Greetings!
My name is Bobby Wallen. I have been following the forums here for awhile but this is my first post. I love creating games! I have created several and have started many more...but have backburned alot of them. My foremost interest has got to be short all purpose systems. I will get straight to the point, I have created a new system and it is still in its infancy and I was hoping to get some yal to look at or perhaps give it a playtest to see what you think.
The system is called Dice Chucker and teh basic rundown is this: Character are represented by dice pools(d6s), that represent all resources, talent stamina, etc all wrapped up into one average number. When characters are weakened in someway they lose dice from this pool, no dice means death. Characters also have Attributes which are individual skills and talents from 1 up. When a character uses a specific talent they roll their entire remaining dice pool, and keep a number of dice equal to the attribute being used. A character has a pool of 4 and a attribute at 3. He or she rolls all 4 dice in the pool but can only keep 3. The dice kept are then totalled and compared to a target number. The higher over the TN the better the action succeeds.
Its a pretty basic system...but I added a twist that I hope will be the hook for players to intrest them in these rules. The twist is Power dice. Power dice is an optional rule I included the system can be used as described above but Power dice are more fun. With power dice certain color dice do diffrent things to change the rules. For example if you have a red die in your pool, you can opt to reroll that die and use the new results. A blue die is open ended. The normal un-powered color in Dice Chucker is white and does nothing special. Power dice can be mixed into the pools and give the game a little more strategy than the basic rules. Players can win power dice for their pools with advancement, but can also lose them randomly with injuries. They can try for all of one color or mix and match. Some of teh power dice are bad, deducting from totals or even "eating" other power dice the character may have!
Thats it in a nutshell, I have uploaded the rules at rpghoard.com(You can find it either in the new files or systems sections)I would love to get some feedback from such a great group of fellow designers. Thanks for taking the time to read this.
Bobby

The question I have for you (and mind you I have not read the system, only going off of your description) is what makes this system any different than the Storyteller System from White Wolf or Shadowrun or the D6 system from WEG?

It sounds like the same stuff. You have a dice pool. Roll the dice pool versus a difficulty number. When you are damaged, the pool lessens. etc. WEG even had the Wild Die concept of using a different colored dice.

Also what kinda game is this used for? Realistic? Fantasy? Off the cuff? Entertaining? I find that these systems are ok for story type of games, but hinder action/realism games due to their poor modeling of physics, damage, etc.

BTW, I am not trying to be mean, only curious, I enjoy discussing mechanics.

No offense taken I wanted to spark conversation. Ok first I am familiar with the WW system but am not familiar with WEG the only d6 system I have had contact with is the silouette system from dp9. So bare in mind that is what I am using to frame my response. With ST system from WW each stat and skill is represented by dice. Appropriate stat and skill are combined to form a pool and are rolled against a TN and any dice that roll over that are considered 1 success each. I do not know how the other systems you mentioned work so cannot comment on them. The Dice Chucker system. Has 1 pool used for all rolls If your pool is 4d6 tehn you roll 4d6 for everything, combat, magic etc. Then you have your Attributes, which are skills and talents that yout char. excels at. Each attribute has a number value assigned to it that cannot be higher than your pool. In the example I gave(4d6) no attibute can be higher than 4. So a warrior might have an attributes like sword fighting 4 archery 2, etc.
When you roll, say you are attacking with a bow. To hit the player rolls his or her pool(4d6). Lets say the roll is a 1,3,4, and 6. This character is not as good with a bow as a sword. The archery attribute will ony allow the character to keep 2 dice. So the player decides to keep the 4 and the 6. You add those together(10) and compare that to the TN(the TN is normally 6 and is so in this example). So the player would have a +4 over the TN, not to bad.
If the character was using a sword and the sword fighting Attribute he or she would have rolled and would have been able to keep all for dice. Using the above example again that would have made for a total 14. Which is +8 over TN...a much better result would have occurred.
Power dice change that up alot, be able to reroll some dice and what not can really change the affect of diffrent actions. It also adds another level of involvement on the players part. "Hmmm since I am a mage do I want all purple dice..but I am pretty weak so some green for healing rolls would be nice." or " Do I attack the dragon, and run the risk of losing one or more of my blue dice becuase of damage?"
The game can be used for anything so long as players and GM handle it appropriately for the story. However I would have to say it was always in the back of mind for a lighter more entertaining type of one friday night game. I would love to hear otherwise though from people trying it out. I do think that the system could be put into any story and function just fine. It is a playtest version and is goign to be tweaked to make it more adaptable and user friendly.
I hope that helps any further questions or comments are welcomed!
Bobby

What do these dice pools represent?

