Lenny,
Thanks a lot for your interesting and detailed analysis here. I have also been talking to two of our playtesters about this specific issue quite a bit as well.
The good news as far as integration is that as I mentioned in the first post (which was copied from an email discussion with one of those playtesters) the MP system should rather seamlessly replace all the different kinds of actions (attack, counterattack etc.) in 5E, and is actually simpler. It also rather seamlessly replaces Advantage to some extent, as most Feats and some other basic mechanics like aiming with support or using cover just add MP – though applying it in some other circumstances might still need to be looked at. To be honest I think they stole the ‘Advantage’ mechanic from me.
The general issue is one of simplification. The plan is to remove the 3.5 Feats, BAB, and some other 3.5 ‘baggage’ and thus make the whole thing a bit more manageable and familiar for 5E players. This is going to be first tested with our new Star Szkola variant (next on my list after I finish Codex Baltic Volume II).
However there is a slight conundrum, a cultural difference if you will, which is that Codex is I think going to need to keep more options including in the form of Feats and Skills, than 5E players are used to. I’ll need to figure out how to handle that. This is in part due to the way the character generation works.
Doling out MP and To Hit bonuses and so on is also tied closely into Character Generation. I have posted a limited preview of the character generation system “Codex Ingenium” in this thread here
This doesn’t quite get at the meat of the issue though because I couldn’t post the tables and it doesn’t include the specializations (similar to the subclasses in 5E, but historically based). However, the basic goal of simplicity is still there. There is no need for PC’s at least to understand all the skills. The approach is just different. Instead of hand waiving the idea of training or skill acquisition by focusing on ability score checks, Codex is meant to allow a lot of specialization based on your life experiences, but the central conceit that keeps it simple is just that, you don’t have to worry about the specifics so much. If you have a skill which sounds like it might be applicable (or you can spin it that way to the DM) then you can use the bonus on your die roll.
In other words, you might have a scholar with a Knowledge: Geometry +4 or an Artisan with a Knowledge: Engineering +4 or a soldier with a Knowledge: Fortifications +4, but any of these skills could be used to enhance a skill check for trying to figure out how to sneak into a castle.
