Some quick notes: I think balancing any new system is going to be tricky. If you have differing costs for differing things, I think this will be very difficult. Clever players will quickly realize that while slashing may be better than bludgeoning, for the extra cost, it isn't - better to be master in bludgeoning vs expert in slashing for example. I'd much prefer to just use expmul - that provides a much higher granularity than just three skill competencies. It is also much simpler. At some level, the KISS approach probably applies. This is after all just a game - the point is to have fun, and not mimic real life or make things so convoluted that people need to spend hours trying to min/max the points they get for their character to the best advantage. In some sense, that is why I think a very forgiving skill system is good - it lets players correct 'mistakes' they may have made in making their character. One of the things that annoys me the most about some games is that you play it for a while only to realize the decision you made 20 hours of game play ago was wrong, and you need to start over. I know one of the points mentioned that all high level characters look the same and that isn't desired. IMO, that is more a player issue - I have a feeling that with a point system, all the high level characters may not be expert in all the skills, but those that know how to play/abuse the system will probably end up having the same set of skills, so all high level characters now look the same in that approach. It is up to the players to to decide how they want to play the game. Right now, there are several special races that are significantly different to play, as well as different religions. I'm not sure what my point is here. Maybe just to try and keep things in perspective - we should try to make it so things are more fun. Having complicated systems tend not to be fun. As for spells - I wouldn't mind seeing perhaps some more subdivisions, but these divisions should be balanced. IMO, splitting each spell path into a skill just isn't going to work, so now you start combining multiple paths into the skill, and doing other oddities. One thing to keep in mind is how to award exp for these different spells/skills. Basically, the spells provided need to be able to kill things - things like protection spells will never really be able to give the player exp. There is already a flag in the spellist.h file that says cleric/wizardry. It wouldn't be hard to make that into a bitmask - you could then add another category or two - could add something like a 'nature' path (with the bigger outdoor map, this may be more useful - could include some summon animal spells, as well as daylight/nightfall, and maybe some more of the outdoorsy like spells). For another, you could perhaps add a 'elemental spell category - this would include the summon fire/earth/water/air, as well as some of the protection to those things. I don't think in any case you can realistically get more than 4 or 5 viable split spell categories (just go down the list and see how many damage spells there are) - having more functional divisions instead of fire/protection/cold makes more sense to me. It would also IMO help with the problem of the growing number of spells - move some of the useful spells to nature or summoning, and now players have to think if they want to pick up (and improve) those skills or not. Could perhaps limit players to some number of spellcasting skills (3 out of the 4 or something) so they can't be an expert in everything, but what they are missing, they can probably pick up in scrolls, potions, or wands. Would put those back into more use again. RE exp for wands, scrolls, and other magic - while it can be said it is the magic of the item that is doing the killing, you could start to make the same argument in lot of other places (it is the fact that I had a resist fire potion that I was able to kill that big dragon, etc). The fact is the player knew to use the item in the right circumstance - that should be worth something just like knowing to use potions lets you defeat some otherwise really tought monsters or whatnot. Also, giving exp for these things might actually inspire people to use them. Maybe they shouldn't get full exp, and it probably should just go into a misc (overall total) category, but saying they should get nothing for using magic items to kill creatures is a bit extreme I think.