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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4015376" data-attributes="member: 1054">You are, perhaps willfully, misinterpreting my post.The entire focus of the game has shifted to "the encounter". Monsters are built around encounters, and non-combat abilities (even those for "social encounters") are given short shrift -- the Pit Fiend, the cunning, plotting, master of hellish politics, had TWO SKILLS relating to non combat activities, and no kinds of powers, special abilities, tweaks, or gimmicks which might feed into this putative "social encounter" system. This doesn't bespeak a lot of focus on social abilities. This is what I mean by "combat adjudicator". Monsters have simpler abilities and fewer tactics, so the DM doesn't need to think as much or make as many decisions -- he just moves the monsters on the chess board and rolls some dice. He's a computer in a t-shirt. Monsters have no interesting "flavor' abilities or much of anything of use outside the rigidly defined bounds of the encounter, so there's no need to wonder what the pit fiend might be doing while the PCs are just beginning to investigate his schemes, or work out how the pit fiend controls the arch-lich who is his putative ally. The removal of profession/craft/perform skills sends a vital message: PCs aren't people. They do not have jobs, hobbies, avocations. They are a collection of combat stats, and their main function is to move from one encounter to the next, fighting monsters who spawn into existence when the encounter begins and vanish when the encounter ends. "These abilities never come up in play!" is false. I have had non-bards heavily invested in Perform, and characters in my current game have a lot of Craft skills, since a focus of the campaign is on rebuilding a shattered world. Those who can fix broken machinery or build a new bridge will win the 'hearts and minds' of the townspeople. Handwaving it all down to "Just write a note on the character sheet" cheapens non-combat skills immeasurably."But that's what older editions of D&D were like!"And that's why I stopped playing them in my early 20s. I like AD&D 1e for pure nostalgia reasons, but I can't imagine playing it now; I have no fond memories of BECMI and likewise can't see playing something like that today. If 4e is moving back to that model, it is moving away from me. So it goes.</blockquote>

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