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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 6176006" data-attributes="member: 2067">It's implied, so it's not text, but subtext. In the conversation, that subtext is found in the idea that of course a barbarian is a better choice for a deadly adventure than a bard, because of course a barbarian is a hardier, tougher, better fighter than the bard, who might get killed more easily. If the combat encounter is the focus of the game, that's broadly true. In D&D itself, that subtext can be found in the powers system, where the main source of character variety and interactivity is found. You have many, many, many different ways to kill monsters (or avoid being killed by them) in 4e D&D. Why would a 1st-level character require something like 7 different kinds of combat maneuvers (two at-wills, encounter, daily, melee basic, ranged basic, racial ability, plus perhaps theme powers)? The big reason I can think of is: so that you have a lot of options in combat, to keep combat interesting and changing and varied. Why not have that many options to, say, explore the dungeon? Well, because variety and player options are not as important there, because these things are not intended to be the focus of game-time, but rather brief changes of pace between the events that the rules are, in volume, dedicated to adjudicating.4e was the example I held up, but you can see this at work in most editions of D&D. The list of things a player can do to influence combat often vastly exceeds the list of things a player can do in any other type of challenge. If you're just seeing an objection to 4e there, you're looking too narrowly at the post. It ranges wide across the editions to criticize all of them for generally having unsatisfactory resolutions to challenges aside from combat (because "Convince The DM" is only ever as satisfactory as your given DM at the moment). 4e manifestly HAS a non-combat resolution system in Skill Challenges, and it's D&D's most robust formal system, but Skill Challenges lack much of the dimension that combat has. And all that's ultimately a detour from the idea that a bard can contribute to the overall resolution of an adventure, without having to contribute to a particular combat encounter, if the adventure itself is the focus of the design, rather than a narrow focus on each encounter.There's a big gulf between "can't contribute at all" and "can't contribute as much." Additionally, "can't contribute at all" might be OK for certain brief periods -- a turn or two when turns spin by 10 per real-world minute is not a bad thing, and you can remain engaged, knowing you'll be back in any moment. If combat eats up an hour, no, that's not acceptable, but if combat eats up more like 3 minutes? That's a different kind of conversation.</blockquote>

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