In WW your strength dice represent the amount of physical strength the character possesses. It correlates to how damage they do, how much they can lift, etc.

In the shortest answer everything. Its a big abstract thing. If you take everything that makes a character innate abilites. Their speed, strength, brains, stamina, everything and give it all a dice value and then average all that together to get 1 value that is what the dice pool(I call it a Character Pool in the game) represents. It is the purest simplest omni-stat. It is a character's natural potential in general. The character's specialties are made up in attributes. The attributes are how well the character is able to utilize that potential.
Bobby
oversoul_games@hotmail.com

To get it out of the way: your text could use some better formatting, *slightly* more direct writing (less jokeyness in text?), and slightly tighter style. I mean, no big deal - I'm not a somber humorless grunk - but formatting and editing have eerily power effects in convincing Joe Gamer that your thing is worth reading. (Have a pro do formatting on a one-shot published scenario did wonders, frex.)

So the CP is roughly the character's "level". or larger-than-life-ness. Bigger pools (more epic characters) will end up better in most challenges, but Attributes (how many die you keep) have a much bigger impact, as they should. That's quite intuitive, and promising. (Similar in some ways, but not all, to The Pool, which is worth seeing for kicks anyway.)

A thought on combat initiative: some games have folks roll their die/pool, and have the roll count for initiative as well as the actual maneuver. Sorcerer has a scheme that could work, for example, but just bounce that thought around as you like.

You should be aware that the difference between Attribute levels is a Big Deal. That is, when you're totalling a 2d6, odds are you are going to hit higher than 6 - that is, odds are that you will ALWAYS be beating the 1d6 guy, no matter what. The system isn't very grainy this way, but then again having different attributes matter also makes this clearer (rather than comparing more minute fractions). I'm just saying, mechanically, be aware that opponents of differing Attribute levels can really hardly compete. (Or so it seems; what did playtesting show?)

You write a lot throughout the text about getting rid of un-necessary bits, and yet you frontload the document with stuff about optional combat rules, equipment, NPCs, and very surprisingly weapon ranges. Wha??? I mean, certainly, include these (even expand more if you want, giving folks a kickstart on cooking their own parts up), but you're detracting from the Cool Thing: POWER dice!

I mean, this is the cool, and this shouldn't be relegated to a "optional rule". I mean, let the players figure out if they want it in the game (or say something like "GMs should decide what kind of power dice, if any, to put into the game".) On one hand, getting actually colored dice seems difficult (although coloring your own is practical), and not all of the different color powers "clicked" with me. But then again, the idea kernel was cool enough to see the potential depth of play, and even inspired me to try making my own power dice. THIS IS THE COOL THING, I say it again.

I feel (very intuitively, fuzzily) that power dice come out best when they encapsulate (a) some sort of dice trick (like black dice killing pairs), and (b) encasing some sort of nonspecific game effect that still impacts the character. So, I think having green(healing) and purple(magic) dice isn't *that* great, since I have other means of measuring my magic-user's powers. But maybe a purple die that does (effect X) when I'm rolling with the help of other players (or playing with in-game relationships). And maybe a yellow die that comes into play (with some powerful but highly variable effect Y) in situations that are fundamentally risky gambles.

While we're at it: why make Flaws just give more attributes? You've got your power dice, especially those black ones, so maybe those Flaws can pay for themselves. How about:
* if you get pairs (black dice powers can come into affect), AND either the player or GM can explan how the Flaw comes into play, then that bad effect (cancelling of die) comes into play.
* there's that off chance during advancement that (through some roll) the black dice are additionally converted into better Power dice. So your black dice are an investment in future power at the expense of your current status.

What do you think?

Wow! Ok off the bat thanks! You took a lot of time to write your post and I really appreciate that, I especially appreciate it when intelligent and considerate people are doing it. Too many time when doing anything on the internet you get rude people who would sooner just say something awful just for the fun of it.
Ok formatting, I am as you can tell rather lax with my english skills. I also cannot afford to hire an editor/formatter. So I will have to really on myself...I will look at it as an opportunity to improve my skills. DO you have any other suggestions on the subject?

