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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5829340" data-attributes="member: 54877">Part of what we have all been dancing around since the pillars were brought up is avoidance of "flaws" or "disadvantages".  That is, weakness are defined by what you didn't take that you might need, as opposed to what is normal for your class/archetype/stereotype/etc. but that you gave up.  It really doesn't make much difference in how the character plays (absent some more creative use of "flaws"), but it makes a lot of difference in how you generate that character. That's the only real issue with Dausuuls' proposal--or rather the fault line between 3E and 4E methods that has no easy answer.  If you define "normal minimum competence" as 70%, that is probably fine for the vast majority of characters.  Then you have that one guy that wants to trade in swimming or weapon use or being moderately diplomatic or something else to fit the conception. That's the 4E model, and you'll have to complicate it with a flaw system to give that guy what he really wants.  OTOH, you can say everyone starts at zero in everything, give them lots of options to buy up, and expect them to cover everything they care about.  That's the 3E model.  Now, you have a lot of work to get to that "base normal" that the vast majority wants in some form--albeit at different levels--along with the possibility that you miss things. You'll note that neither 3E nor 4E were pure in this.  That's why 3E had the wizard getting a little BAB (whether he planned to use weapons or not) and why 4E still made you positively allocate skill training from zero.  (The pure 4E form would been something greater than the +1/2 level in all skills flat, then skill allocation coming only from feats, which you got more of.) Various kinds of swaps, talent trees, and the like are efforts to evade this issue.  I am beginning to suspect that it might be cleaner to come up with a good flaw/disadvantage system.</blockquote>

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