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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Nth Dimension Games" data-source="post: 9887852" data-attributes="member: 7056791">I hope this thread isn't dead. I'm looking for a good place to jump in and be part of the community and this one doesn't have 20+ pages to read through yet. When I started my Character Creation chapter I began with my home brew rules from D&D 3.X 25ish years ago. What I did was take all the Feats and Class Skills from each class and create a "Skill Tree" from it. There were prerequisites like Dexterity: +11 to unlock Dodge for example. Combat Reflexes required Dodge and Dexterity +14 etc. I think I started working in Skill ranks as requirements as well. My goal was to prevent the Multiclassing problem of grabbing 5 levels in Warrior, 2 in Barbarian, 3 in Bard just to get a class skill then abandon the class entirely. It never felt right narratively but makes perfect sense practically. My imagination for creating unique and interesting characters was very limited by D&D Class System. So when I got serious about my own project, I examined why D&D had a class system in the first place. The reason why nearly all TTRPGs have a similar system is because D&D was the one who established it as a standard. Everyone is coping it because it works. You have to go back to the OG system which is based on LoTR. Dwarven warriors, elven archers, human ranger, halfling rogues... D&D had a flavor and players experienced it through a very ridged class system. 2nd allowed for the Mage/Rogue (if boomer brain remembers properly) but you had to pay a heavy price for the cross classing. 3rd opened it up a bit more but it was still rooted in core classes playing a role. I have not read more than 5 words from 5th edition so I don't know how it's handled now. So I started over. Not from a design point, but a practical one. "I exist in a world of magic and monsters. I want to cast magic and fight monsters. What do I need to do to do that? Is magic common? How strong and tough am I compared to the monsters I may face?" There probably a hundred more questions I asked myself before I could even get started on how to approach this. But I used the same way we develop ourselves. If I'm an accountant and I want to be the best accountant, I'm going to spend my time doing things that make me a better accountant. People at the top of professions, live and breathe it. People who play TTRPGs rarely say "I'm just going to stay home and harvest my fields until I die." They play characters that seek to be exceptional. Picking how your character is going to navigate a game world should reflect those exceptional people who reach the top in their professions but in a world inhabited by monsters and magic. I think, if narratively feasible, players should be able to create and shape their characters to maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses within an elegantly designed system.My game is designed with the min/maxer in mind and encourages them to do it. I think we all should in our own lives as well.</blockquote>

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