[Aezeal]

hmmm personally I think Oblivion has better character creation system than most games certainly including Avernum. Fall-out 3 is good too.. but the effect of your choices is somewhat limited pretty soon in the game.
Baldurs gate and neverwinter night.. basicly everything based on DnD certainly has a good character building system.

Personally I'm mostly missing MORE RPG's (I dislike MMORPG where I have to pay everymonth and where I need to invest more time than I have to be competative.. in SP games I'm always the most important person and THA MASTA in the end as it should be. And more good strategy games too though I admit I've not looked very much into them for when I want to play a game I can always do dominions which is just very good.

I'd like to see starcraft 2 though.

back on choices.. I think you shouldn't want for much more options than in dominions.. you have a lot of races.. and between the races you can use a lot of strategies.. sure not each fits each race but that wouldn't be good..

example: if you have an unlimited range of GOOD choices that means that every choice is good.. which means whatever you choose is good.. which means there is basicly no real strategy anymore. (I'm exaggerating of course but it core of it is true.) While most games could use more diversity in the end it's more important that between the best choices for each character there is a good balance than having more choices. (I'm not playing the game but I imagine that going to the highest level in WoW for exmaple, will take quite an effort for most pplz so just having made a decent choice you'll be busy for a while anyway, no need for more choices then.)