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<blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9342423" data-attributes="member: 7026617"><p>I'm probably also kind of trying to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of being a crank who feels a need to bash on a game he dislikes every time it comes up, but I suppose its relevant here.</p><p></p><p>Okay, I'll summarize a few of the more important ones. </p><p></p><p>1. The way the pools work is, I think, malformed from the get-go. Having the same pools that take damage from certain kinds of attacks being the pools that are used to improve odds of success for the associated attributes is, frankly, kind of perverse, and particularly bad in the commonest cases as it tends to catch warrior types across the kneecaps.</p><p></p><p>2. The dependence on cyphers (think various kinds of consumable magic items) makes very little sense in a lot of genres, and the attempts to recast them in ways that don't make them so blatantly weird while keeping the mechanic shows just how specific to Cypher's first iteration they were and that they're a component that is carried forward because the system doesn't work quite right without them, whether they make sense or not.</p><p></p><p>3. Conflating extremely short term benefit resources and permanent improvement together resources is a problem everywhere I've ever seen it. The fact Cypher has a somewhat convoluted form of that doesn't make it better.</p><p></p><p>4. Making most of your mechanical distinction that isn't attribute or class based (and there are only four of each, three for classes in some of the incarnations) being hyper-specific and pretty clearly ad-hoc in design is something I've somewhat come to expect from D20 derivatives, but having them lumped together that big means that its remarkably easy to have character concepts that you're out of luck with unless the GM is willing to create a brand new one even though there isn't a really good metric to tell you what's reasonable. This isn't an uncommon problem with some class systems but it can be particularly glaring if you're trying to make a general-use rather than setting-specific game. Its particularly a standout in a game that otherwise usually has no skill system as such.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Thomas Shey, post: 9342423, member: 7026617"] I'm probably also kind of trying to avoid the uncomfortable feeling of being a crank who feels a need to bash on a game he dislikes every time it comes up, but I suppose its relevant here. Okay, I'll summarize a few of the more important ones. 1. The way the pools work is, I think, malformed from the get-go. Having the same pools that take damage from certain kinds of attacks being the pools that are used to improve odds of success for the associated attributes is, frankly, kind of perverse, and particularly bad in the commonest cases as it tends to catch warrior types across the kneecaps. 2. The dependence on cyphers (think various kinds of consumable magic items) makes very little sense in a lot of genres, and the attempts to recast them in ways that don't make them so blatantly weird while keeping the mechanic shows just how specific to Cypher's first iteration they were and that they're a component that is carried forward because the system doesn't work quite right without them, whether they make sense or not. 3. Conflating extremely short term benefit resources and permanent improvement together resources is a problem everywhere I've ever seen it. The fact Cypher has a somewhat convoluted form of that doesn't make it better. 4. Making most of your mechanical distinction that isn't attribute or class based (and there are only four of each, three for classes in some of the incarnations) being hyper-specific and pretty clearly ad-hoc in design is something I've somewhat come to expect from D20 derivatives, but having them lumped together that big means that its remarkably easy to have character concepts that you're out of luck with unless the GM is willing to create a brand new one even though there isn't a really good metric to tell you what's reasonable. This isn't an uncommon problem with some class systems but it can be particularly glaring if you're trying to make a general-use rather than setting-specific game. Its particularly a standout in a game that otherwise usually has no skill system as such. [/QUOTE]
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