---A thought on combat initiative: some games have folks roll their die/pool, and have the roll count for initiative as well as the actual maneuver. Sorcerer has a scheme that could work, for example, but just bounce that thought around as you like.----

Intiative is always a touchy subject I have noticed in gaming. Some games look at it as apart of a character's natural abilities. Other's use an absolute abstraction that has no basis on the character or his/her abilities. I will consider some alternatives but I am rather fond of this one.

----You should be aware that the difference between Attribute levels is a Big Deal. That is, when you're totalling a 2d6, odds are you are going to hit higher than 6 - that is, odds are that you will ALWAYS be beating the 1d6 guy, no matter what. The system isn't very grainy this way, but then again having different attributes matter also makes this clearer (rather than comparing more minute fractions). I'm just saying, mechanically, be aware that opponents of differing Attribute levels can really hardly compete. (Or so it seems; what did playtesting show?)----

Attributes levels...I was intending for them to be "diffrent" I feel that someone who has more training in an area will on average always do better than someone with less training, but there is always luck, and there enter Power Dice.

----You write a lot throughout the text about getting rid of un-necessary bits, and yet you frontload the document with stuff about optional combat rules, equipment, NPCs, and very surprisingly weapon ranges. Wha??? I mean, certainly, include these (even expand more if you want, giving folks a kickstart on cooking their own parts up), but you're detracting from the Cool Thing: POWER dice!----

A kick start is what I was going for. My reasoning is simple. I am trying to find a line to walk. I feel that a simple game should be that.. simple. Here is the problem when is it too simple? and when is too much? That was what my target was I will definately have to continue tweaking and fine tuning that area. My ranges admittedly are probly way off as most are complete guesswork.

-----I mean, this is the cool, and this shouldn't be relegated to a "optional rule". I mean, let the players figure out if they want it in the game (or say something like "GMs should decide what kind of power dice, if any, to put into the game".) On one hand, getting actually colored dice seems difficult (although coloring your own is practical), and not all of the different color powers "clicked" with me. But then again, the idea kernel was cool enough to see the potential depth of play, and even inspired me to try making my own power dice. THIS IS THE COOL THING, I say it again. ----

Power Dice, power dice are my materpiece and is what I am most proud of in this work. I seriously considered making it a standard rule, but I let fear of reject reduce it to an "optional" rule. But with your comments I think I will return it to its main rule status. I am still tweak the dice effects and am currently considered changing the black die'e effect, I have found it difficult yto come up with reasonable effects for the dice. Do you have any specific ideas concerning it?

----While we're at it: why make Flaws just give more attributes? You've got your power dice, especially those black ones, so maybe those Flaws can pay for themselves. How about:
* if you get pairs (black dice powers can come into affect), AND either the player or GM can explan how the Flaw comes into play, then that bad effect (cancelling of die) comes into play.
* there's that off chance during advancement that (through some roll) the black dice are additionally converted into better Power dice. So your black dice are an investment in future power at the expense of your current status. -----

You have given my a lot to think on including the idea of using Flaws to purchase Power Dice and lots of other things too!. I must admit that I have not playtested the rules myself. I am planning a game but organization and timing is difficult when everyone has real adult lives. I published the playtest version to help with that, I was hoping to get some responses to this post as well as hear from email from people trying it out. Then compile that with my own tests and come up with my revision. Looking at this post it might come across as defending my work, I am really glad you posted, it put a lot of things into prospective and brought up many points I looked over or neglected, I hope to continue this dicussion with you and anyone else that wants to chime in!
Thanks
Bobby

Yeah, I agree with Dev - Get those Power Dice out in front. They jump up and down and say, "hey! This game is different and worth looking at!" Make them work for you.

Regarding suggestions for editing, I'd drop a line over at the Connections forum. You don't have money, so you'll need to offer something you can give - the easiest example I can think of would be a free copy of the game when it's published along with the contributer's name in it somewhere.

Also, check out this article for some useful hints about publishing on the cheap.

You've made some comments in your posts that give me the idea that you're trying too hard to make this game appeal to "the market," whatever the market might be. I say, don't worry about that so much. Write the game you want to play, the game that gets you excited and pumped up. That enthusiasm will come through in your text and do more to sell the game than trying to make it please everyone.

