YOU are in charge of Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 3e...

[PhoneLobster]

You get a choice here Kaelik.

1) The base system was somehow lacking in the choice I wanted to make, so I homebrewed it.

2) The base system WASN'T somehow lacking in the choice I wanted to make, so I still homebrewed it anyway.

You are currently instead trying to pick...

3) I homebrewed a new choice for some system or other for no reason we need to look into. So new systems should really try to cater to fewer choices!

WRONG CHOICE!

Go back and pick either 1 or 2 instead.

[JonSetanta]

Do you realize what the point of this thread is?

It's going to end in a bitchfest shitstorm anyway so I figured I could say what I want.

[Kaelik]

You get a choice here Kaelik.

1) The base system was somehow lacking in the choice I wanted to make, so I homebrewed it.

2) The base system WASN'T somehow lacking in the choice I wanted to make, so I still homebrewed it anyway.

You are currently instead trying to pick...

3) I homebrewed a new choice for some system or other for no reason we need to look into. So new systems should really try to cater to fewer choices!

WRONG CHOICE!

Go back and pick either 1 or 2 instead.

This system doesn't have any tightly focused classes. If only it had a more open multiclassing system, the open multiclassing would provide me the tightly focused classes I want and I wouldn't have to make them myself... Oh wait, no, not that.

That's what a strawman means PL, when you define the choice of 100 different tightly focused classes as "all about taking choice away from the player" as compared to the beacon free choice of Fighter/Wizard/Cleric/Rogue take some levels in some of them. It's you that is the one assigning the anti-choice label. It shouldn't surprise reasonable people that the distinct classes people are not particularly anti-choice, because they never said they were, you made that up.

But since still, open multiclassing does not provide me with the characters I want to play, more open multiclassing wouldn't do suddenly change that, because open multiclassing is fundamentally opposed to the things that I keep making classes for.

[PhoneLobster]

That's what a strawman means PL, when you define the choice of 100 different tightly focused classes

Oh I wasn't AWARE I was arguing against a proposal of ONE FUCKING HUNDRED TIGHTLY FOCUSED CLASSES.

I mean if I had known that I'd have just called you an idiot and a liar.

I've seen the anti choice fuckery mob on here define their "ideal D&D with limited numbers of narrow classes" bullshit before, as it has come up on this thread, and while I have seen them suggest some stupid numbers on class bloat I'm pretty sure they've basically never said ONE HUNDRED CLASSES!!!11!1!

And fuck it, if even if they did WHO CARES, because if your so called "class system" is ONE HUNDRED CLASSES wide then fuck you it's a failure that has essentially lost all value on basically any and all fronts that have been put forward as coherent arguments for why you should even use a class system in the first place. Familiarity and ease of use? Recognizable archetypes? Easier to balance? Fuck all that you've got 100 classes, all those things fucked off somewhere before you hit the forties.

Seriously. WTF is wrong with you?

[OgreBattle]

Hahah, I do like mixing soda from the fountain, especially if I can dilute sickly sweet pepsi with regular soda water. When it comes to coffee though I just like having it black, but with warhammer I do love kitbashing...


Something else to keep in mind is how your class system fits into the other elements of customization like race/class/skill/background/theme/template/kit/etc.
I figure we're somewhat on the same page when it comes to what a race and class choice is suppose to mean in D&D, but what you're suppose to be getting from skill proficiency/points and feat choices is more vague.

It's easier for me to start with what I'd want to avoid than what I want feats to be.

* The 3e thing where "Feats are the fighter class feature", I'd rather have fighter get fighter class features and everyone gets the same amount of feats per level.

* The pathfinder thing where your ninja class gets a ninja trick that can be spent on getting a feat that gives you a skill bonus should also go, or be presented in a less confusing manner like how casters have a list of what they can cast.

