The Merits & Flaws system allows everyone to play character possessing whatever combination of abilities they want (within reason) without raping game balance too badly.
The idea is that merit points allow you to possess abilities ‘‘not granted through class or monster level advancement’’. Another way to think of it is: for a given ability, your character earned it either through experience (class or monster levels), or it is somehow innate (purchased with merit points – either racial, genetically engineered or otherwise spontaneously discovered, depending on your backstory).
Thus, abilities purchased with merit points are fundamentally static, and do not improve with character level. Of course, you could spend additional merit points every level to continue improving an ability. For example, you could add +1 to your natural armor every level by spending 1 merit point each level. But merit-based abilities never automatically improve.
Note that this system details how to pay for character abilities mechanically. It still has to make sense for your character to possess the abilities on his sheet. That is, a character with a 40 Str shouldn’t just be a normal guy – but his musculature could be genetically engineered, or he could possess strange magical powers that grant him amazing strength, or he could be a robot built for heavy lifting.
Characters start with 30 merit points (30mp) to spend on ability point increases, feats, and special abilities and qualities. Up to 20 more merit points can be earned by adopting flaws. Humans start play with a 3mp bonus. For each level achieved, characters receive an additional 5mp.
Characters still have class levels as usual and advance normally, gaining the usual benefits from each class level. However, characters do not receive the character-wide benefits of an ability point at every 4th character level or a bonus feat at every 3rd character level. Instead, characters improve ability scores and gain additional feats by spending merit points.
If you take a merit that you later gain through a class ability, you regain the merit points to reuse. If you want to take a flaw later in the campaign, you may only do so if it doesn’t exceed the 20mp flaw rule, and if it’s appropriate to the story. For example, if your character’s hands were chopped off, you could (and should) take "no manipulable digits" as soon as it happens. Lastly, if you want to get rid of a flaw as the campaign progresses, you must spend an equal number of merit points to buy it off.
See the list of merits and the list of flaws to configure your character according to your vision.
{img src="images/chooseahead.jpg" width=400 height=215 align="center" desc="So many choices"}
Monster races
In the case of monster races, if you use a level progression outlined in Savage Species or other sourcebook, the levels you take pay for the monster’s abilities as usual, and no merit points need be spent. But if you want to ‘‘start play’’ as a creature with a level adjustment, you must pay the merit points for all the creature’s abilities (some of which could require a GM ruling on how much certain unique abilities are worth; e.g., the pixie’s Natural Invisibility power). This procedure negates the level adjustment, since the abilities are already balanced with those of other characters. On the other hand, with this system, certain creatures are simply too expensive to start fully powered.
You may choose to buy only a subset of the monster’s usual abilities. But if you do so, this does not give you a head start on leveling along the monster progression. That is, if you buy abilities corresponding to the first three levels of a stone giant, then achieve character level 2, you cannot immediately progress to stone giant level 4. The rationale for this restriction is that higher levels typically grant much stronger powers than lower levels do.