@HandEFood: True, you had to choose your weapon specialty in DD up front... but if you chose any one-handed weapon, you could use a shield without losing your expertise. It appears not to be the case in BD, but I may be misunderstanding that.
Also, you are correct about experimenting with spells. But the cost of experimenting with spells is severe in BD, since you have to open each skill tree, then put points into them before you can "experiment." Also, there were only four main stats in DD to control, whereas there are six in BD... but you still only get 5 stat points per level.
I think my main concern is the restricted ability for cross-skills that was easily available in DD, but not in BD. For example, I wanted a warrior that could pick locks and make poison. Easily don in DD... but in BD I'd have to find a way to open the lockpick skill and open the alchemy skill BEFORE I could even put puts into them. Also, my characters started DD with two valuable skills. BD characters start with no skills at all.
It just seems to me that skills are going to be pretty stingy in BD, and that disappoints me because I enjoyed mixing/matching the various skills in DD. Time will tell whether the new skill system works well for my style of gameplay or not. As I've said, I'll buy the game in any case.
