I think it ' s fine save for the insane healing boost . That should really REALLY be reduced or changed . Combined with her absurd hps on slow moving targets , it makes her easily the strongest pick in the game . <| sep |> Even with this situation , the solution you pose is a nonsequitur to the problem proposed to be solved . The issue you ' re arguing is that players are preplanning out characters far in advance , which is unrealistic . Alright , we can sorta go with that because it ' s true for most people . I mean , most people aren ' t olympic athletes , but those who are pretty much invariably knew they were going to be by the time they were 4 years old and player characters kind of are much the same way , they ' re the ones who worked the hardest towards a set goal for most of their lives generally speaking . But there are exceptions so we ' ll go with that . Even with that in mind , this doesn ' t solve the issue at all . The player who wants to stealth , and wants the ability to sneak quietly , is going to plan out their character to keep rolling on the stealth table until they get sneak quietly . You haven ' t done anything at all to prevent them from making long term plans . If anything , what they would ' ve just grabbed at level 3 , they now might have to keep throwing themselves blindly at until level 10 instead . This doesn ' t mean they ' ve planned their character out less they ' ve made the same plan anyway , it ' s just now they might have to have a short term plan become a long term plan . So . they ' ve planned up until level 10 of their character instead of level 3 . This . solved nothing . It doesn ' t feel organic or natural , either , which was an implied second problem this is supposed to solve . It feels really weirdly awkward and strains all credibility rather than flowing as a natural progression . As others have said , if you use a skill and that skill improves , that ' s fairly natural . Like it actually makes sense , and even if the burning wheel is a little clunky in the mechanics side of things , the concept at least feels like it makes sense . You could refine that concept to a better presentation , but whatever . If you work on skill A and instead skill D improves , however , you ' re going to be left scratching your head in confusion . The effect does not logically follow the action . Yeah , you could argue organic in the sense of random genetic mutations on a small scale , but even evolution follows a fairly consistent pattern where creatures adapt to the environment and the other creatures they find themselves in contact with . Sure , one creature may grow an extra leg , which may not be handy at all , but the one that ' s most likely to pass on its genes is the one that actually became more resistant to the toxin that its primary food source produces . So even if , yes , there is some random element to the most literal possible interpretation of organic , as silly of a way to take it as that may be , it still doesn ' t really hold up . Now this isn ' t to say that you can ' t use a random element to nudge players away from having guaranteed preset builds . For example , if you were to have say . a player works on several things during their level . They do some sneaky stuff , some physical training and some social skills , then you ' re like okay , so because you worked on these things , you now roll 1 d 3 and whichever it lands on , that ' s the skill that improves you can now pick one trait from the skill type you rolled . That would at least give players some choice , let them feel like they have a degree of control , and if they reaaaaally want something , then they can just focus on doing only that one type of thing all level . Pure physical training for the whole level . Bam , there you go , you get a physical upgrade . It makes sense , and it does encourage players to role play out some stuff they might not have expected to otherwise , but which still falls in line with the character they were using , even if it may not be the character they expected to get . I mean , yeah , sure , you meant to be sneaky , but you spend all your time leaping over spike pits , climbing walls and so on , so it turns out you just wind up stronger than sneaky . If you want to fix that , do more sneaky stuff . You could even remove the die entirely and just have the GM rank the skills the player used the most often . The topmost used one gets 3 points to spend on talents , the secondmost gets 2 , the third gets 1 . Role play out ways to get your character to do one thing more than the others to earn your way towards particular stuff you want . That would feel organic , and would keep players from perfectly planning out their character build every level because their imagination of what they think they ' re going to do is rarely what happens in actual play . So I ' m not saying the basic concept is wrong , just that the implementation you ' re suggesting is filled with more holes than a wheel of swiss cheese and does pretty much the opposite of what you suggest it ' ll fix . Implementations can be fixed though the core to focus on is that you want players to not necessarily get what they want in the order they want it . Relying on dice is a pretty bad setup for something like this , but allowing the events in game to nudge what happens does a good job of introducing a chaotic element rather than a random one . Random chance is generally very bad when it comes to character development , but chaos can be fun . The difference is that chaos has a degree of order to it and makes sense , even if it may not be predictable . Something which is purely random has no order to it at all , it just happens without rhyme nor reason . When you say organic , you imply chaos , but your mechanic suggested promotes randomness . Yes we use the two terms interchangeably almost as a colloquialism , but in terms of game design , knowing the difference is really important . Anyway , I hope that helps you out , even if it might ' ve come across as a bit harsh . Organic growth which is a bit unpredictable isn ' t a bad idea . Absolute random nonsense where your input is practically irrelevant , however , is not organic growth is all .