D&D5e is coming.

my life experience--people's professional abilities do fall into levels. its a reasonable abstraction.

Sure! If you are ever here in São Paulo (I find it unlikely you would go to São Caetano do Sul specifically), just say the word!

I agree here. The main problem with D&D is the lack of a really usefull skillsystem. A fighter gets only 2 skillpoints basevalue to distribute. That's just not enough. Even a rogue has usually not enough skillpoints considering the must have skills. With proper skills and a usefull way to distribute them widely you could flesh out your charakters a lot more and make combatcentric classes outside of combat more useful. Personally I would like to see the attack and hit values get included in the skillsystem and don't have it levelbased. Das Schwarze Auge (Realms of Arkania) does it really well to balance combat usefulness with other skills (but sucks in other things).

But then it is only natural to make magic part of the skillsystem too and before you know it you have a skill-based system. Not saying those are not better.

Anyways my solution is simply to give alternate skill points called 'trades' to classes. You can only spend those on 'suboptimal' skills like craft and profession, but they do add to flavour and outside-combat-utility.

I think there is nothing wrong with including magic. You can still have it restricted to let it work similar to a classbased magic system.

Your "trades" are fine and at the moment probably the only thing you can really do with the current system. You can call it major and minor skills or primary and secondary skills, too. I had something similar in my mind but not playtested. You can do it with feats, too.

http://www.wizards.com/DnD/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20120116

Well, it sure does sound crazy. Or perhaps the inevitable fist fight over "So, I rolled a 13 and missed in 3 seconds total, and now you're taking 15 minutes to make your move ffs" combat is an intended feature for DM amusement?

"Our game will be a fast-paced arcade shooter, a tactical shooter, a cover-based shooter, an RTS, an RTT, a 4X, an action RPG, an RPG, an adventure game, a..."
You get the gist.
Not really interested in P&P past the point where it leads to cRPGs being made, but that Cook comment seems to be as easily implemented as what I wrote...

Yeah, but many previous D&D systems had multiple levels of complexity. For example, in 2nd Edition you could choose between no skills, secondary skills, and nonweapon proficiiencies. I think in 5ed, WotC is just taking this concept to the next level. I won't say I'm optimistic, but I'll give them a fair chance anyway. My guess is that they'll apply 3 levels of complexity to most of their systems. These will most likely come in the form of on rails, packaged sets, and specific choice.

The fumy thing is, I can actually see this system of "complexity dials" working out well in PnP, but I'm having a tough time imagining this being incorporated into a crpg. Imagine a game that claims it can be played like ToEE, BG, or Diablo depending on the player's choice. While that might be awesome, I would be blown away if this was actually accomplished.

Complexity dial:
1.Popamole = ARPG Hack n Slash
2.Volournish = RTWP Bullshit
3.KKKodexian = Turn based Magnifico!

M:

The visionaries at BioWare are hard at work to turn the things you only dared to imagine into reality:

Would be more prudent to say it is on a curve. more like Bethesda games, but with regression over time.

The idea of a modular system with different layers of complexity is decent enough, and is in fact nothing new, I remember several such systems from back in the '90s. However, thinking that people playing at the same table can be using different modules and all have an enjoyable game is bullshit.

Gaming via spreadsheet <> complexity

Ahh! don't forget

Xp for next level = xp for cur level ^ 2

Multi-classing with the parent class is popular but really slows advancement

Fiksed.

But Bioware would have a different expression.

This idea of different playstyles-in-one-game seems retarded. But hopefully it also means, that 5E will be house-rule friendly.

Well at least they would have reason to avoid combat encounter. A smart PnP session would make combat encounters rare anyway.

I am constantly amazed at Bioware's ability to take good Codexian ideas and make them into the shittiest possible