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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4068967" data-attributes="member: 4937">I was trying to avoid having to prove something if challenged to back up my claim, simply because I didn't want to do the research to find the quotes.  I figured if I used some qualification in making my claim, that the claim would be much easier to back up if challenged on.Doesn't bother me any.  Line up a whole bunch of quotes proving that it is.  It only strengthens my argument.Nothing says 'dumb system' to me like mental/social attributes that are dump stats.Consider the following:A character of class 'A' has combat performance f(x), and non-combat performance of g(x).   Now, suppose thier is a class 'B' with combat performance f'(x) where f'(x) > f(x).  In other words, that character performs better in combat than another class.  By the definition of 'combat performance is no longer tied to non-combat performance', f'(x) implies nothing about g'(x).  But I think that it is clear that we would not want to design classes where both combat performance and non-combat performance are generally better than some other class.  In fact, this has been a common complaint against 3rd edition as at high levels spell-casters generally are more capable both in and out of combat compared to say fighters.This means that if we impose the additional constraint f(x) = f'(x), that is to say classes are generally balanced in combat, we must also have the constraint g(x) = g'(x) - classes are generally balanced out of combat.  We therefore can no longer have classes designed such that f(x) < f'(x) but g(x) > g'(x) or f(x) > f'(x) but g(x) < g'(x).  And that's fine.  You may think that that is a good thing, and in the extreme case of something like f(x) << f'(x) but g(x) >> g'(x), I agree with you.  However, good thing or not, it still implies a very tight and highly constrained design, and not one that has 'one less restriction'.  I'm not at all sure how you reason that it is one less restriction.</blockquote>

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