* The 4e thing where you need to take your +hit/defense feat every tier to stay level appropriate

* The boring thing where your feat gives you a numerical bonus to hitpoints, initiative, a save. I'd rather have that kept under the attribute distribution part of character customization so if you wanted a higher initiative you put more points into DEX and that's that.

Now with skills, I prefer proficiency to points and a small list of broad skills over having "use rope". Some skills like perception are so important they'd arguably be better off as a defensive stat alongside FORT/REF/WILL. Some skills are used in defensive situations that could also be fit into FORT/REF/WILL like concentrate (use FORT), balance (use REF), and so on.

Or maybe after figuring out what attributes/race/class/skill does we have everything needed to make a satisfying customized character and feats can be banished to the plane of NWP's.

[Kaelik]

That's what a strawman means PL, when you define the choice of 100 different tightly focused classes

Oh I wasn't AWARE I was arguing against a proposal of ONE FUCKING HUNDRED TIGHTLY FOCUSED CLASSES.

I mean if I had known that I'd have just called you an idiot and a liar.

I've seen the anti choice fuckery mob on here define their "ideal D&D with limited numbers of narrow classes" bullshit before, as it has come up on this thread, and while I have seen them suggest some stupid numbers on class bloat I'm pretty sure they've basically never said ONE HUNDRED CLASSES!!!11!1!

And fuck it, if even if they did WHO CARES, because if your so called "class system" is ONE HUNDRED CLASSES wide then fuck you it's a failure that has essentially lost all value on basically any and all fronts that have been put forward as coherent arguments for why you should even use a class system in the first place. Familiarity and ease of use? Recognizable archetypes? Easier to balance? Fuck all that you've got 100 classes, all those things fucked off somewhere before you hit the forties.

Seriously. WTF is wrong with you?

There are 87 base classes in the Tome Community Material Sticky. There are another 10 in the Tomes Proper. None of those include Wizard, Cleric, or Druid. Certainly some of those are duplicates, but then again, plenty of homebrewed classes are not on that list.

There are already 100 classes written, and yet, I have difficulty believing that no one could obtain the benefit of "Class X is likely to obtain Y abilities" from those classes.

Look PL, we get it, you hate all decisions that anyone besides you has ever made, and therefore are contractually obligated to strawman the fuck out of multiclassing discussions (and feat discussion, and every other discussion). But can you at least keep your complaints within the realm of the slightly less ridiculous.

[PhoneLobster]

Look keep talking up your garbage fire Kaelik but it ISN'T what the fucking conversation is about.

You want to make it about your tome compilation of random shit from random sources? Because I don't see why, it's nobody's ideal system, and only an idiot would declare it to be anything other than a large collection of randomly sized and decidedly second hand bandaids for an ooooold wound.

[rasmuswagner]

Rolling 1d20+ [13, 13, 8 and 3] to hit for 1d8+20 each against DR 5 has to fucking go. Having recently played with kids, I'm growing increasingly fond of mechanics where you can just report what the fuck you rolled and have that be a relevant number. Also, having the difference between d12 and d4 be serious would make the signature bag of polyhedrons relevant again.

[Username17]

On the multiclassing thing: yes, PL continues to be a crazy person. It is in fact time to think back to 2nd edition AD&D, you ever notice how the Fighter Wizard is the most popular multiclass option and Fighter Cleric is the least? Isn't that weird? Well, it isn't weird at all once you realize that Fighter/Wizard addresses a real character archetype that doesn't have an associated class (Jedi) and Fighter/Cleric doesn't (on account of the Paladin class being an actual thing).

Moving on to 3rd edition, that same usage pattern continued. So completely in fact that they created an Eldritch Knight PrC to mix and match Fighter and Wizard more effectively, but they never bothered to make a Priestly Knight that did that for Fighter/Clerics. There just wasn't a demand, because people who wanted that character concept could just go play a Paladin.

