Love the game but...

[Elvish Lore]

... my fear is that it creates a fantastic level one character but doesn't really much help progress or advance the character further once past character creation for non-magic characters.

Like... I get it, everyone accrues skills. Magic users accrue spells as levels are gained. But martial type characters have only Milestones to spend on Revelations, correct? (and Milestones are a very GM-centric mechanic - the players are waiting for the GM to indicate when they can take a Revelation) Anything on that list of Special Skills can't be bought past level one? (On pg 55 of current document, it says that Milestones _can_ be spent on buying SS but pg 80 only indicates that Milestones can be spent on Revelations.)

I totally get that this isn't Pathfinder 2e or something with endless Feat and Ability gains... and I don't want that. I guess I'm just worried that simply building more skills won't be interesting enough for players to further differentiate their characters as progression continues in long-term play.

Maybe I'm misreading things or don't understand some fundamental progression mechanic, please correct me if I'm wrong. Thanks.

P.S. I still love the game.

[Rasyr]

Thank you. I am glod that you like Fantasy Express.

Without going the route of D&D3.x/Pathfinder (of Feats), it is difficult to make arms users more interesting. Not impossible, just more difficult

One way that this is done is through the Special Skills, which can and does include a couple of weapon fighting styles. And I do need to add more arms related items to the list of potential Special Skills. Another is through the use of the Milestones.

Don't forget that as you spend Drive Points, you progress along the "Heroic Path". For every 10 points along the Heroic Path, you gain a Milestones. This can allow you to gain additional Special Skills. I need to add some more Milestones as well, for the more combat-oriented (I have several Martial Arts related ones in there already). These would, however, go in a supplemental product, not in the core rules.

Milestones and additional Special Skills (i.e. built as Combat Styles) will eventually be coming, and work to help expand Arms users as they progress.

[Dimirag]

In these kind of games, differentiation between characters goes more with roleplaying and both what skills are increased and how they are used.

Caster get more spells, but they have to put points in them and they can use them a limited set of times (due to mana costs), non-casters can build on skills that will always be available (it will only depend on environmental factors to be used).

I'm sure Razyr will publish rules for Combat Styles and Moves/Techniques sometime in the future.

But you can always let players try to do "special moves" using skill penalties and Success Levels.

[Giovanni81]

I frankly do not like so mush games with a huge array of feats. I'm in for having lot o spells and skills. But feats: you end thinking to your PC as a cluster of feats that must combine. It's a nightmare for the Game Master that must remember every feat of every character and must understand interaction and collision between exceptions. This is the way followed by True20 .... a beautiful generic system of Green Ronin.

[Rasyr]

I frankly do not like so mush games with a huge array of feats. I'm in for having lot o spells and skills. But feats: you end thinking to your PC as a cluster of feats that must combine. It's a nightmare for the Game Master that must remember every feat of every character and must understand interaction and collision between exceptions. This is the way followed by True20 .... a beautiful generic system of Green Ronin.

Feat chains that required multiple levels to accomplished, which could be made entirely useless by a shift in the campaign direction were a bit of a pet peeve of mine in D&D 3e/3.5e.

Which is why I did my best to make sure that very few things had such requirements  (there are a couple of milestone options that have such requirements, but only where those head more towards semi/quasi-magical abilities).

I also tried to make sure that as few Gifts overlapped as possible and where they did, I put notes if they were needed (if no note, then no worries for the most part).