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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2206938" data-attributes="member: 4937">I've got no problem with how anyone runs their games if it makes them happy, but I do feel like noting that I find it interesting how after all this time, people are advocating going back to 1st edition's system of having fixed levels of skill per level.I fully agree with Gneech that such a system has the advantages of being simplier and making it easier to create NPC's on the fly, but I completely balk on the idea that a skill system that gives you fixed ranks in something per level is more 'flexible'.  I also wonder how we reached this point from a discussion that began with the problem of characters maxing out ranks in just a few skills.I seriously doubt that there is anything that can prevent players from creating Johnny One-Trick, but it is true that one approach would be to pregenerate what you consider a 'balanced' character, preselecting feats and skill ranks for every level of the class in a manner that you felt made for suitably broad characters.  But understand that in doing so you are flat out rejecting the 3rd edition revisions to D&D that made it a modern system in favor of a more 'old school' approach in which you new how skilled a thief was in Pick Pockets because he was an 8th level thief.   That's all well and good, and Kenzer has a great game based on that sort of rejection of modernistic systems that revels in old school tables and eclecticism, but before adopting such an approach be sure you know exactly where it is going to take you.  I still maintain that there is nothing wrong with the skill system that by and large couldn't be fixed by DM's making calls for a more diverse range of skill checks - both in terms of the DC's to succeed and the range of skills that are applicable to a given session or campaign.Switching on the right brain, I think Undermountain is completely silly, but one thing that I do admire (and have long advocated) about WotC's 'spoiler' rooms that they've been showing from Undermountain is that the designers have spent alot of time and thought on making each room have alot of skill related features.   To me this is the mark of good D20 design, and it is comparable to me to the transition between a game like Doom in which the only feature of the environment you could really interact with was the monsters, and a game like Duke Nuke 'Em (or in more modern terms Half-Life) when the whole of the evironment began to be more of a plaything with which the character could interact with.</blockquote>

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