I will definately head over and drop a line, as far as offering the most I can offer is "name in lights". The game will be completely free and is up for grabs at rpghoard. The finished version will be there as well. I do intend on publishing other work just not this one. This is the first rpg I have whole heartedly told myself " Now Bobby no dreams of grandeur this is for free"
As far as formatting goes, I kinda like the jokeyness of it I was wondering what everyone thought was bad about it? Is it just too much of it? I have about a thousand questions? But I should organize my thoughts and tackle them 1 at a time so as not drive yall insane.
I will say i am glad that I and this game has been overal so well rceived and that yall like it and can see what my aim was with it!
Bobby

oversoul01 wrote: The game will be completely free and is up for grabs at rpghoard. The finished version will be there as well. I do intend on publishing other work just not this one. This is the first rpg I have whole heartedly told myself " Now Bobby no dreams of grandeur this is for free"

$5 I had thought about it and I do intend on using rpgnow for sales of stuff. My question is would you really pay $5 US for Dice Chucker? This is always a tricky part. Gamers are notoriously poor and therefore if they are intelligent budget their spending. When someone is thinking about buying my game what are they thinking bout exactly? Page count... 9 pages the finished version might reach 10 or 11. I know page count should be second to content but it ain't always so. Now content, in your opinion do you think the concept is worth $5..and I am really curious on that. Would those people who have read it adn taken the time to respond to this thread, would you pay $5 for this game?
Marketing is almost always guesswork, in my opinion. What do yall think?
Bobby

Ah, what's a fair price to charge? That's always the question, isn't it? Here are some relevant discussions from the past, if you're interested in checking out some other opinions on the subject:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=79
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1340
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=1873
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=9980
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=10999
http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?t=11270

Personally, I think you should go with your gut. Do you have your heart set on releasing Dice Chucker for free? Then do it. Willing to sell, but think 5 bucks is too high a price? Sell it for 3, or 2, or whatever you want. In the end, it's your game. And, if it sells for crap, you can always lower the price later.

But that's getting into the realm of publishing, and this is the Indie Design forum. So, get designing! :)

(Note: It's a rule on the Forge not to "ressurect" old threads, so if you decide you want to contribute to one of the topics I've linked to above, it's best to start a new thread with a link to the older thread. Just an FYI.)

Thanks for the adice I am going to go and drop a line in the publisher and connections forum and see what I can fish up. Maybe even the Actual Play forum I am curious as to what people think of the system in action, if anyone ahs tried it yet
Bobby

While we're at it: why make Flaws just give more attributes? You've got your power dice, especially those black ones, so maybe those Flaws can pay for themselves. How about:

Definately good stuff Dev!
I had not given any thought to if my carefree feel (which is what I was aiming at overall from the writting) would affect it. Over at rpghoard it has been downloaded 71 times. But I could see how after giving it a quick look over they would just dump it. Having other prospectives is great! I think What I will do is when I go back into it, I will lessen it some, but at the saem time try to build a "hype" into my writting to get people wanting to play.
I like the Bluff die alot. My only concern is being able to distinguish them on the table, that is why I was so focused on color. I want everyone to be able to look at a die and know what it is.
Love to hear more
Bobby

I think I am going to cut heavily back on the humor and sorta reserve it mostly for side bars and examples. IO am also hoping to organize a REAL playtest this weekend or early next week.
I am also starting up a free site dedicated to it hopefully with regular updates, news and stuff for dicechucker. Its not ready yet but the address is dicechucker.0catch.com
Bobby

Hi Bobby,

I'm not going to nit-pick on specific typos but I do want to indicate how important I think it is for you to go over this document with a fine-toothed comb. The general unclarity of the writing made reading a painfully slow task and there were a few lines that I simply never did figure out the meaning of. I'd be surprised if you didn't lose more than a few readers because of this.

Now, I want to agree that the power dice is really the core novelty of the game. But you need more and you need more interesting ways for them to interact: cancelling opponent's dice, changing your own or others, combinations, multipliers, conditionals, etc. I think you could do more of those kinds of things by making all rolls opposed, but that would obviously require some rethinking of stuff.

When presenting the third commandment, you should immediately point out that through advancement there is a mechanism that would otherwise allow you to surpass your CP. Or better yet, just get rid of the commandment. Who cares if some bone-head player wants to waste his development that way? You can obviously never keep more dice than you roll, so what's it matter?