And yet, despite the fact that the Paladin exists, the number of people who play Fighter/Clerics is still non-zero. Because there are people who gain real pleasure and personal utility by expending effort tweaking the system. People who dump a lot of different flavor shots into their Coke just to see what would happen. What this means is that AD&D was actually on the right track (for once) way back in the 70s when they started offering multiclass options only with a select few classes but then added additional specific classes that didn't have multiclassing options.

There really isn't any value added of letting people multiclass Berserker and Illusionist. If and when you want to support Berserking Illusionists as a character type, you should add to the classplosion and make a class that does that. Let's call it the "Invoker" for this example.


Berserker/Illusionist? Or stand-alone Invoker class?

I can certainly imagine wanting to play a character that was part Berserker, part Illusionist. But it is a bad use of design space to have the player mix and match. And the reason it's a bad use of design space is resource management systems. The only balanced way to take some number of powers off the Illusionist List and some number of powers off the Berserker list is to have those abilities have resource costs that are transparent with each other. In short, you can let everyone mix and match classes or parts thereof if every class is a 4e D&D class with equal numbers of Encounter Powers or whatever the fuck, but that fucking sucks. In the far more likely scenario where you want Berserkers to rage bar themselves to bigger and bigger maneuvers by inflicting and receiving damage, while Illusionists start each battle with a bunch of ablative images that pop or become disbelieved as the battle progresses - taking abilities from both sides is almost guaranteed to be unbalanced. Instead of taking some overpowered actions and then taking underpowered actions like an Illusionist or taking some underpowered actions and then some overpowered actions like a Berserker, you'd presumably min/max it so you took some overpowered Illusionist actions and then took some overpowered Berserker actions and were just better than everyone else. Or if it didn't work that way, you'd end up probably sucking hard.

In short, once you don't have to worry about all the classes multiclassing into each other it frees you up to explore actually interesting design space with the stand alone classes you have. And that's better than the marginal benefit of being able to make hybrid classes on the fly out of a long ass list of classes that are only made of interchangeable parts like 4e D&D classes.

Yes, 4th edition D&D would have been a better game if you'd have been able to mix and match Warlock and Paladin bits at will with an open multiclassing system. But it would have been better still if Paladin and Warlock were meaningfully different in the first place.

-Username17

[PhoneLobster]

Yes yes, that's right you are TOTALLY one day any one of these years now going to have a tight elegant perfectly designed narrow class system D&D clone.

And it's going to have a highly limited number distinctive highly recognizable classes everyone is easily familiar with.

But at the same time there will ALSO totally be so many they are going to cover every possible character concept or close enough to it.

I'm totally sure that ANY DAY NOW your impossible contradiction of a plan will totally come together and it will surely be perfect and eliminate all that nasty nasty mess of letting players make their own perfectly OK stupid ass choices about their own characters. I'm sure your choices are better for them, I mean YOU certainly believe that. A little too hard.

[Username17]

Yes yes, that's right you are TOTALLY one day any one of these years now going to have a tight elegant perfectly designed narrow class system D&D clone.

And it's going to have a highly limited number distinctive highly recognizable classes everyone is easily familiar with.

But at the same time there will ALSO totally be so many they are going to cover every possible character concept or close enough to it.

I'm totally sure that ANY DAY NOW your impossible contradiction of a plan will totally come together and it will surely be perfect and eliminate all that nasty nasty mess of letting players make their own perfectly OK stupid ass choices about their own characters. I'm sure your choices are better for them, I mean YOU certainly believe that. A little too hard.

Your incredulity isn't an argument. The reality is that we've already done the controlled experiment. On the one side there's the reductionist mix-n-match "generic classes" option, and on the other side there's a classplosion of specific stand-alone classes like the Tome Monk, Fire Mage, Assassin, and Totemist. And the latter is simply better. By a lot. Player satisfaction is higher and characters are more interesting and distinct. People have the choice to use either or both, because they are both optional rules made for the same edition of the same game. Not only is it possible to take the Pepsi Challenge here, it has already been done.

