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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thasmodious" data-source="post: 4281685" data-attributes="member: 63272">Weariness.  Definitely.  It makes me weary the enormous effort some are putting forward to squash their own common sense and imagination in order to try and find fault with something.  And houserules do not prove fault with the system.  Every gaming group in the world create houserules.  You find a system you like, that lets you play a game in the genre/subgenre you like, and then you modify what you need to fit your style.  No game can encompass every playstyle and every GM or groups "priority of realism" without modification.  Different DMs and groups have problems with different things.  Some don't like easily damaging objects with swords.  Some think there should be some system for dealing with damage to clothing as a result of combat.  Some can't stand that accelerating from standstill is not factored into movement.  Others think food and water rationing is a strong component of the game.  No ruleset can cover everything.The design philosophy for 4e is simple and straightforward and something the designers made clear from the get go.  They understand that they can't cover everything.  They also understand that gamers are smart (seems some here are trying to make them regret that assumption).  They also understand that every group houserules things as they feel the need to, no matter how "complete" the system is.  So, with those things in mind, they set about designing a solid system for "baseline" D&D gameplay.  The rules cover in game conflicts - combat and non combat encounters.  A considerable amount of fluff and design material is in the DMG to help people along, along with the caveat that things can be tweaked as needed, and sections throughout the DMG deal with how to tweak, how to design workable houserules, how to improvise any situation not covered explicitly by the rules, etc.  The designers learned from 3e that trying to answer every crazy corner case someone comes up with on the internet is like fighting a hydra.  For every head you chop off, two more appear, and things quickly spiral out of control if you don't focus on the body.  When someone throws some silly corner case at the system, like the OP, the response "fix it if it bothers you" is entirely appropriate because that is the design intent.  Gamers are smart enough to fix things that bother them.  The OP asked for rationalization for the mechanic and got it in spades (experience matters).  The skill set for 4e is focused solely on skills the PCs use in conflict resolution, whether combat or not.  Those are not the only skills that the PCs can have or do have.  The others just aren't relevant as mechanical expressions.  The skill set that exists are skills that all characters will use over the course of their careers, and see others use very well.  An adventurer, even a wizard, is going to pick up some athletic and acrobatic skill out of necessity and experience from scaling cliffs, plumbing dungeon depths and the like.  A dumb fighter is going to learn at least a bit about the world, monsters, history, religion, as he spends years traveling the world and beyond with learned wizards and pious clerics.  The mechanic aptly represents this, even if you create some corner cases that won't ever come up in actual gameplay that make it seem a bit of a stretch.  So, yeah, I am weary responding to people who think some corner case and an answer of, "so, houserule it to your liking" somehow proves that 4e is a broken system.  In every one of these discussions when someone says "you can't expect the rules to cover everything (or everything perfectly", the response by the OP is "of course not, but it SHOULD cover this."  Why?  Because it fits that persons "priority of realism".  It's an arbitrary distinction and people seem unwilling to understand that what is important to them isn't to others.  "Of course the game should include hardness/appraise/complex magic item identification/between level training, its necessary!"  The threads here along these lines comprise dozens of "but its necessary!" subsystems the posters think are just a travesty that 4e doesn't include and none of them seem willing to just accept a design philosophy that allows for the variance of the game group and their priorities and the intelligence of the average gamer.</blockquote>

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