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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5288787" data-attributes="member: 58197">How? Brainpower is brainpower. Humans suck at multitasking.No, but you may well be thinking about your attack bonus and which feat to use (orcs), or your social skills and relevant powers (the princess). Lots of people have observed players in 3E and 4E developing a kind of tunnel vision, seeing everything through the lens of powers and skills and feats, and ignoring the possibility of stepping outside what's written on the character sheet. That happens because it takes so much thought to sort through a PC's mechanical options that non-mechanical options get overlooked.If you're playing a fighter with Intelligence 8 (not unlikely if you're going the turnip farmer route), every skill point counts. It's not going to cripple you in combat, but you'll certainly feel the lack when your Climb or Swim skill suffers as a result.In 4E, there most certainly is such a thing as a non-advantageous background. For instance, Wisdom clerics have a strong incentive to pick a background that gives them Perception as a class skill; Perception is a massively useful skill, it keys off the cleric's prime stat, and by taking the appropriate background you can save yourself a feat on skill training. Picking a different background won't break your character, but it'll cost you either a feat or a valuable skill, which isn't negligible.Either way, the system sets up incentives to put the mechanics first and contort your character's back story and persona to fit. All of D&D does that to some degree, of course--it's hard to justify being a professional scholar with an Int of 8, in any edition--but the more incentives there are and the more detailed their interactions, the stronger the pressure.I can show those things in 1E and 2E as well, and much more easily. In the little space on the character sheet where it says "Character History" or "Background" or whatever, I write, "Turnip farmer." Done. I don't see why you're hung up on needing mechanics to detail every little thing about your PC. Do you need to pull out the Book of Erotic Fantasy to state whether your character is straight or gay?For all their flaws, and they have many, 1E and 2E recognize that you can create two totally different, distinct, and interesting characters with exactly identical stats. Or at least I can.</blockquote>

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