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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3431549" data-attributes="member: 4937">As I understood your argument, you presented the problem as being one particular to D&D and which was particularly problematic in D&D.  I see the problem as one which is general to all game systems, and which in fact is relatively mild in D&D compared to other game systems.  In fact, quite arguably older versions of D&D (pre-unearthed arcana) which used more or less a strict class system did not have this problem at all precisely because they did use a strict class system.  It's very difficult to power game a strict class system by being specialized.Compared to what?  Compared to point buy?  Compared to what?  Relative to any other game system I've ever played - including Amber for crying out loud - a class system most certainly does encourage the opposite of specialization. And I would like to point out that these options are available not because of the class system per se, but the parts of the D&D system designed to encourage flexibility and which are most like point buy - skills and feats, for example.  The class system itself is designed to resist the draw of over specialization.Which has nothing at all to do with whether or not a game system is classed based and everything to do with RPG's in general.I didn't claim that they cause it or that they are the only source of it.  Any flexibility you give to the players over the creation and advancement of the character will tend to create oppurtunities to specialize and hense powergame.  But the class system itself, by virtue of being inflexible, is the opposite of this.  And D&D, by virtue of being pretty much the premier class based system, is by its very nature the most tolerant of power gaming because it can afford to be.  Most point buy systems by contrast simply and explicitly advise the DM to forbid power gaming by fiat because they know that particular combinations of powers or particularly abusable single trick builds are game wrecking.</blockquote>

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