You have a bunch of things that are customizations of your game that will be unique to each group. I suggest your read Donjon by Clinton R. Nixon and adopt the "dials" from the way he laid his rules out. They're a great way to highlight the features that need to be customized.

An inept roll means you keep the lowest half of the dice you roll, right? For characters with a CP of 5, that's likely to be better than having an attribute of level 1. Is that how you really want it?

I'm put off by the fact that the damage table starts at 6+ instead of 7+.

Advancement seems broken. If I'm getting it, the better (higher CP) you are, the faster you get better. Is that what you're looking for? Also, I think you'll find through play that every player makes an advancement roll after every session -- because it would be dumb not to.

Also, I may have missed it, but I don't remember seeing a link to your game in these notes. You might want to provide one.

And you need whitespace between the border (or the center divider) and the text. If whatever software you're using won't do that, ditch the border -- it's not doing anything for you.

Finally, I think that as an overall strategy, you would gain granularity by expanding the scale of CP and target numbers. If the average Joe had a CP of 10 and supers a 30 (and you adjusted the 1+,7+,13+... progression to be wider) then you'd have more fine-tuning to play with. I haven't given this change the careful scrutiny that it would need, but I hope that you'll do so.

Chris

The draft that I placed on rpghoard.com is a rough playtest, I put it up to see if there was first any intrest in continuing workign on it, and secondly it was also to help motivate me to continue working on it. I tend to get sidetracked easily as new ideas bombard my brain. I am working with an editor and the next version will be much easier to read and hopeful with more clarity.

Now, I want to agree that the power dice is really the core novelty of the game. But you need more and you need more interesting ways for them to interact: cancelling opponent's dice, changing your own or others, combinations, multipliers, conditionals, etc. I think you could do more of those kinds of things by making all rolls opposed, but that would obviously require some rethinking of stuff.

When presenting the third commandment, you should immediately point out that through advancement there is a mechanism that would otherwise allow you to surpass your CP. Or better yet, just get rid of the commandment. Who cares if some bone-head player wants to waste his development that way? You can obviously never keep more dice than you roll, so what's it matter?

You have a bunch of things that are customizations of your game that will be unique to each group. I suggest your read Donjon by Clinton R. Nixon and adopt the "dials" from the way he laid his rules out. They're a great way to highlight the features that need to be customized.

An inept roll means you keep the lowest half of the dice you roll, right? For characters with a CP of 5, that's likely to be better than having an attribute of level 1. Is that how you really want it?

I'm put off by the fact that the damage table starts at 6+ instead of 7+.

Advancement seems broken. If I'm getting it, the better (higher CP) you are, the faster you get better. Is that what you're looking for? Also, I think you'll find through play that every player makes an advancement roll after every session -- because it would be dumb not to.

And you need whitespace between the border (or the center divider) and the text. If whatever software you're using won't do that, ditch the border -- it's not doing anything for you.

Finally, I think that as an overall strategy, you would gain granularity by expanding the scale of CP and target numbers. If the average Joe had a CP of 10 and supers a 30 (and you adjusted the 1+,7+,13+... progression to be wider) then you'd have more fine-tuning to play with. I haven't given this change the careful scrutiny that it would need, but I hope that you'll do so.

oversoul01 wrote: I am now toying with this idea as well, I however do not want to overwhelm players with too much, I want the PDs to enhance the whole game not bog it down. I also want the dice to be quickly and easily recognized on the table("Purple with red horizontal strips and yellow flecks now that is......hmmm")

oversoul01 wrote: Originally it was roll the CP and keep the lowest 3. This idea never set right with me, I think that no matter how inept you are you always should stand the chance of grwt success. I mean you could roll all 6s. Using the original roll that puts a cap on that and the highest you could get ineptly is 18.

oversoul01 wrote: This is a whole new rule so tell me what you think.
XP equal special advancement dice, at the end of a session a player may use any number of their XP to roll an equal number of dice(XPd) and compare to the advancement chart to get the advancement results. The XP still can be used to aid in normal rolls.
This removes the character power factor but still keeps it intresting...I think anyway

oversoul01 wrote: I am using just basic html for the layout. I do not have any advanced program for layout and do not know of any good free one. But it isstill in development and I am working on improving it. I will look over it and see what I can do.

