I tried rewriting some of the
Replaces advances as
Requires (with clarification in the text) for my homemade Class books last night. It sounded clunky. For example, the Fighter's Bloodthirsty Level 6-10 Advance became:
Bloodthirsty
Requires: Merciless
When you deal damage, deal +1d8 damage instead.
Basically, all the changed moves would need to have "instead" in there somewhere. Otherwise it could sound like the two advances stack with one another. "Whoa! +1d4
and +1d8 when I deal damage if I take Merciless and Bloodthirsty? Yes, please!" So after doing that, I realized that just tagging the Advances with
Replaces: X is probably the easiest solution. Obviously there's a reason Sage and Adam are successful game designers and I'm not. LOL.
Still, just because I'm anal retentive crunch monkey who likes to know exactly what's happening with my mechanics, I'd like that clarification. Does the player have to take the Advance that the better Advance replaces (like Admutt's "requires + Replaces" suggestion), or does "Replaces" simply indicate that the "lower" Advance is no longer available to the player?