The results are in. The argument is over. I am right and you are wrong. The end.

You can make a game with just eight classes, three classes, or even just one class called "Adventurer" that you can hot swap customizable lego pieces for. No one is going to stop you from doing that. In fact, people have been making games that did exactly that since about 1980. The problem is that it just isn't as cool as writing up even ten weird standalone options that are actually distinct.

Fundamentally we're talking about a roleplaying game. And that means that you're going to end up having roleplaying prompts. And those prompts could be anything, but they have to be something. The game benefits from those prompts being good more than it benefits from them being numerous. And whatever the fuck it is that game has is just what the game has. If a game announces that all the player characters are cartoon characters or all vampires or all action heroes, that can be fine. If you wanna do something RIFTS-esque where your character choices are Mad Scientist, Giant Frog, Mech Pilot, and Saucy Maid, that could be fine. If all those options were good and distinct, that would be better than handing out more generic "customizable" concepts like "Strong Hero" and "Smart Hero" where none of them bring that much to the table. Again, this isn't airy speculation, this the voice of experience. RPGs are over forty years old now, and it's been tried both ways many times.

Let's look at 1st edition Feng Shui and Unknown Armies. In Feng Shui there is a classplosion of 26 different character templates with relatively little customization. In Unknown Armies you can write whatever skills you fucking want on your character sheet, even if it's nonsensical shit like "Winning Everything With Frogurt." And both of these are games crafted towards one-shots and mini-campaigns. Indeed, both games have advancement systems that are tire fires. But Feng Shui is a fun game and Unknown Armies is a taint licking abomination. That is for a lot of reasons, butthe really important reason for the purposes of this discussion is that total freedom to write whatever you want on your character sheet isn't even an advantage. Having a double handful of options is plenty if enough of those options are entertaining that everyone can pick a different one.

Bottom line: we are way beyond theory craft on this point. We have exhaustively tested the claims that I'm making that you find so incredible, and they are simply true. You can stomp your foot and continue to refuse to believe it, but all that does is make you look ever more ridiculous.

-Username17

[virgil]

Does PL do anything BESIDES this crap anymore? I mean, I know there's the regular rant about life down under, but all I see otherwise is barely coherent contrariness with hints of their system being the one true way. It feels like that's been the way for half a decade.

[codeGlaze]

I feel like the biggest problem with multiclassing is figuring out how to handle powers.

Constraining your basic resource management schemes into ~4 flavors, and only 'allowing' those to multiclass, then releasing 'official' mixes of those is definitely a workable solution. But that typically brings to mind mixing only 2 of those resources... Not all 4, or any new ones you release going forward.

@customizing an existing class: You could list equivant costs for class featurea, then allow people to hot swap similar costing features. Or swap feature trees (like a finesse tree instead of a brute tree for melee class).

[Username17]

Constraining your basic resource management schemes into ~4 flavors, and only 'allowing' those to multiclass, then releasing 'official' mixes of those is definitely a workable solution. But that typically brings to mind mixing only 2 of those resources... Not all 4, or any new ones you release going forward.

The AD&D model was that "basic" classes could be multiclassed and others could not. The original basic classes were Fighter, Rogue, Cleric, and Wizard (well, Fighting Man, Thief, Magic User, and Cleric, but you know what I mean). There were other classes that brought their own special sauce like Ranger and Cavalier, but you couldn't multiclass those fuckers so it didn't change the multiclass calculations to print more.

So you could go ahead and make an Essentia using class that diverts its power points between its powers turn by turn. And obviously such a class would respond very strangely to mix-n-matching with other classes whose abilities weren't Essentia dependent. The Essentia points you have are basically more valuable to each Essentia-using power you have the less Essentia using powers you have. In the simplest model where you split your points between attack and defense every turn, having a level appropriate attack from another class that doesn't use Essentia at all leaves 100% of your points for defense every turn forever. I would expect that to be unbalanced.

