Quote: Indeed. It is, as I mentioned, one of the many things I'll be houseruling if I ever run a game.There in lies the problem... you need to house rules frequently right off the bat. The system is somewhat badly designed from the descriptions
your giving us. The system is apparently riddled with nonsense assignment of stats to skills and abilities. So, to me anyway, this means zombies, skeletons,
and your average ooze don't get an intelligence score. Also, your average animals starts off with a major negative just for the crime of existence....
considering that this is a problem with one of your basic root secondary stats I find this a ridiculous problem.
I don't care about the half dragons... because they had this thing in the 3e called templates.... one of which was a half dragon. I've played a
(mutant chaos rolled abilities) half dragon and as long as the DM doesn't nerf the enemies and treats you as 2 or three levels higher the system still
works just fine. ECL (Estimated Character Level) was a good thing... and if the modifier was too low you upped it by +1 level till it worked.
My problem comes in with the single worst RPG book I've ever read, The 'Advanced' Psionic handbook. It was 'Advanced' it the same way as
memory is 'advanced' by Alzheimer's. In the Psionic's Handbook all six ability scores mattered and your dump stat(s) could screw over your
character... it was a class where that every four levels stat boost is not actually a no brainer. Each ability score had its own specialization path. You got
logical exclusions and inclusions of your pickable limited manfestations... it was a class where the DM testest your ability to do basic math before allowing
you to play one.
The 'Advanced' Psionics handbook decided that was stupid and too thinky or something... so it eliminated those nasty, mean evil thinky bits. First,
intelligence is the caster stat they use reguardless of path. Then we double the power points across the board by level 3 and it get higher multiples later.
The we make teleport with error (5th level) a psycho portationist only skill (previously the based dex) and Teleport without error (7th) a generalist skill.
Then all teleportation damage menefestations (spells) are scalable.
By scalable I mean instead of disapating touch (1st level add +1d8 teleportation damage to a touch attack) to (level)d6 on a touch attack... or as I call it
Fist of the North Star. They did the same for the menfestation Baleful teleport (5th level 9d6 teleportation damage at range) to (level)d6 at range... both
are general skills. Which makes no sense, unless... the idea behind this to have a chacter with super sayjin power reserves and Fist of the North Star at
first level.
So my problem is that in order to 'balance' a class it was made insanely stupid for a DM to allow into a campaign. Also it nerfed the other base class
in the book Psionic warrior.... for instance the 3-4 prerequisite feats Deep impact (spend 5 power points to turn a melee attack into a touch attack, this
could be used for each melee attack in a round... which ate power points like candy.) into a infinitely repeatable stare blankly into space for a round... make
one melee attack as a touch attack... repeat this 1 attack every two rounds attack until the party kills the thing your drooling mindlessly at.
As for the can only be healed X times per day thing... I can't think of a DM I've played with that wouldn't happily spam the frequently accessed
random encounter table with undead that drained those times per day heals off. Or made spells and weapons that drain them... or made a healing field cloud
spell that forced people to use a heal charge every round to heal 1 hp while they were camping and then attacked. Seriously... if your characters are in your
opinion being munchkins use harder mobs on them and have them hit constant smaller battles to bleed off resources. That or my favorite... give them a Deck of
Many Things to deal with... but introduce it with a random guy walking up behind them and asking them to pick a number between on and a hundred. Who ever
answers draws that many cards.
I find there is a great deal of difference between different and botting my player characters... excluding FFX1 all Final Fantasy games (minus ffX and FFX2)
are different... but only FF12 lets you steer a cluster of botted PCs around. Some people loved FF12 others hated it. My problem come up when My tank spends
10 seconds out of 12 staring off into space and this is considered a good idea, that requires feats.