Witchking, I totally understand your irritation.
I think that there are 2 main points in character development that result in "unfair" progressing of characters: (1) Development points based on stats and (2) differing number of favored categories. Although one might argue that life isn't fair, why should roleplaying be, or, speaking more sense, that characters with many favored categories won't specialize, so won't excel, I still tend to try to fix both.
Concerning favored categories (FCs), I occasionally think about removing professions altogether, and everyone chooses a fixed number of FCs (as proposed
here), say 5 (half of the categories). An option is thinkable to buy another category, but I believe it should cost every level. (Edit: Or, for, say, 15 DP, you can buy ONE additional category that develops at 3 points, and that's it. For generalists like the rogue. Instead of paying 15 DP, a player cut also trade off any professional ability).
Concerning DPs, I usually give everyone the mean value of available points, rounding up. So, if my 3 players have 41, 42 and 44 DPs, everyone gets 43. That way, improving stats still makes sense, and even for the group as a whole.
On a sidenote: I play with the thought of dropping levels as the means of progressing, instead giving out DPs directly, maybe bound to certain categories. "Oh, very nice how you interacted with the dragon - you receive 2 DPs in the Influence category" or just "wow, great roleplaying: 2 DPs". That's unfair again, of course, but at least I reward the good player, not the good min-maxer. As you still need levels to determine certain effects, I'd let the players keep track of the point total they have invested, and a 160 point char would be fresh level 4.
Jan
