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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GreatLemur" data-source="post: 3597441" data-attributes="member: 28553">I've got to say, I'm on the fence about mmadsen's points regarding feats vs. talents.   I lean strongly towards generic classes and greater flexibility, and the main point of making a distinction between talent trees and feat chains seems to be to keep flavorful abilities isolated across several not-completely-generic classes.And, seriously, I can't see any reason a fighter-type shouldn't have access to Evasion.However, I do like the idea of using the distinction to allow for two different power levels of character options, with feats as the "nice to have" abilities that add depth to a character, while talents are the high-powered primary abilities that define a character, and are used all the time.Honestly, I think one of the biggest benefits of a more flexible class system (whether it's based on feats, talent trees, or both) would be the chance to finally ditch prestige classes all together.  Instead, we can just have powerful feats or talent trees with more elaborate (and possibly story-based) prerequisites.I'd argue that you're mixing mechanics and flavor a little bit, here, and my own bias is to base character systems strictly in mechanics.  For exmple, there's nothing in the mechanics (or even the most basic concept) of the Paladin class that says they have to wear heavy armor; so classing Paladin-type abilities like Smite under "Armored Fighter" wouldn't make sense to me.  Instead, I'd say that a paladin-type character would be one who'd taken a generic Warrior class and focused on abilities from some Divine Crusader talent tree.  The same Warrior class--and even this paladin character--might also have access to abilities like Evasion, AC bonuses while unarmored, and archery feats.  There's no reason any of this shouldn't coexist and be compatible with things like Smite and such.I'd also say that "Wilderness Warrior" is more of a concept designation than a mechanical one: There's no reason why an urban character shouldn't have Favored Enemy or Rage.  There's really nothing inherently wilderness-related about those abilities.I think I'd structure my generic class system a lot like True20, but with room for more different types of supernatural power.  So I'd have Warrior, covering all the various combat-specific abilities (including unarmed combat, martial maneuvers, and even Sneak Attack), and Expert, covering everything that's neither combat-related nor magical (that means things like the Marshal's leadership effects, Bardic Knowledge, almost every skill-related ability out there, movement enhancements, most Rogue-type stuff other than Sneak Attack, and so on), and several different caster classes with different spellcasting mechanics.  Maybe a spellpoint-based class for arcane magic, a fatigue-save-based class for divine magic, a Warlock / Dragonfire Adept-style cast-all-day class for psionics or other inborn powers, etc.  Maybe a single caster class with several very different talent trees could work, as well, but I'm not sure.</blockquote>

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