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@ElectricPaladin, I think this depends on what RPG means to you and your party. If you need to discuss consent beforehand, then LotFP might NOT be the right game for you. (That said, my personal opinion is that the only role-playing that needs that should at least involve lots of rope and a single-tail...)

I'd feel uncomfortable refereeing for a party where harm to the characters translates into (unwanted) psychological distress. As for "yea my fighter could really use a manly scar", that's not me either, not even in Conan-esque power trip gaming..

I think you may misunderstand the prime reason for the absence of henchmonsters. Why do you think the soldiers of Sauron are pig-faced, decaying hunks of pure evil? Why do you think the Stormtroopers wear identical armor and masks? It's to make them non-human, faceless and fair game for extermination.

Orcs are monsters not in a sense of "evoking horror and dread". They are monsters in a sense of "unworthy of mercy or compassion". When was the last time you experienced horror and dread from an orc (in a way that stemmed from it being an orc as opposed to a human savage or robber)? Probably when you first read the Hobbit when you were 11 or something.

In fact, having orcs makes the situation far LESS horrific and dreadful, as it removes the horror of murder - turning it into, well, pest control.

LotFP monsters are monsters in a sense of "oh my God help me, how can such a thing even exist", and "I shall never be free of the nerve-gripping terror from what I have seen", and not in a sense of "my lawful good paladin procerds to go from hut to hut, killing them all... WHAAT,  come on, they are just orcs".

Design is always a compromise between simplicity and functionality.

Using a single die will always result in a flat distribution of probability. Using modifiers will always result in a simple shift in that flat distribution, making previously impossible results possible, and previously possible results impossible to attain.

If, as Jim expressed, one wants a system that always allows for a positive probability on all possible results, but shifts the probabilities around, one simply cannot make do with a single die.

That is a good personal argument, but hardly an objective one.

The only time you really need to comprehend the exact probability distributions is when you are designing a game (including die throw mechanics), or writing random tables. And you can perfectly afford using a computerized tool to help you in those specific cases.

And as I pointed out above, there is an inevitable compromise to be made between simplicity and functionality. You'd prefer simplicity to reign supreme. I think there is room to add some functionality without sacrificing actual ease of use (ie. how much work and tedium it is to actually play).

Elegance is entirely subjective...

As for complexity, I linked a perfect tool for the job above.

And in fact, choosing the best or worst n out of a number of dice yields the most beautiful probability curve. Essentially you can adjust the mean deviation and expected value while maintaining postivie probability across the entire setof values.

Not to mention that choosing the largest or smallest takes zero time and has almost zero chance of error, while totaling is both time-consuming and error-prone.

Good question. I remember an interview where Jim talked about clerics being sort of anti-magicusers. Is this paradigm going to shift as well?

Speaking of taking the largest / smallest of a pool of dice, I've recently been looking into dice roll probability graphs, and other geeky game design stuff... and found THIS here:
Troll dice roll probability calculator

It might be known to everyone, or it might be new, anyway it's very useful in determining the effects of dice rolling mechanisms. Taking the largest of a pool significantly reduces the mean deviation of a throw. If a single die is picked, then the highest probability will be the highest result, while if the largest n dice, (like the 3 largest of a pool of 6), the result is a narrower bell curve skewed to the side.

Syntax examples for the calculator:

Least die of 2d8: least 1 2d8
Largest die of 2d8: largest 1 2d8
Largest 3 dice of 6d6: sum largest 3 6d6
And so on. There's also a documentation but it's quite massive. You can simulate entire combat actions and see the probabilities of outcomes.

Hey Jim

I'm a new fan of your work, so it's a bit of an outsider's viewpoint here...

Personally, the one thing (beside your quite unique tone and approach) that made LotFP stand out for me from all the ODnD and B/X clones was the highly elegant way you separated character roles. The Fighter fights, the Magic-user uses magic, and the Specialist, well, has skills. If I want every class to have skills, I'll play 3e or OSRIC.

I do feel that this extremely "walled" system makes it harder to create characters whose in-game abilities reflect the way they are imagined. If you are tempted to ease up on this, I suggest you should add multi-classing rules.
Currently the biggest hurdle in using multi-classing rules is handling the saving throws in a fair manner that doesn't turn the game into an exercise for Certified Public Accountants.

Also, I personally believe that overbloated skill lists often take something away instead of adding it. For one, with too many character stats, people tend to assume that it's their stats that should be playing instead of them. ("- I search for traps. {diceroll}" as opposed to "I have a close look at the doorway, looking for cracks", "I carefully probe the ground a few feet ahead with my staff", or "I pour some water on the ground and see if it seeps in between the slabs", etc.) In a discussion, I've read an oldschool enthusiast once mention "systems where a character needs a skill not to wet their pants". It's easy to get there, unfortunately.

I really like this idea.

What I'm not entirely sure about is what archetype I'd most like to see it represented as - a Conan-like hardened warrior slicing up horrors and carving out a kingdom of Men, a holy warrior standing with God against the hordes of darkness, or an anti-wizard, an initiate of the occult who turns against Chaos while being still deeply interlinked with it. I guess it could be any of these.

I'm not entirely sure about this one. It doesn't feel like it adds anything new, beside maybe an extra stat of Bushcraft in exchange for worse progression in combat stats. I think if you did the multi-classing, this would become wholly redundant.