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<blockquote data-quote="HeapThaumaturgist" data-source="post: 2637347" data-attributes="member: 12332">Well, my shortest answer would be to do it your way and playtest it.&nbsp; And then playtest it with a group of people you've never played with before.&nbsp; And then playtest it with some people who are specifically looking to yoink the system for everything they're worth. Longer answer is, I'm not correlating &quot;strong&quot; with &quot;warrior&quot; or anything of the sort.&nbsp; What I'm saying about balance is that there are finite packages of &quot;BAB&quot; &quot;Defense&quot; &quot;Skill Points&quot; &quot;Bonus Feats&quot; and &quot;Talents&quot;.You can really toss the base classes down to &quot;packages&quot;.&nbsp; You can have Full BAB, but you can't have &quot;Automatic Firearms Bonus Feats&quot;.&nbsp; You can have &quot;Max Skill Points&quot; but you can't have &quot;Full Defense Progression&quot;.&nbsp; You can get close to both, but then you don't get &quot;Power Attack Combat Group Feats&quot;.I'm not saying that you're WRONG, but that it raises flags in my mind.&nbsp; If you can find ways to put them together that you can retain character parity, then it might be the best idea since general classes in the first place.And Character Parity is an important thing in design.&nbsp; If it isn't, then you're spending too much time playing with Feats and Classes when you could be playing GURPS.&nbsp; Bob's Super Ninja Swordsman should be able to play in the same game alongside Ralph's Gadgeteer Scientist and Sally's Investigative Journalist and Peter's New Wave Gunslinger.Roughly, that's what SpyCraft 2.0's classes do already.&nbsp; The Scientist is balanced against the Wheelman is balanced against the Soldier ... that way everybody can play and nobody gets overshadowed.&nbsp; You can play a Soldier with huge Int, but there's alot of places where you can't get abilities that the Scientist has already and places where you're forced to take stuff that doesn't play to your high Int.&nbsp; Or multi between them, which amounts to the same thing.Grim Tales/ d20 Modern does a BETTER job of letting you play &quot;A Smart Soldier&quot;, a much better job, but the fact remains that you can't get ALL of somebody who wants to play &quot;A Weak Scientis&quot;'s abilities AND a full BAB AND more HP AND better Defense while doing so.&nbsp; Not because the designers are out to make sure you can't play what you want to play, but so that Bob and Sally and Ralph can play the characters they want in the same party without Bob tweaking on the system to make everybody else redundant.Combinations of Level and Stat requirements outside of the classes might be a way to go ... I'm honestly thinking Level would be better than Stat.&nbsp; If you can avoid taking Dedicated by having a high Wis ... a little backwards.&nbsp; I think the stat classes should be viable REGARDLESS of your score in their &quot;linked&quot; Attribute, y'know?&nbsp; Dedicated levels should show off Wisdom, high or low, not just bolster having a low attribute.I think the Campaign Qualities from SC2.0 are pretty genius.&nbsp; They're really just &quot;modular house rules&quot;, but I think its methodology is a wonderful way of &quot;letting&quot; people tweak their campaigns.&nbsp; I think they can be one way to &quot;let&quot; people do something without changing the basic assumptions, and there-fore keep everybody on an even keel.&nbsp; Instead of saying:&nbsp; &quot;You can have any feat any time&quot; to let people play gun-kata stuff, you can let anybody choose gun or martial arts feats as bonus feat selections, etc. etc.&nbsp; It's one of the things I'm looking at right now.--fje</blockquote>

[QUOTE="HeapThaumaturgist, post: 2637347, member: 12332"] Well, my shortest answer would be to do it your way and playtest it. And then playtest it with a group of people you've never played with before. And then playtest it with some people who are specifically looking to yoink the system for everything they're worth. Longer answer is, I'm not correlating "strong" with "warrior" or anything of the sort. What I'm saying about balance is that there are finite packages of "BAB" "Defense" "Skill Points" "Bonus Feats" and "Talents". You can really toss the base classes down to "packages". You can have Full BAB, but you can't have "Automatic Firearms Bonus Feats". You can have "Max Skill Points" but you can't have "Full Defense Progression". You can get close to both, but then you don't get "Power Attack Combat Group Feats". I'm not saying that you're WRONG, but that it raises flags in my mind. If you can find ways to put them together that you can retain character parity, then it might be the best idea since general classes in the first place. And Character Parity is an important thing in design. If it isn't, then you're spending too much time playing with Feats and Classes when you could be playing GURPS. Bob's Super Ninja Swordsman should be able to play in the same game alongside Ralph's Gadgeteer Scientist and Sally's Investigative Journalist and Peter's New Wave Gunslinger. Roughly, that's what SpyCraft 2.0's classes do already. The Scientist is balanced against the Wheelman is balanced against the Soldier ... that way everybody can play and nobody gets overshadowed. You can play a Soldier with huge Int, but there's alot of places where you can't get abilities that the Scientist has already and places where you're forced to take stuff that doesn't play to your high Int. Or multi between them, which amounts to the same thing. Grim Tales/ d20 Modern does a BETTER job of letting you play "A Smart Soldier", a much better job, but the fact remains that you can't get ALL of somebody who wants to play "A Weak Scientis"'s abilities AND a full BAB AND more HP AND better Defense while doing so. Not because the designers are out to make sure you can't play what you want to play, but so that Bob and Sally and Ralph can play the characters they want in the same party without Bob tweaking on the system to make everybody else redundant. Combinations of Level and Stat requirements outside of the classes might be a way to go ... I'm honestly thinking Level would be better than Stat. If you can avoid taking Dedicated by having a high Wis ... a little backwards. I think the stat classes should be viable REGARDLESS of your score in their "linked" Attribute, y'know? Dedicated levels should show off Wisdom, high or low, not just bolster having a low attribute. I think the Campaign Qualities from SC2.0 are pretty genius. They're really just "modular house rules", but I think its methodology is a wonderful way of "letting" people tweak their campaigns. I think they can be one way to "let" people do something without changing the basic assumptions, and there-fore keep everybody on an even keel. Instead of saying: "You can have any feat any time" to let people play gun-kata stuff, you can let anybody choose gun or martial arts feats as bonus feat selections, etc. etc. It's one of the things I'm looking at right now. --fje [/QUOTE]

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