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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Geron Raveneye" data-source="post: 3771213" data-attributes="member: 2268">That would, in my opinion, require a rebalancing of the importance of combat and non-combat scenes at the core assumption of the game. If the core assumption is "back to the dungeon" v. 2.0, we'll get more combat, more interesting combat, more varied combat, and as an end result (apart from more loot) more focussing around balancing classes around combat (which is done by clarifying the roles of classes in combat, for example, and by trying to adapt the power curves of classes concerning their battle effectiveness) and clarifying the roles a monster has in combat encounters.A tighter integrating of combat and non-combat can (and must) be done both on a roleplaying and a rules level. To explore what role a class can play in a "generic D&D" setting, those roles need to be defined first. For example, Cleric as religious leader or frontiersman, fighter as secular leader, military man, etc...wizard as scholar or magical scientist, opening academies or researching in seclusion, rogues as underworld chiefs, charismatic buffoons or daring tomb raiders. Add mechanics that support those roles IF they are taken (one 3E example is the Leadership feat, which could have been made a bonus fighter feat for fighters of 6th level or higher). A few more skills for fighters would have indeed been nice, along with a few more skill points along the whole class set of 3E.The thing is that I'm not sure it's a good idea to try and balance combat and non-combat, or more general the mechanical and the roleplaying aspects separately, since in a game that's supposed to flow smoothly, one is there to support and draw substance from the other. That's why it always rang a bit weird to me to try and separate those two aspects. To be frank, the 3E attempt sounded to me as if they were saying "D&D players can deal better with limited numbers than with a roleplaying challenge, so all mechanical advantages need mechanical disadvantages to equalize them. Nobody likes to be limited in his roleplaying just because he chose something that does so, but limiting numbers is okay." Yet a lot of complaints arose about the mechanical limitations as well. This is a bit akin to older editions that (to some people arbittrarily) limited the numbers of levels a race could attain in a certain class because that was easier than to express it as a roleplaying challenge...you want all the mechanical advantages of an elf? Fine, here's the mechanical limits of elves you got to swallow along with them (and which were houseruled out of a LOT of games, if you believe the posts about that here. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> ).What I think is that those classes that "enforce" a certain role on the class are the most difficult because people have to really try and get into that role to actually play that class, instead of just adding up numbers and losing some benefits somewhere else. See the paladin for a class that includes a (maybe pretty narrow) role for that class, and all the controversy that class inspires still, after 30 years of existence. And to me, that's a good sign, because it means people have to THINK about the role of the class, and if they like it or not, and how they want to fulfill it. Or different versions of the Knight, which almost always include some kind of knight's code to steer the behaviour of the class. As a counter example, see the cleric, a class that actually brims with roleplaying potential as a religious leader/warrior/frontiersman, but is relegated to be first-aid kit or holy tank-flamethrower in most groups, and is usually discussed in terms of combat effectiveness and "fun/unfun" discussions lately.The reason why bards are loathed by so many, and why the biggest complaint about them is "they SUCK in combat" and "they should be equally effective to every other class in combat" is the fact that you have a class with a heavy social/non-combat role that is plugged into a game where combat is more than 50% of the game. So you either rebalance the class for better combat efficiency, or you rebalance the game for better combat/non-combat balance. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> My 5 cents.</blockquote>

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