Dedicated class ability

[alcyone]

I like things the way they are just fine with primes and abilities, especially when you have to be a little careful if you want to be good at absolutely everything.

I hear a lot of comments that make it sound like some would like to go a different way with that, though. Be awesome at whatever your class specifies for abilities.

So, how about this. Make a new ability. It's named whatever your primary class is named. So, for a ranger, make a new ability called Ranger. It's then the same score as the Ranger's class prime, Strength. If Strength goes up or down, so does this score. It's always a prime. You always add your level when you use it. Now, all Ranger class abilities will be against the Ranger score. If someone else wants to use a ranger class ability, they will have to use it using the listed ability without adding level, as usual.

You use this new score for all of your class abilities, and nothing else (though maybe the CK will extend its use to other obviously Ranger-specific tasks).

Why not just use Strength, then? Just to underline, it's not strength, it happens to have the same score, and (probably) it's your highest one. It represents the essence of the class, what you worked hardest at (poured your points into). So you aren't tracking someone using Strength, you are tracking using your ranger-ness.

You might also consider making a score for demihumans; you have an Elf score, for instance, which is used for all Elf racial abilities.

[Sir Ironside]

So, how about this. Make a new ability. It's named whatever your primary class is named. So, for a ranger, make a new ability called Ranger. It's then the same score as the Ranger's class prime, Strength. If Strength goes up or down, so does this score. It's always a prime. You always add your level when you use it. Now, all Ranger class abilities will be against the Ranger score. If someone else wants to use a ranger class ability, they will have to use it using the listed ability without adding level, as usual.

Why not just make it another class ability that only the Ranger (With specific Ranger abilities) can take and is a prime but doesn't count towards your normal primes that you get.

I find this way simpler and easier to implement.

Adding racial abilities would just get too fiddly.

Then there is the problem of multi-tasking.

[alcyone]

So, this class ability would have an ability score? Or where does the ability score come from?

[Demiurge]

What I use: Attributes are always considered prime when making class ability checks. I haven't found this to be unbalancing and it plays a little closer to 1e IMO.

[Arduin]

What I use: Attributes are always considered prime when making class ability checks. I haven't found this to be unbalancing and it plays a little closer to 1e IMO.

Not sure about this as it would discourage playing a human. Example: Ranger = prime of Str. Has class abilities that use Dex & Wis as primes. Why play a Human Ranger (3 primes) over an Elf (2 primes)?

If you don't mind getting rid of that race balancing factor it isn't a problem at all. But, it WILL pretty much eliminate the key reason in C&C for playing a human...

[Demiurge]

What I use: Attributes are always considered prime when making class ability checks. I haven't found this to be unbalancing and it plays a little closer to 1e IMO.

Not sure about this as it would discourage playing a human. Example: Ranger = prime of Str. Has class abilities that use Dex & Wis as primes. Why play a Human Ranger (3 primes) over an Elf (2 primes)?

If you don't mind getting rid of that race balancing factor it isn't a problem at all. But, it WILL pretty much eliminate the key reason in C&C for playing a human...

I haven't found that to be the case in my games. Humans still get 3 good saves (huge, IMHO) and ability checks that are not class specific.