But if you use the old basic/advanced class model, you can simply declare your Essentia class to be an advanced class and just not fucking worry about how the system would break if people multiclassed the crap out of it. It's arbitrarily not splashable and you move the fuck on with your life. Meanwhile, if you want to make content that does play nicely with the currently multiclassable classes, you can just go ahead and write new "basic" classes as well.

The key then is to make a small number of multiclassable classes and then playtest the small number of multiclass options. But then leave them underived in the book, because the people who want to multiclass really do want to derive the final form themselves.

-Username17

[virgil]

Wasn't there some debate for giving every class some minor, yet fungible, feature that can be traded? One the one hand, that's sort of how 4E said it handled multiclassing. On the other hand, that just sounds like feats with a fancy title...which I'm not sure is a bad thing.

[deaddmwalking]

Ultimately, it's largely a semantic difference if you build a 'new' advanced class or combine elements of two existing advanced class into a 'multi-class'. I don't see a compelling difference between making a 'crusader' that combines paladin/cleric abilities versus a new class that thematically does the same thing.

It may not be possible to multi-class every aspect of every class - at least, not without gestalt classes, but guidelines for buolding a class and multi-classing are good.

Trying to multi-class is a good first step when trying to build your own basic classes. It's much harder to build your first class before you've gotten a sense of how your classes compare to published classes.

[Username17]

Wasn't there some debate for giving every class some minor, yet fungible, feature that can be traded? One the one hand, that's sort of how 4E said it handled multiclassing. On the other hand, that just sounds like feats with a fancy title...which I'm not sure is a bad thing.

What you're thinking of is the "tracks" idea. It's a means of letting people make hybrid classes quickly by asking each class to put things into two or three columns and letting players mix-n-match the columns for different classes. If you can get it working, the obvious advantage is that it allows you to have races that sub-out for a character's primary, secondary, or tertiary class track. So like, people can play werewolves from level 1 because they lose the secondary track of their main class and get a series of werewolf abilities instead or whatever.

Unfortunately, it has a lot of failure points, as we saw from the relative clusterfuck that Legend was. The first and most obvious failure point is that the very selectable nature of the columns enforces a certain procedural sameness on all of the contents. When designing the game, you don't know whether a player's B track is going to be Paladin, Necromancer, Werewolf, or Fire Sprite. So if you want to put an attack form into Level 6 Paladin Column B, you kinda have to put an attack form into Level 6 Column B for Necromancer, Werewolf, and Fire Sprite as well. Because otherwise a character might very plausibly have no level appropriate attacks at all, and I think we can all agree such an output violates much of the purpose of having classes and levels in the first place.

And the enforced sameness isn't just laterally between the tracks, but vertically as well. Earlier we talked about our hypothetical Essentia user class that has a set of powers and a series of power points to distribute between them each turn. Obviously such a class because highly problematic if you yank one of the tracks out and pop in a track that doesn't siphon off power points at all to provide whatever offense or defense it brings to the party. Or imagine the Monk, who gets a lot of powers contingent on not wearing pants that allow him to function without wearing pants. If you end up with half of that, you end up being incapable of functioning with or without pants. And so on and so forth.

At the end of the day, once you've sidestepped all the obvious design pitfalls, you're basically left with 4th edition character classes with open multiclassing and several powers per level. And while such a paradigm is obviously better than what 4th edition D&D actually went with, I do not consider that a particularly high bar.

Apropos of nothing: the scheme I currently favor to get player's the power slots they need to trade off for being a Vampire instead of a Halfling is to sacrifice Magic Item Slots to be a powerful race.

Ultimately, it's largely a semantic difference if you build a 'new' advanced class or combine elements of two existing advanced class into a 'multi-class'. I don't see a compelling difference between making a 'crusader' that combines paladin/cleric abilities versus a new class that thematically does the same thing.

