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Message: <blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 1952839" data-attributes="member: 12332">I guess my problem comes, Thanee, is where's your balance?  How long is it going to take to find the balance?  If we have 100s of core classes (and WotC seems to be well on their way to doing that for D&D.  Again.) then some are going to be better than others.  Why?  Because they're created at different times by different people to do different things and balance just can't map to that.  When I run D&D I have to stipulate Core Books Only and then allow individual items in on a case by case, and then I still seldomly do as it's often hard to tell when something small will run a game into the ground.  If we have a point-buy or similar system, you rapidly run into the same problem in a new guise.  There WILL be a sweet spot, players WILL find the sweet spot, and from there on out every character is going to be quite similar.  I've played point buy systems before.  Without severe and constaint reigning players gravitate toward the "best" choices and deviate ONLY to start finding some sort of "concept" afterward.  I've played all three kinds of systems, even within d20, and I find them all pretty equally fun, within what they do.  I don't think anybody is going to convince you about GT and Modern, so I'm not going to.  Just expressing my feeling that this ... middle ground ... brings for me the best balance between two ways of doing things ... Core Classes and A La Carte ... that allows me to maximize my choices and those of my players without creating or leaving open eggregious balance issues that I have to then come along behind with the hose and put out.  But it is also fun to play those other ways.  EDIT:  One of the closest systems I've played to One Class is "Savage Worlds" where you get ability points, skill points and "feats" to build your PC any way you want to.  I like the system alot, would play it regularly if I could.  Has a problem though.  Within ten minutes of sitting down my brother-in-law and his friend had calculators out and were figuring out the exact probabilities for all of the "feats" and skills to find the sweet spot where they got maximum potentioal for their points.  It's how they are, they're bath-tub game designers so they always want to know how everything works and how everything balances.  And they were getting a handle on it after just a few hours.  I'm sure by now they'll have gotten the prime scores mapped out from which they can deviate to create the best character for whatever they figure the game should involve.  It's just there.  Statistically if you think there WILL be combat, then certain things are best.  From there you can decide if you want to scale back less useful things for your concept.  So sure ou can make ANY scientist, but you tend to see the best possible combat scientist in systems like that.--fje</blockquote>

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