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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Bendris Noulg" data-source="post: 1539603" data-attributes="member: 6398">Well, there's also Favored Terrain, Favored Beast, and Favored Region, but you wouldn't have known that.  However, you seemed to have overlooked the fact that I don't use the 20% Experience penalty.  (See my first post in this thread.) As for taking Ranger instead of something else, most of them took Ranger because they felt it was most fitting.  See, my groups like that.  They don't worry about Caster Levels or things like that.  Rather, they are focused on in-game experiences, plausibility, and story-based justification. That might work to a degree.  At the same time, what's wrong with going to the academy after gaining a Character Level but before gaining the benefits of a Class Level?  The end result would be the same, would it not?  And that doesn't require giving the PC anything he hasn't directly gained through adventuring. Define "less skill".  Also, wouldn't this be dictating what Class Level to take (Expert), which is exactly what you thought I was doing earlier when my players opted for Ranger Levels? Because it doesn't work.  At least, it doesn't work for me and my group.  (See earlier comments about the results of balancing min/max and powergaming by the designers in the post you quoted.) If a PC spends years doing something, then sometimes Expert is the ideal result.  However, having PCs in my game heavily involved in politics, government administration, and politics, Courtier (Rokugan, or Swashbuckling Adventures, both by AEG) is also a viable Class in many instances.  It really depends on the end result you are after and maintaining some semblence of balance within the game (be it Core balance or your own take).  For me, I like to keep some things within a certain range for the sake of combat/adventuring balance between PCs while allowing a degree of flexibility for things that are more role-play in nature (such as professional vocations, politics, governing, leading armies, administrating temples, etc.) and thus outside the standard bounds of the rules. To go from doghead's example to my own, I can relate that I'm a former US Navy sailor (E4), and I used to be the manager of a pizzaria in Chicago, yet having these at despondant levels (I was a competant manager and an average sailor) does not seem to at-all effect my ability to work as a Facilities Design and Logistics Coordinator within the private sector.  Indeed, the basics of both of the former (working under extreme pressure + deal with large volume production) were exceptionally helpful in preparing me for the later (dealing with Fortune 500 companies, their clients, and their suppliers).  So while on a technical level, the 20% penalty is good for the purpose of keeping min/max to a tolerable level, it's also in the way of (to use doghead's expression) narative sensibility when that narative is more important to the group than min/maxing is (to which I'll add, if I didn't on occassion suggest some things to my players, they probably wouldn't be min/maxed at all!). Going back to the characters that took Ranger levels, this same group was composed of various Class Levels (and one ECL4 + Classes) at the earlier levels.  Later on in the campaign (around 8th Level), they signed up with a Mercenary Company.  From that point on, they started gaining Levels in the Soldier Class (Legionaire from Mercenaries, AEG) because, within the context of the campaign, it was the sensible thing to do.  Would it be fair to penalize the PCs for having made a completely logical choice based on in-game events?  I'd argue that the 20% penalty does not, in any way, shape, or form, take such things into consideration.</blockquote>

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