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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 6131773" data-attributes="member: 7006">This is precisely the reason why I think the idea of the "Specialty" should get tossed out at this point in the playtest process.  Grouping a bunch of feats in a fluffy package seems to have become unnecessary, if indeed the classes themselves are going to have the fluffy packages already in them via subclasses.The whole original point of the Theme concept in 4E was to create fluffy packages that up until that point in the game were just created by the player in his head as part of his character concept.  But the Theme wrote those character concepts explicitly because they also granted additional mechanical benefit to layer on top of what you got for your class.  So if you decided your character was a Noble, there was now an in-game benefit you got for making that character concept choice.When they started creating D&DN... they decided rather than create new mechanical benefits for these Themes out of whole cloth... they just brought over the idea of Feats and used them for the mechanical benefits.  But the character concept part  of the Theme/Speciality was unchanged-- that was meant to put a fluffy package onto your character (to go along with the mechanical benefit) because your class didn't provide it.But now that our classes ARE apparently going to provide these fluffy packages... then having another system in the game that also does it is redundant in the best case or more often than not going to cause story conflict in the worst.  After all... if you are a Fighter and you are a Scout... do you need to know you're a Skirmisher too?  Is that "designation" layered on top of being a Scout Fighter really necessary anymore?  Doesn't just taking the feats that make up the Skirmisher specialty do enough to tell us who your Scout Fighter is?I know many people here like the idea of multiple (possibly conflicting) layers of character fluff... but I still think it's messy and unnecessary.  At some point... the game needs to be able to trust its players to once again in part invent their own character concepts and just supply the mechanical benefits that allow us to create them... rather than needing to add fluff to every aspect of character creation.Because I know that I'm going to go a bit cross-eyed when I keep looking at created characters identified as things like Mountain Dwarf Priest Scout Fighter Hedge Magician... or Lightfoot Halfling Bounty Hunter Acrobat Rogue Skulker.</blockquote>

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