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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4997107" data-attributes="member: 4937">So, speaking just RAW, skills that are directly useful in combat:1) Spot/Listen: High skill at this means less often surprised, which means you can act on the surprise round which means more attacks for you and less damage.2) Hide/Move Silently: High skill means more often achieving surprise, which means you can act on the surprise round, etc.3) Tumble: High skill at this means you can fight defensively to your advantage and that you take fewer AoO's.4) Balance: High skill at this means you can charge, run, or double move across difficult or broken terrain without having to and/or fall down.  You can also wear heavier armor while doing so, and generally can adventure more successfully in heavy armor.  How often this matters depends on how often your DM makes you fight somewhere other than rooms with flat floors or outdoors with carefully manicured turf, and how often you encounter minor hazards that provoke balance checks (which might not be so minor if you are on a narrow path above a chasm).5) Bluff: High skill at this allows you to feint in combat successfully, as well as pull a 'Batman' to distract your opponent to attempt to make a quick hidden get away (when you would otherwise be observed).6) Escape Artist: High skill at this can be substituted for your grapple bonus to escape a grapple.7) Sense Motive: Lets you resist Bluff, above.8) Intimidate: High skill in this lets you pull off minor debuffs against some targets.9) Use Magical Device: High skill in this gets you access to wands and other devices which can supplement your combat ability.10) Ride: Skill in this is necessary when fighting from a mount, and opens up the option to use a mount in combat.  How important this is depends on how much of your combat occurs underground in 20'x30' rooms.11) Concentration: High skill in this is necessary to cast spells in combat.And there are probably some really minor things I'm forgetting.And I tend to play heavier skill usage in combat than that even.  See for example the clinch rules I posted not that long ago, or the rules for the leadership and tactics skills posted before that.But out of combat counts too.  It matters if your character is a boorish thug with no diplomacy skills.  It matters if you can't appraise anything to know what it is, or if you have no knowledge skills and you want a clue to solve a puzzle.  It matters if you can't handle a boat on a stream, or survive a blizzard.  It matters if you can tell who is lying to you.  It matters if you find that trap, and if you can't evade whether you can disable it.  It matters if you can jump the pit, or scale the cliff to let down a rope or for that matter climb the rope.  It matters if you can swim when you fall in the water, or grab the ledge when the floor or ice or basalt crust crumbles beneath you. Sure, you can do all or most of this with magic and flying solves a world of difficulties, but if you are doing all of this with magic then its eating into your daily spell uses and guess what - you are less effective in combat.</blockquote>

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