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Message: <blockquote data-quote="SWBaxter" data-source="post: 2869060" data-attributes="member: 27926">In D&D (unlike the real world), experience maps directly to personal power. If you're following the rules as written, the only way to increase your Diplomacy (and Profession: Noble Despot, etc.) skills is to level up, and levelling up in any class (even the NPC classes) means you have more hit points, better saving throws, and eventually a higher BAB. Your personal power has increased. That's the way D&D works, that's what we have to deal with in order to think about how a world that strictly follows D&D rules would differ from ours.The thought experiments about a first level expert or aristocrat or whatever cherry-picking feats and such to get a high skill check are kind of silly, because all they mean is that somebody following the same strategy but one level higher will have an advantage, and somebody five levels higher will have a significant advantage. Hence the higher level types will still rule, saying "but wait, it's only higher level types with Skill Focus: Diplomacy" doesn't change the basic fact that levels are going to be what matters. I don't believe this means that every campaign should dump the pseudo-historical government systems, IMHO the most useful aspect of this kind of thinking is to identify the point(s) at which a given campaign setting is making changes to the most likely implications of the D&D rules. This allows a DM to anticipate questions the players might ask, and also to work out why exactly things developed differently. This sort of critical thinking can only help to flesh out a setting.</blockquote>

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