This probably sounded Solomonic in your head, but it's totally wrong.

The difference of course is resource management systems. Consider the actual class "Crusader," since you chose to use it as your example. It's a WoF class. And such classes are very fiddly about deck size and hand size. You can't just divide both by two, because in so doing you'd completely destroy the odds of getting certain kinds of hands. And there are lots of abilities that would be broken in a constantly refreshing WoF system that are at least kind of acceptable in a daily charges model (long lasting effects like charm and wall of iron come immediately to mind, but also things like healing dynamics are unrecognizable).

If you're going to make a paladin flavored class by hacking chunks of the Knight and the Cleric off and Frankensteining them together, then you have to give the Knight and Cleric mutually transparent resource management systems and the resulting Paladin class is going to have mutually transparent resource systems with both the Knight and the Cleric. While if you make a Crusader from scratch, you have a lot more design space to work with and can make something that actually plays differently from the other options.

If you make new classes by hacking apart the stuff you already have and sewing it back together, you can write new fluff space but not really any new crunch space. If you make new classes that stand on their own, you have the option of new crunch and fluff if you so choose.

-Username17

[Ice9]

The issue with narrow thematic classes and little/no customization is that you'll never have enough. Like those ~100 or so that were brought up earlier - that's simultaneously too many to fit in a book, and not enough to cover even the majority of concepts. And yeah, there's no system that can make every character, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter - 4E was rightly criticized for having too many unsupported gaps when it came out, for instance.

Multiclassing isn't the only way to customize things - you could have a primary/secondary class system like FFT. Or make feats a bigger thing. But leaving out customization mostly/entirely, I don't think that works so well.

[virgil]

Multiclassing isn't the only way to customize things - you could have a primary/secondary class system like FFT. Or make feats a bigger thing. But leaving out customization mostly/entirely, I don't think that works so well.

I think equivocating "no multiclassing" with "leaving out customization" is a bit of a strawman.

The thing is, regardless of your system, you're going to come out with new content. We never called the Monster Manual hot garbage because there was an expectation for a Monster Manual II (or Monsters of Faerun) down the line, so why should thematic classes be a sign of failure because we can make more?

[Kaelik]

The issue with narrow thematic classes and little/no customization is that you'll never have enough. Like those ~100 or so that were brought up earlier - that's simultaneously too many to fit in a book, and not enough to cover even the majority of concepts. And yeah, there's no system that can make every character, but that doesn't mean it doesn't matter - 4E was rightly criticized for having too many unsupported gaps when it came out, for instance.

Multiclassing isn't the only way to customize things - you could have a primary/secondary class system like FFT. Or make feats a bigger thing. But leaving out customization mostly/entirely, I don't think that works so well.

See what happened here is you read PL being a dumbshit, and you believed his lies. So of course your post addresses something that no one is saying. I mean are you talking to Frank, who wants feats ever level, or me who wants feats every level? Who is this mysterious no feats tight classes no customization person you are talking to?

[JonSetanta]

I like feats every level too so count me in.

[Ice9]

I thought I remembered Frank, in a recent thread but not this one, saying that Tome-style feats were a mistake and feats should only do minor stuff for flavor, not be a major part of the character's abilities.

Edit: Found it, here. Although it doesn't say specifically how important the feats would be just "smaller than Tome feats" and you get them every level. They are described as "minor personal touches" however.

