When people poke fun at in-game logic and nods to realism, and I'm not sure if it's intended as carte blanche statement that fantasy needs no logic, I tend to switch tactics. I'd say something like: if you watch a fantasy movie like LoTR, and you see a hobbit in a contest of raw strength against Aragorn, and the hobbit is a match for a heroic warrior twice his size (again in a contest of pure strength -- no cheating sneaky hobbits) and the audience laughs at how ludicrious it appears, then that silliness is not cinematic if you prefer that over "realistic".
What if my 7" tall minotaur PC must interact with an equally strong 4" halfling PC?
No system is going to make that go away. If you want realistic then you'd determine the height and mass of your PC and then derive a minimum STR you would use as a base, etc. Even with a +4 STR for goliaths and a -4 STR for halflings there's a rather large range in which the halfling can be higher STR than the goliath.
If you have to interact with a halfling that is as strong as your goliath then you RP it. That's going to be true with ANY system. As the guy I responded to said, it is a FANTASY world. Halflings and goliaths are already physically impossible in the real world. There simply ARE no rules that will establish realistic interactions there because there are none to be had.
So why again are you punishing me because I want to play a halfling fighter? Goliaths in 4e have +2 STR, so they are almost always going to be stronger than halflings, yet I CAN play an 18 STR halfling fighter if I really want to. You could play a 10 STR goliath rogue too.
I want to be able to play against type, and I don't want to be actively punished for it. I'm already playing a class/race combination that has some distinct limitations (in 4e I can't even use a longsword unless I give up my shield and I have to pay a lot more for a high STR, and my DEX and CHA bonuses are of considerably lesser utility than they would be for say a rogue).
And in 1e (yes, it had skills), 2e, 3e. Not to mention any number of other skill based systems.
But using your argument, 4e is "flawed" because some people are better swimmers than they are acrobats, but 4e lumps them both together. All game systems are abstractions, so there has to be a limit to how fine-grained the skills are otherwise you get an overly complex game that isn't really usable.
I don't follow your argument. In 4e certainly swimming is lumped in with the REST of Athletics. Yes, I can't be a good swimmer and a crappy climber, but I can live with that fine.
I think you give way too much credit to the "4e-style skills" considering, they are in reality a reduced variant of the 3e skills, which in turn are variants of other systems anyways.
But I really can't think of many games that don't have skills. All the d20-variants, Hero, Action, Savage Worlds, GURPS (well of course), Storyteller, d6, etc.
DragonsAge RPG uses a system much more like what seems to have been being mentioned in the transcript. die roll + Ability + "modifier". But in reality thats all the 4e, 3e, etc. skills are anyways. They have been just written down. There isn't anything that says the 5e rules can't have a set of fairly commonly used skills that are predefined, nor does it mean a player can't setup a bunch of predefined skills himself based on the background of his character.
Not sure what I'm giving 4e too much credit for. It makes skills a nice simple thing that is always worked out on your sheet and its pretty easy to remember what you're good at as its a short general list.
And yes, 5e could provide a standardized list of skills much like the 4e skill list as defaults, except if you can bargain different ability scores that does mean there's no fixed total bonus. It is nice having those fixed numbers written down. Still, most of the time it will work OK. It is a question of is it easier to have the set list and a bit quicker easier play or is it worth it to have slightly more complexity?
There could be other considerations too. If there are no really core defined skills and other such 'middleman' numbers then the game can only grant bonuses to more general things or to very specific things. Granting ability score bonuses is slippery because they will be REALLY valuable and they twiddle a lot of numbers, which can be a pain if the bonus goes away for some reason during play. Super specific bonuses (say to just swimming) are cool. OTOH they can be hard to track down if you start accumulating very many of them, and in any case the 4e system could handle those as well.
There are pluses and minuses to any approach. In general I tend to favor ease of play, which IMHO was a real strength of 4e's core systems (they managed to spend all that they gained with combat effects, but that's another story).
