I dunno about that. I shy away from the micromanagement of letting the player pick skills and abilities on each level-up. That's a subgame that I don't care much for, and for a lot of players it isn't fun. I like class skills by level a lot. Simple and done to death because it works. Choose a class at game start and it predetermines what you get on level up for many of your primary skills throughout the game. Maybe there are options along the way where you choose to concentrate on a subclass, and a "branching" class tree. But even that's too much micromanagement for a lot of players.
That said, I like for the characters to accumulate buffs and intrinsics during play which differentiate them, and I like at least some of those buffs and intrinsics to reflect the kind of challenges that the character has overcome and the methodology the character's used to do it, while the rest can be the random luck-of-the-draw of items found. With class/level determining truly essential skills, these buffs can be for optional stuff that has an impact on play style without being necessary for survival.
So, all together, I favor a mixed approach. Truly essential things should be automatic (including not-enough of some things for player comfort, which is part of the essential challenge of some classes). A lot of very useful optional things should be awarded for thematic playstyle, to support players who are trying to play some sort of thematic character or develop a particular individual strategy. And finally, there should be enough luck-of-the-draw to prevent characters from being exactly alike and present each with opportunities and challenges the others don't face.
So, does that, um, "embrace the power of AND" enough?
Bear
