I'm curious as to what everyone here thinks might be some of the problems occurring with characters at level 99. There are some obvious pitfalls with offence and defence. A fighter dropping maximum possible points into attack/defense (dodge or block) would have a 1400 in both minimum, not including any object bonuses. And with 1d100 being the common variable, even if the threshold for open rolls didn't close, you're still looking at a reduced probability with each roll of 1/p^n. So a 1/100 to get +200, and 1/1000 to get +300. Meaning if there's more than a 150-200 base difference at that point you're completely ineffective. Even pulling out 10 dp from max (40 instead of 50 spent on att/def per level after 1st), you're looking at almost 250 right there, and that doesn't take into account other major purchases that could drop that further. Just wanted to know what ideas people might have. Also, how do you deal with stats over 20, for bonuses?

First a stat cannot go above 20, but if it could the progression would probably continue as it did beforehand (secondary bonuses would not increase for obvious reasons);
21-22: +50
23-24:+55
25:+60
26-27:+65
28-29:+70
30:+75
etc.

Second you brought up a good point on a level 99 fighter having +1350 to attack and defense (or +1325/1375) and small changes over the levels cause a problem between fighters, but this is not the main problem. The main problem comes from how Psychics and Mages increase their projection. At level 99 a Wizard, Psychic or what not will have up to 1560 giving them about 200 more attack and defense then the fighter can have. Even with a +25 sword the fighter still loses over 99% of the time.

Dungeons and Dragons had this same problem. They solved it by modifying how you level after level 20 to prevent problems such as this from happening. This game maker does not seem expect this to be a problem because level 20 is as high as your expected to ever get, even if you become a god.

I believe Mages and Psychics cannot allocate more than half their supernatural/psychic DPs on projection (30% that is for "pure class")...how come they get more projection than Attack/Defense for fighters, who can spend 30% each on Attack and Defense AND gain a natural bonus of up to +50 to them AND as opposite to Mages and Psychics they can actually CHOOSE to ignore spending DPs on other stuff?

Besides...guys, this game ISN'T designed to reach Level99. Nemesis which is possibly the most powerful being on Gaia is Level20. I rolled a couple higher Level NPCs(like Pistis Sophia in Mnemosite, which I made Level25) but really, LEVEL99 is far out the reach this game is supposed to have, which I understand seems strange for a JRPG-like game, but that is. Remember Erik Sterki is considered one of the best fighters in the world and is a Level9 Warrior.

@Elric of Melniboné: Every class is limited to 50% of their DP when it comes to the question how high they can raise their attack and defense combined. Don't know the page in the core book, if i find it I'll post it.

This game is balanced around level 15. At this level a fighter can have up to 250 (+-25) attack/defense + class bonus (max 50) + characteristic modifier (max 45) This sums up to a 345 (+-25), where the +-25 stands for the max difference between attack and defense.

A mentalist can at this point raise his projection to 300 + characteristic modifier (max 45) This sums up to a 345. The mentalist can't lower his attack to get more defense or the other way round.

As you perhaps noticed, I didn't mention weapons, armor, foci, ect, because I simply don't have the time and the real question is how the two classes compare against each other in terms of their own abilities.

Now, the real problem starts at level 16 The fighter, as usual, has his 50 points for attack/defense which mean a +12,5 to attack and defense, but the mentalist gets 30, which mean a +15 to attack defense. Since class bonuses to attack and defense do not stack higher than +50, that means fighters begin to lose their advantage against mentalists at level 11 and have completely lost it at level 15.

There are two solutions to this problem. The first one is easy: If you play higher than level 15, allow class bonuses to attack/defense to stack for 2 out of 3 levels, which means +5 at16 and 17, none at 18 and so on.

The second solution is a little more complicated. Set the max projection for psychers to 25/level, which means an uneven progression, but give them +5 bonus projection per level (max +50 at level 10).

I removed the 50% limit for attack+defense (of course for those classes which can reach 60% in combat) for fighters entirely. Yes, fighters tend to have slightly higher attack/defense (considering the +50 class bonus) than mages and psychics, but since Mages and Psychics tend to have more "options" and have strong attak/defense anyway, since their attacks are invisible to most, the thing doesn't seem to break the game.

Besides, although in "high fantasy" or "western fantasy" the Mages and/or Psychics tend to become monsters compared to non-mystic classes, in jrpg settings, fighters tend to at least "keep the pace" with mystic classes (think of any anime/manga/jrpg you've seen/read/played and you'll notice that the WORLD-BREAKING protagonist is a "fighter" most of the times). So giving little advantage in fighting to warriors (and the likes) is reasonable.

Finally, my campaigns are seldom a continuous hack-&-slash, hence it's not like having higher Attack/Defense definitely makes a character better. Uberpowerful fighters WON'T BE faced by opponents that try to best them in combat, but will be fought with tricks. The same goes with hipermages or superpsychics.