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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steel_Wind" data-source="post: 3663001" data-attributes="member: 20741">It seems to me that you could, if you wanted to, design an entire system of branched feats, with one path chosen potentially closing off others.Or if not an overt restriction, the crunch in your rules could inherently have the effect of restricting the number of choices available at any one time to a given level character.  This is already the case in D&D, and if we had additional feats with numerous pre-requisite "chains" of feats required (and limited feat slots to acquire), the effect is to exclude multiple feat chains.In the result, we would get a more WoW like - or at last a more CRPG like  character leveling mechanism.In many computer games, the designer employs these means of character progression to provide an illusion of choice - but the real reason is to restrict the powers that need to be playtested at any given level.  By daisy chaining character progression along restricted paths, the overall number of features can be bullet-pointed and claimed, but the demands on testing are reduced. Play balancing for player challenge at higher levels of play is much easier to do because skill/power progression is far more predictable and manageable.Moreover, by making certain paths mutually exclusive (or practically so) the idea was then pitched that these restrictions add "replay value" and "distinctive play styles".   So that's the design ethos behind these sorts of elaborate tree branch systems within CRPGs.  The fact that some CRPG designers have exploited these character levellng skill trees and refined them so that they are interesting thematically to PnP players is a testimony to good designers making bad medicine taste good and smell even better. But in the end - all of this was born out of a need to make testing and play-balance an easier task for the QA department.So what does all this CRPG design crap have to do with the question?Easy. The issues which face a CRPG designer are frequently encountered by  PnP designers as well - but I don't think this is one of those times.Could you harness all of these ideas to create a potentially more balanced RPG character levelling system? Sure you could. 100% "yup" to that. But to what end? Is "balance" better than flexibility?I'd say that the history of modern PnP game design suggests a resounding "no" answer to that question.The tendency in all RPG systems over time is that players want to break free of restrictions that say "no" to a given combination of skills and powers.  Whether the squawking is over races and classes, multi-classes, class abilities, spells, armor and weapon types - or skills feats and reserve feats and tricks....In D&D or any other system. It doesn't matter. Nature abhors a vacuum - and players seem to abhor what they perceive are "artifcial  restrictions".No matter that you call it - the basic instinct of players is to rebel against these restrictions which are viewed as "artificial" and "limiting". Even if they are limiting for very good reasons.Which is a nice way of saying that while you could do this with a new edition of the game - I think it's borrowing trouble to no particular purpose - and without a very compelling reason to do so.</blockquote>

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