Quote Originally Posted by Conundrum View Post
This is the impression I got, too. The character sheets do say "Play without Backgrounds and Themes for a more old-school feel", implying that there is a character-creation method for boosting skills apart from the "+3 to four skills" that the backgrounds seem to give.
Maybe but I always thought that "old school" often meant no skills period except for rogues, that is what dumping backgrounds would do here.

Quote Originally Posted by Ziegander View Post
It's seriously going to make gameplay almost impossible without a daunting amount of effort on the part of the DM or without running pregenerating modules (which assumes that the module designers even know that there is a problem and try to mitigate it). Why? Because if save-or-dies and save-or-get-f***ed effects can target all six of the ability scores, then at nearly every turn at least one member of the party WILL face a monster that can severely screw that member over. That is, as I mentioned earlier, unless the DM (or module designer) goes to great lengths to pit his party against monsters that ONLY have attacks that target the party's strengths (which will be highly variable and thus almost impossible to do).
I don't know. What if most effects just target Dex, Con, and Wis anyway? Then it's the same as it ever was. I've only skimmed the materials so far but I don't think I saw any saves targeted against anything else except for one that targeted Cha.