Figured I add a link to my new page for Dice Chucker, it is a freebie page with limited bandwidth but it will do for now
http://dicechucker.0catch.com
I plan to use it to introduce new ideas, rules, and setting for Dice Chucker.
Bobby

I had a intresting idea concern power dice and my dilemma of maximizing the fun while not overwhelming the player. Thanks to Mr. Weeks for the inspiration. The idea of picking and chosing which PDs to use is not new it's actually in the rules. But I was limiting myself by color to determine which die is which.
Well with your encouragement I am doing away with that concept and am going with the "name" approach. Magic Dice, Open Dice, Reroll Dice, etc. So there will be ton of possabilities. Mayeb even a page or two worth of them.
I am also going to use the legend idea contributed by Mr. Weeks. But I am going to expand upon that and say that the players can only select 8 types od PDs(as many colors as I am now using) to us in a game. Players then assign which dice are represented by which color. I think this will simplify it and will keeping the types and combinations quite open. What do you think?

EDIT TO THE ABOVE POST
OK first I do not think that was very clear. When I said I was using color to determine which is which, I meant I was only using a finite amount of PDs according to color. You could choose which PDs to include in your game but there where only 8 to choose from. With the new idea there would be nearly infinite choices for PDs(As many as I or the players can come up with) BUt you can only choose up to 8 to use in a game.
OK next dilemma. After that initial post I began thinking. By just leaving it open like that players are going to naturally select only dice that benefit them. They would not choose say the "black" die to add to the game. I want PDs to be a chance thing, some good some bad. So I need some sort of balancing system for Dice Chucker. So when you choose a beneficial die(or dice) to add to the game, there is a non-beneficial one added too.
It dies not have to be perfectly balanced, it could be 6 good to 1 bad. I just want the player to dread getting a bad die, and occassionally actually get one.
Does that make sense?

Hey Bobby,

Here's an idea that you might be able to use to get around the problem of requiring several distinctly colored dice and balancing beneficial with harmful dice. Use a dicemat (a piece of paper, shoe box lid, whatever) with several labled circles. If any part of a die is in one of the circles then that die becomes a power die of the type assigned to the circle. If the dicemat is a piece of paper, treat any die which rolled off the mat as a normal die.

This will also let you easily vary the ratio of the types of power dice/zones from scene to scene. You could also create custom layouts for the mat to reflect different settings. A cyberpunk mat would have a look and feel distinct from a fantasy game.

You could also have inactive zones that some game event would activate with a random or preselected power. You've angered the Old Ones and get a new black zone activated.

-kenan

Dear Bobby,

Congratulations on making a unique and working game system. I have only two concerns. The first is that with only quantative measurements of abilities (the dice), you will be unable to have qualitative aspects of characters (quantative being things like skill with a sword, qualitative being things like dyslexsia). My other concern is that a system in which leveled characters are just better at everything, an archmage, for instance, just beginning to learn how to use a sword, would still get all 6s on his rolls with no real justification. I'm sure you will encounter many other issues when playtesting. This is the unfortunate thing with trying a completely unique system; it will invariably be filled with problems. You can try this, but I can only see it ultimately failing. Sorry for my pessimism. If you email me, I can help you improve it.

To Kenan:
The mat idea is excellent! I like it a lot, my only concern is control though, having dice set or keyed to certain powers still exercises alot of control from the player. With a mat all you can do is aim and hope. I can see its fun by using it to incorporate some really intresting in game stuff though. I may use this in that way as an additional rule to add "havoc" to a game. Thanks for the suggestion!

To Devolutionary:
With any game system it is a matter of approach. No game system accurately reflects reality. What game designers do is try to simulat as best they can while still keeping it fair and fun. I have seen two approache to this. Either heavy rules which really on the rules to dictate reality. Or lite rules. in this form rules are mostly thown to the wind and it is left to the player to add reality and logic to a game. What would keep a player with an archmage from making him into the world's greatest swordsman? The player and the GM. The players have to govern the reality of the game. "My character is an archmage, I am going to attack with a sword though, so I think that would require some sort of penalty?" To the spirit or to the letter, with these types of rules you cannot always really on the rules to give complete balance. They are set up to handle many situations but not all.
I understand that my rules will not and cannot function in some circumstances, but they work in many. I intend on writting a chapter on how these rules should be interpreted and applied. By doing this the players can use the system as it was intended. In my mind if you do that the experience is much more fun and can easily be built upon form there.