System Overhaul

When last we left our intrepid game designer, he was blathering on about some dream, completely unrelated to the task of creating a gaming system.  After several months of not much progress, a recent visit from a close friend and play-tester yielded an unexpected result.

"Dude, you're making things way too complicated."

Faced with the accuracy of the statement, the game designer leapt to his mental feet and declared, "I have so much work to do!" before collapsing into the fetal position at the prospect of the undertaking now at hand.

Outside the city, in a remote location, our hero worked tirelessly at his task.  Though he'd broken the archetypal classes into their base components already, he still had ended up with what was essentially a class-based system, one which dizzied the mind with its complexity as he strove to make a fantasy gaming structure more realistic.  Taking up the tools of his craft, he tore this structure apart and rebuilt it into something simpler, cleaner, more fluid.  The basic details and abilities of a character could be seen with a single glance.  He had done the unthinkable.

The System was reborn.  Three stats, from which all else derived.  No classes, nor class-fragments, but a comprehensive list of skills to govern the abilities of a character.  And yet this simplicity maintained, at its core, a means to fit within the dynamics of 3rd Edition rules, providing the ability to use available Monster Manuals.

The game designer sat back to survey his work, making small adjustments.  He found it to be shiny.  But there were still questions to be answered, regarding how much of a role the character's level was to play, in contrast with skills and ability scores.

And so he sat, fondly inspecting his new creation, awaiting the chance to see it in action.

New Class: Wild Caster

Just designed the basic concept behind a new class I'm currently calling Wild Caster. The idea is that they do not learn or memorize spells. Instead, they can attempt to cast any arcane-based spell, with a percentage chance of it either working, casting a random spell from the same school of magic, casting a random spell from a random school, or the energy fizzling entirely.

Actually, now that I think of it, I could add a 5th option: the energy backfires and deals damage to the caster.

At any rate, if I remember correctly this is similar to a concept that I've heard previous gamers express a desire to see implemented. Initial reaction?

Racial Benefits

Prior editions of D&D gave various bonuses to the different races when it came to class. Some classes were even limited to certain races. I have some Combat Proficiencies like that, but so far none of my classes are race-restricted. However, I just recently considered the option of giving a reduced experience cost to certain classes, based on race. At this point I'm not sure how much of a bonus it should be, or if it's even truly desirable as an aspect of the game. I would like to include some sort of technical variance due to race, but I could just include the bonuses based on size and the different types of vision and be done with it. Thoughts?