[Grek]

Player side rules are fine as is. It's the DM rules that need serious revisions. While mundane skills and the economy need rules that don't let them get skullfucked by first level spells, I'm going to talk about monsters instead. D&D had always had an absurd overabundance of "Always Evil" monster races, incredibly dangerous apex predators and creatures that subsist entirely on humanoid flesh. If I was put in charge of a new edition, I'd be forcing the game away from that tired bullshit:

• Monstrous Humanoids don't exist. Every humanoid is playable, both mechanically and in setting. Orcs are not for killing. Even stuff with templates is playable. You can just be a Halfling Ghoul Ranger if that's what you really want to put on your character sheet.
• Monster Classes exist, both as sub-PC concepts like "Cultist" and as pre-built, choice-free versions of normal classes like "Necromancer". If a player plays a Elf Wizard and makes all the correct choices, they end up with a character identical to the Elf Necromancer in the book, but the GM is not making any of those choices when they put together the encounter. They just cross reference the Elf rules and the Necromancer rules.
• The Monster Manual ships with brief rules for a minimum of 20 types of inanimate magical plant (think Yellow Mold and Striped Toadstools) and 60 types of herbivore, at least 15 of which need to have rules for use as a mount. If there aren't rules for taming and riding a giant frog into battle, the Monster Manual has failed this edition.
• The Monster Manual also devotes 12 pages to half page summaries of the food chain, populations per square mile and interesting set pieces for each climate/terrain type, along with the typical encounter size, ECL and page reference for the monsters in question. I should be able to flip open the book to "Warm Desert" and see that a Basilisk is a typical CR 5 predator in the area. If there's room, include DMG page references to natural hazards as well.
• Have I mentioned templates yet? Skeleton is a template. Clockwork is a template. Fire Elemental is a template. Templates are CR-neutral customization options in this edition. You can apply any template to any creature and get something mechanically viable. You might think a Clockwork Sphinx is a stupid idea that doesn't merit a writeup, but one person's stupid is another person's awesome. Templates let it exist without wasting page space on it.
• Things that are actually intended as a power up (like Vampire) are Monster Classes with a free mandatory template attached. When a Vampire makes someone into Vampire Spawn, they gain levels in the Vampire Spawn NPC class and the Vampire Template. PCs who become vampires do not have their levels altered: instead, they have to swap out one of their three Special Traits (the same slots you use for Magic Items and Noble Titles) in order to gain any real benefit beyond the minor bonuses and drawbacks of the Vampire Template itself.
• The current batch of Good Outsiders is terrible, particularly the Chaotic Good ones. Instead of trying to rehabilitate them, we're just swapping in Fey as the Chaotic Good outsider type and merging Angels and Archons into a single thing. Plus, Fallen Evil Fey have almost as much dramatic interest as Fallen Evil Angels, which is nice.

[PhoneLobster]

I thought I remembered Frank, in a recent thread but not this one, saying that Tome-style feats were a mistake and feats should only do minor stuff for flavor, not be a major part of the character's abilities.

Edit: Found it, here. Although it doesn't say specifically how important the feats would be just "smaller than Tome feats" and you get them every level. They are described as "minor personal touches" however.

Yeah, the feats stance is also a contradiction.

It's totally gonna be a narrow tight class system with minimal choice to keep the classes (and resulting characters) highly and uniformly predictable and recognizable. (even though there are going to be like, lots and lots of classes, how many? well THAT number suits whatever the current argument is)

BUT there are going to be lots of feats, every level at least or more, and they are totally going to matter... while also being deliberately small and not mattering. And definitely not interfering with the high uniformity and predictable recognition by class/race of the resulting characters the system generates but also allowing deeply personal customization options. All at the same time.

There are reasons this system doesn't exist.

[Mask_De_H]

So, since I am a filthy millenial who came into the hobby with 3.0, I'm not entirely sure how the basic multiclass thing works. I assume they would all be on the same resource management system, or mutually compatible resource management systems? Would it work like old school multiclassing/gestalt, would you choose powers off of both lists in a 50/50 split, or would there be specific subclasses that you use instead of the main class?

Also, I assume you don't just go to print with the core four basics, instead using them as springboards to mess around with resource mechanics with a certain fluff focus.

Also also, where would the descriptive class building system fit in this; the one where you have X abilities with the [Rage] tag, so you get to wear the Berserker hat today?