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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3273496" data-attributes="member: 4937">More power to you.  Go ahead slugger, knock yourself out.And the differences between a class ability and a feat besides a naming convention?  One's optional and one isn't?  But if we make all class abilities optional, well then we are making them like feats.  How about a feat can be taken by any class by a class ability can't?  Ok, sure, but how about feats which can only be taken by one class, aren't they more like class abilities?  Or in short, optional and flexible class abilities are feats, and feats which can only be taken by one class are class abilities.  The only difference is a naming convention.Don't suppose.Yes, they are.  The special abilities that the rogue gets at levels 10, 13, 16, and 19 are basically bonus feats.   In fact, they can take a feat using one.  You could move all the special abilities out to the Feats section, place them in a category similar to Weapon Specialization and it would be almost the exact same thing.   I've seen the rogue worked up as little more than a series of special abilities and a list of class specific feats and it actually works pretty well.We could go ahead and make a more flexible wizard that had instead of a spell progression a wizard bonus feat at every level and have one of those be 'Wizard Spell Progression'.  Anything that can be packetized and which is a bonus to the character is basically a feat, and every feat is basically a class ability with a bit more flexibility.  Or we could take the class abilities of a PrC, turn them into feat chains with the same requirements as the PrC and accomplish much of the same thing (and all of the same thing with well design base classes, or at least all of the same thing worth accomplishing).Yes, it would.  Lots of players complain that Turn Undead is an inappropriate ability for certain clerics, and that they would be better served with some different ability substituting for 'Turn Undead'.  You really can only provide for that by making alot more classes or by making class abilities that are alot more like feats.It's semantics.  It's a failure of imagination.  The incoherence comes from the fact that you are making skills less specific to a particular class (no cross class skills) but arguing about making feats (or rather bonus abilities so much like feats as to make little difference) more specific to a particular class - all the while complaining about 'Weapon Specialization'.  I read you post just fine.Right.  Chosen throughout the character's career.   Like feats.   Optional.  Like Feats.  Small compartmentalized bonuses.  Like feats.  Congradulations, you've reinvented Weapon Specialization.  For a full take on this, see the Primal Heroes classes.I didn't say that at all.  In fact, you are suggesting that class abilities be done exactly how I think that they should be done.What you are doing that is utterly incoherent is not that class abilities should be optional, flexible, but yet distinctive, but that you are moving things in that direction and then insisting that cross class skills are bad.  That makes absolutely no freaking sense.  You just don't get it do you?  No other class can emulate the fighter.  Because the fighters thing is combat related bonus feats, and no other class comes close.  You might as well make the claim that fighters can emulate rogues by taking tumble, open locks, search, diplomacy, and move silently.  Sure, you can do that.  But you end up with a pretty sorry imitation of the rogue if you try it.  In the same way, no one can emulate a fighter in his domain because in effect 'fighter feats' are 'cross class' to every other class and they have to spend a greater percentage of thier precious 'feat points' to buy any of them.And in the case of 'Weapon Specialization' they have a feat exclusive to the class that even then no one can take (much like a class exclusive skill).  If you make a bunch of optional class abilities, say a bunch of new flexible abilities gained over the course of the fighters career and not available to anyone else, you are basically extending the 'Weapon Specialization' mechanic - the same mechanic you claim you despise.   And, while doing this, you decide to get rid of what makes classes that depend on skills highly distinctive.  In other words, the complaint you mistakenly made against me when I tried to explain to you the close kinship between a bonus feat and a class ability - because you wrongly thought I was taking away class distinctiveness - is exactly the complaint I have against taking away the concept of a class and cross class skill.  I don't believe for a second you can make a more elegant system for making skills distinctive by a set of class abilities.  If you could, someone would have tried it by now.  In fact, someone would have probably made a pretty decent system by now.I'm not even sure I believe you are game designer.</blockquote>

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