expert-level to master-level, or increase three skills from apprentice-level to journeyman-level... many players will go for option 2.This is actually one of the things I noticed while playing WoW: many classes have (or at least had, they've cleared many of them out now) some skills that aren't directly useful in combat. For example, Shaman have a spell called Farseeing, which lets you look around as if you were standing somewhere else within your LOS (and while using the spell, you can recast it to project your vision to yet another place), so you could basically explore a whole continent using it). Had WoW been a point-based system, I'd never have spent points on that spell, at least not unless those points came from a separate &quot;Fun stuff&quot; pool (like Shadowrun's hobby skills). But getting it as part of the rest of the shaman tool kit? Sure, I'll take it, and have fun with it.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 6500087, member: 907"] I completely agree with this. In my experience, and ironically enough, systems that allow large amounts of flexibility often lead to more similar characters - or at least characters with a similar core of competency. In a game like RuneQuest, for example, everyone either starts out with decent scores in skills like Spot Hidden and various athletic skills or they develop them in play, because they tend to be used a lot while adventuring. This is particularly true if you have diminishing returns on buying skills: if you can either bump one skill from expert-level to master-level, or increase three skills from apprentice-level to journeyman-level... many players will go for option 2. This is actually one of the things I noticed while playing WoW: many classes have (or at least had, they've cleared many of them out now) some skills that aren't directly useful in combat. For example, Shaman have a spell called Farseeing, which lets you look around as if you were standing somewhere else within your LOS (and while using the spell, you can recast it to project your vision to yet another place), so you could basically explore a whole continent using it). Had WoW been a point-based system, I'd never have spent points on that spell, at least not unless those points came from a separate "Fun stuff" pool (like Shadowrun's hobby skills). But getting it as part of the rest of the shaman tool kit? Sure, I'll take it, and have fun with it. [/QUOTE]

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