Niroh's page

First and. Foremost I really enjoyed the concepts of the half-elf and half-orc in the playtest, especially once they became heritages instead of a regular ancestry feat.

Something I think would be really cool to have in 2e would be something like that for more races instead of mostly environmental variants. This way we could have some similar ancestry feats attached to them.

The example my playgroup discussed most would be for the goblin ancestry. You could make a Half-orc-like heritage feat, but since it’s for goblins, you become a bugbear instead, to emphasize the increased size and strength, and provide proficiencies for iconic bugbear weapons. How cool would a Giant Totem Bugbear Barbarian be? Or throw everyone for a loop with a bugbear bard? Or for a more half elf type you could be a hobgoblin, emphasizing grace and dexterity. As the game grows you could keep tying races to these variants and add similar feats, but with the appropriate racial flavors. The possibility is probably one of the things I would be most excited to see and explore if done well.

So far, my group and I have been pretty satisfied with the playtest. Moreso once that patches started coming out. One thing has stuck out for me as a constant annoyance, both in my game, and on several boards, and that is the issues of the proficiency system. +1 every level no matter what, and an extremely small bonus for increase proficiency level has near constantly been a point of contention. For example, in Chapter 3 of Doomsday Dawn, we had a Paladin, the armor expert, in +2 Full Plate, having only a couple AC points more than the Monk in no armor, purely due to proficiency. That being said, what I think may be a good solution is making the proficiency ranks (Untrainted, trained, etc) act as gates or limits as well as an additional bonus. For example:

Legendary-Max Proficiency +25 (20 levels +5 Bonus)
Master- +20 (17 Levels +3 Bonus
Expert +15 (14 Levels +1 Bonus)
Trained +10 (10 Levels, no bonus)
Untrained +5 (9 levels, -4 penalty, though could also be 7 levels -2 penalty if it was switched back)

Mechanically, increasing your rank would allow your skill to rise to its cap, so someone untrained in martial weapons, like a level 10 wizard taking a feat to give himself trained status, would suddenly increase to +10 bonus.

Combined with more feats or class abilities adding improvements to these ranks, especially for non-skill proficiencies, and it would allow for greater distinction between characters. A level 20 legend in martial weapons would be able to have a +25 to hit, which would far outstrip someone who was only trained at +10, or an expert at +15. I don't necessarily feel like this is a perfect system, but I do feel like it would make for greater variability in classes and characters, and make more of the choices we have matter.

I welcome anyone's thoughts comments or ideas on how this might be improved. If nothing changes, we still enjoy the new system, but what I could always do is make it a house rule at my table, so I want it to be the best it can be.