Shattered Kingdoms

I think this is a good idea, and would provide variety without adding more classes or anything. Would help make PK more interesting - it gets so boring knowing exactly what to expect from certain fights - and this wouldn't be such a huge change that people wouldn't be able to prepare. You can still get a necro good with BoG and Holy Word, even if they specialize in control undead. I'm not even a big fan of PK, but with this implemented? Maybe so.

However, GL getting it implemented.

Maybe have this connect with class centered quests?

Of course you'll have the uber specs. Gee, I wonder if my priest should specialize in heal, harm, or create food. The great thing about stuff like this is that it allows for greater ingenuity. For example, you might have something really weird like a sorceror who specializes in enlarge, but that sorceror might go around casting a single spell and forcing enemy fighters to drop their weapons instantly. He might not be as "powerful" as the sorc who chose petrify and can cut through awesome enchants, but he's still a very subtle and effective fighter.

I think that this is at least worth looking at for spells. Increase the damage, make it beat down saving throws easier, increase the duration, decrease mana cost, decrease casting time...if this could be coded it would make spellcasters much, much more interesting. It would also take some of the wind out of the "melee>spells" argument.

I think it might be more appropriate to question whether a priest specializes in enchantment/location/transportation, healing, or buffing/damage. And if you specialize in one group, you weaken your others, you would always have the choice not to specialize, etc.

I would love to see something like this added which would, at its inception, give very minor advantages (5 percent differences etc.) then after some testing could be changed to give larger bonuses/penalties.

This would go a long way towards adding more variety and interest to the game. A very good initial idea that should be looked at by the monkeys in charge and fleshed out.

This topic has been brought up numerous times in the past. It's great to think about so every class is actually different in some way compared to others of the same class, outside of what race they selected. Also makes a class less boring to level / play again.

As for balancing issues, usually anything that adds more DPS in Melee needs to have something penalized, especially in this game where combat really doesn't last all that long at all with the hard hitting melee classes.

I'd spec in detect poison

It has been brought up time and time agian in the past yes.

I think the major argument against it was that eventually (and probably quite soon), as has hapened with specialize, people would discover the 2-3 'elite' skills to specialize in with each class and the flavor and divcersity of it would be as good as extinct.

That is simply because most skills and spells in the game are not of equal usefulness.

However, I would not be against a selection of 1-2 feats or talents from a general selection tree per character.
Yep, its the craze started by 3d eddition and immortalizeed by WoW, but the reason everyone uses it is because it is great.

If there were say, 20 talents/feats to select from, all of equal strength, it would give some diversity to characters.

Examples of what these could do:

So long as the choices are balanced, there would be flavor and diversity.
The moment class specific choices start appearing, you will just see more xerox character sheets.

The only reason that players have discovered the 2-3 'elite' skills to specialize in is because the immortals have barely done any tweaking at all since specialize was put in. What specs have been changed since the creation of subtypes years ago - pike and trident, and that was right around when subtypes came out. Nothing since then.

And the fact that the IMMs sit and add 50 of the top tier weapons to the game.