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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6927548" data-attributes="member: 82106">Having gone through this exercise with my own 4e hack, I think Tony has some good points. So do other people.It is VERY VERY difficult to make sufficiently distinctive power choices if you put powers onto a power source list (IE all Martials can pick from the same powers). Yes, you can have a class feature that interacts with that, but you don't really achieve anything close to the level of distinctiveness that 4e powers can get you to (not all DO, but they CAN). Also, role as a source of powers or other mechanical elements of the character is just IMHO a non-starter. Its not thematic at all. There's really very little in common between the various Defender classes for instance (and they're really the most samey of all roles). At best you're hobbling your ability to make really interesting and distinctive characters by divorcing role from class. I quickly abandoned this as a viable design concept.In the end I also MOSTLY abandoned the power source power lists as a concept. At first I tried doing what Tony is referring to, and having just a few archetype classes (Warrior, Mystic, and Trickster), but there's just not enough in common there. Doing it by 4e power source doesn't work much better. Doing it by class we already know is not that great, so what did that leave? In the end I've abstracted a LOT of what 4e puts into class into packages that are mechanically called 'Major Boons'. You get one per level (actually you get one level per major boon you have, another discussion entirely). These package up concepts like "casts fire-based powers" or "has a natural animal companion and some tricks to go with it", etc. Power sources also have a thin list of basic powers that you can pick. Some of the boons also do things like introduce a new 'feature', such as 'add fire damage to any attack you make once per encounter' or whatnot. Classes have their basic 'shtick' features that adapt them to their role and spin the various powers to some extent, but also include some non-combat stuff that speaks more to the essence of what the class is about in world terms.Because classes don't have a huge amount of specific material its VERY easy to make them, and at the same time you don't NEED a vast number of them to get all the different permutations of characters you want, as a lot of that can be pulled in by acquiring the right boon. One thing to say about the boon system though, you get a boon for narrative reasons, and then you get a level because you got the boon. This is kind of subtle, but what it means is that character build-out is mostly narratively driven. Its under the player's control to some table-specific degree, but its not likely you'll be sitting around comparing this boon to that boon and mixing and matching just the right ones to do XYZ. Its a lot more organic. Design-wise the point is there's a less compelling argument for insuring that every random assortment of boons doesn't lead to some 'broken' build or other. Its mostly only necessary to think about what elements are LIKELY to come together within a plausible story-arc for a given character. I've also trimmed down a lot on the sources of powers, so PCs generally have something on the order of 4-7 power choices at a given time. By making each power more distinctive and significant in use you get a pretty varied set of outcomes and tactics that you can use, but its less focused on mechanical issues and more on general tactical concepts and narrative play.We haven't really played through all of this a whole lot, it seems to work reasonably well, but I don't know for sure what happens when you run an entire campaign if things continue to work or if it may get repetitive or out of hand in some fashion. Its definitely easier to run than even 4e!</blockquote>

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