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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tony Vargas" data-source="post: 7829989" data-attributes="member: 996">I probably shouldn't, but here's my pet history-of-the-game theory:Way back in the dark mists of time, like, the 60s & 70s, Arneson &co were playing what would become RPGs, Braunstien, or whatever, Blackmoor, just mak'n it up for the most part.  And, I'm guessing the idea that the PC had skills/wits/cunning/personal-relationships/etc different/distinct from those of it's player may not have gelled yet.  Because, when 0D&D first hit, there weren't really skills, even though there were mental stats.  If your character did some schmoozing or politicking, even though he had a CHA score, you likely just schmoozed or politicked the DM some, in character.  For that matter, if you looked for traps, you described probing the floor ahead of you with a 10' pole & the like (thus 10' pole being on every equipment list).Then came the Thief, with Special Abilities that were essentially skills, as its raisin debt, and the fighter was perforce cut off from having skills (those skills, at first), and a precedent set that /if you could have non-combat skills you had to suck at combat and vice-versa/.  That precedent was broken, eventually, by 3.0 giving the Rogue decent combat options, and the Rogue is actually fine, now, in combat - but still not as tough, nominally, as the fighter (I mean, a hp or so per level and a point of AC if he keeps his DEX maxed, nothing like the gulf back in 1e), but still significantly better with skills out of combat (Expertise, Reliable Talent, etc).Really, skills should have been formalized in Greyhawk Supplement II, and given mainly to the Fighter, and the Thief/Rogue should never have existed.  We wouldn't have so much of a problem, now, if the Fighter, as the main non-caster, had been /both/ the meatshield, and the skill-miester. It's not like it'd've been remotely OP.</blockquote>

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