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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Psion" data-source="post: 1342592" data-attributes="member: 172">One of the main weaknesses with kits is that they were designed to be used by a character from day one. The main reason for the shift to prestige classes is that you could focus a character after creation and it does not require you to make a new character.OTOH, this is the weakness of prestige classes. You can't use them at the beginning, so if feat and skills selections aren't sufficient to define your characters (and given the inherently limited nature of class skill selections, this could well be the case.)Another weakness of kits as they existed were that they were supposedly designed around a zero-sum principle, but they very often were not zero-sum. Characters with kits often were unbalanced with one another or (especially) characters without kits. The later in the 2e book series, the worse this problem was. Mongooses character concepts while not implicitly as bad (because they are always an advantage and disadvantage, while most kits had both plus bonus or cheaper proficiencies), many are as bad because of unbalanced requirements or by having non-disadvantages like penalizing skills you would never use.The first take I have seen on a kit-like structure that I considered acceptable was starting occupations in d20 modern. They share the "your choice is permanent" drawback of kits though.A still better version of this I am adapting in my own game is backgrounds from the Second World Sourcebook. These are fundamentally similar to occupations, but you get three bonus skills (which if you already have a class skill, becomes a +1) appropriate to the character's occupation of background, and you can trade two bonus class skills for a feat. There is an option to charge a feat for them, so you can pick them up later. Regional or racial requirements can make these slightly more efficient version of feats since you get an extra bonus skill, but in reality the inbalance is tolerable, but large enough to emphasize the nature of the character's background. I think this is the best solution going for refining character backgrounds and concepts where class, feat, and skill choice is insufficient.</blockquote>

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