Why isn't base attack a skill?

[JohnSnow]

Of course, the obvious answer is that BAB is not a "skill" per se because D&D had BAB before it HAD skills. So back then, they created the only "skill" necessary to play the game as it had been conceived and built that skill (combat ability) in as a class feature.

When skills were added to the game in an integrated way, they used the same mechanic (a d20 roll) that D&D had been using (successfully) to resolve combat for decades. Thus was born the d20 system. So BAB is a skill. It's just a special category of skill that's tied to class. A spellcasting "power check" that's (d20 + caster level + Int modifier) is another version of the exact same kind of class-based skill.

Some "rules lite" d20 games (like Castles & Crusades) reduce all skills to this form. So basically, making certain skills a class feature is a combination of a design choice and a (god help us) sacred cow.

In D&D, BAB (even when it was called THAC0) has always been tied to class. It's just one of the things the designers haven't seen fit to change. And since combat is such a crucial part of the game, nobody should want to truly stink at it. Building combat ability into the classes is an acknowledgement that combat is a fundamental feature of the game. One that says a great deal about D&D as a game.

 

[Umbran]

Hmmm... let's see... prestige classes? following the pack... skills for characters... following the pack... unified gaming mechanic (in theory at least) following the pack.... elimination/reduction of subsystems in the game... following the pack...

Yeah, what does tend to be gained from following the pack?

I am not at all convinced that D&D is following anyone when considering presitge classes and skills - D&D had the forerunners of those in previous editions all on it's lonesome: the 1e bard & dual-classed character, and the 2e "kit", and the 2e nonweapon proficiency. These all came in 1989 or earlier - before most of the other games around were published. Kinda difficult to say they're following the pack when their (albeit crude) designs were among the first in the market.

And I think you double-count when talking about unifying the mechanic and eliminating subsystems. Those two go so stongly hand-in-hand that they should only be counted as one. But you do have a point, in that D&D is one of the latest games to take on a more unified mechanic.

So, they did it in one thing, so they shoudl go ahead and do it in others? Since they bought into one design philosophy others had, they should buy into all the others? I think that's a quick road to having all games look pretty much alike. Thank you, I'll pass.

What people often miss is that, just in the world of living things, for games there is a strength in diversity. There is no need to have all games be the same in this regard. And we gain something in having multiple styles to compare and contrast. And since we have multiple styles already out there, folks are free to play another one if D&D doesn't fit what they want to do.

That, fundamentally, is the best reason to avoid makign D&D into things that are already well-covered by other systems. Those others already exist. What is to be gained by having them all do the same thing? Would you prefer all board games to be, Monopoly, and all movies be The Matrix, and all books be Lord of the Rings?