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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5949692" data-attributes="member: 54877">I know it has issues, but I keep coming back to the answer of making the fighter an almost skill monkey (to the degree that a character can be a skill monkey in Next, of course):<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Wizard - arcane master, some skills, bit of arms</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Cleric - divine master, some skills, bit extra arms (presumably because arcane trumps divine magic somewhat and extra arms mainly defensive focus)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Rogue - decent with arms, some skills, then master of sneaky skills on top of that.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">Fighter - arms master, some skills, and then some more skills.</li> </ul>Where the "some skills" is the baseline that everyone gets, and in Next terms is including actual skills, ability scores, and any other background, class, or theme abilities that are helping in what we would generically call "skills" outside of magic or combat.  In any case, once you've defined that baseline for all characters, rogues get that plus mastery of their "roguish skills" while fighters get that baseline plus some extra stuff that fits.  In 3E terms, you'd give the fighter 6 ranks per level.  How that mechanically works out in Next, I can only guess. It might be as simple as giving the fighter an extra background instead of an extra theme.  Isn't that essentially what we are saying when we talk about giving the fighter mounted abilities or leadership abilities or whatnot?  Why not let the fighter pick that second thing that interests him? Or if you want to look at it from the simulation point of view, what did these characters do with their development time?  Every adventurer starts with some basic weapon ability and some basic skills by virtue of being a PC.  On top of that:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The wizard focused on the extremely hard and potent arcane magic.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The cleric focused on divine magic and staying alive long enough to use it in the thick of a fight.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The rogue focused on honing and expanding those basic skills to cover being sneaky, and some offensive arms to stick a knife in an unsuspecting back.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The fighter finished mastering arms and then ... ?</li> </ul>If I'm thinking fantasy stories, I think the fighter learned to sail or ride or trade or any number of things--because he had the time to do it, and it was the type of stuff that naturally came up while he was out fighting. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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