So in my all-fired-up push to get pen to paper, I neglected to mention something VERY KEY to tabletop RPGs, and in fact, gaming in general: Balance. Specifically, how you balance the overall power level of your characters.
There are a few ways to do this. D20 and Palladium both promote a dice-rolling system wherein a character’s stats are determined randomly. That’s fun and all, but let’s be honest, it’s fun for about the first 6 characters you make, after which you realize that the dice aren’t going to turn you into a god every time, or may give you a really awkward stat loadout. “Well I could use a little extra Wisdom and I don’t need quite that much Dexterity, but all I’ve got here are a bunch of 16s and 11s.”(in D20, stats run from 3 to 18, though it’s incredibly rare to see a character with a single stat below 10, which is average.)
If only there were some way to trade points from one stat into another. Some sort of… “Point Buy” system.
I said Point Buy, not Best Buy!
Candy-Coated Bacon 