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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Rechan" data-source="post: 4667957" data-attributes="member: 54846">I also don't even get this whole discussion. 4e, in terms of the system, is not very different than 3e. 9/10ths of the book consists of Combat-focused things. For instance, let's take social skills. 3e had: Bluff, diplomacy, intimidate, sense motive. 4e has: Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Insight. In 2e, skills were so unimportant they were called non-weapon proficiencies.So if you want to run a social game, there's no difference. How about other skills? The only difference between the two:Profession skill. Which were so vague. The only use of the profession skill is to gauge how much someone is supposed to earn per week using their profession. Or it's a vague description that using a single skill to encompass so many things that one could take the "Adventurer" profession, and use that skill check for anything that depends on the adventure.Craft skill. Which is pretty much a hand-waving power. The craft skill isn't going to impact anything besides effecting the GP distribution of item creation. It just makes someone feel nice that they have a craft skill point sitting on their sheet that lets them know their character was trained as a blacksmith. The exclusion of Profession/Craft skills are not going to impact a campaign scope. If anything, the non-combat skills in 3e were a vestigial tail, providing the illusion of non-combat depth.What about low magic campaigns? 3e could not facilitate that campaign scope; magical items and healing magic were required. If you didn't have a +2 sword by level 10, you were in trouble because of DR, and inflated AC, and so on. Not to mention the other Big Six. How about healing magic? Unless you where chugging healing potiosn or had a cleric, battles were lethal. Not very Arthurian.Next we have a few magical items missing between the editions. Decanters of endless water, folding boat, etc. The loss of these are not going to impact the campaign scope. We could discuss the economy. Where the sole purpose of the economy is to distinguish what sorts of magical items you are balanced to have. There is nothing in D&D that costs more than 100gp, except magical items. In 2e, you couldn't even buy magical items, so loot = castles. In 1e, loot = XP. Next look at feats. The only non-combat feats that 3e had were Skill boosters (hey, 4e has those), and feats based on crafting magical items - which, 9/10ths were combat-specific magical items.Finally, there's spells. 3e had quite a few non-combat spells. The problem is that those spells allowed plot bypassing. It didn't require any skill or story, but ultimately came down to "I cast this spell, and the DM gives me what I want." Here's a question: how many 3e spells were useful for non-adventurers? For growing crops, building things, etc? Answer: next to none, because the game focuses on adventurers. So I don't know where people got this idea that 3e supported a huge amount of non-combat games. D&D has never supported non-combat gaming to the extent that people make it out. Anyone who has ever ran low-combat games in D&D is using a hammer to put in screws, nuts and bolts. It's a round hole and a square peg. Sure, you can do it, but it's not pretty.</blockquote>

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