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<blockquote data-quote="FireLance" data-source="post: 5192130" data-attributes="member: 3424">That's just shifting the problem one level down. The 3e NPC building Rules As Written pretty much require high skill ranks and high attack bonuses to go hand in hand. Admittedly, you can get a lot of mileage out of a high ability score, Skill Focus and synergy bonuses, but even that will only get you so far. Beyond a certain point, you have to add more levels (and more hit points, base attack bonuses, saving throw bonuses, etc.) in order to raise an NPC's skill level. Because high skill ranks tend to go hand in hand with high combat skill in 3e, you need to push the limits of the rules to get a highly skilled NPC who is poor in combat.In the interest of fairness, I should note that 4e has the same problem for the PCs because skill checks gain a bonus equal to half the character's level. If skilled diplomat NPCs in 3e are required by the rules to be decent fighters*, skilled fighter PCs in 4e are required by the rules to be decent diplomats. 4e NPCs, on the other hand, can be either, both, or neither, as the DM requires.* EDIT: Insert snarky comment about 3e diplomat NPCs being able to trip, sunder, disarm and overrun, which 4e fighters cannot do without selecting special powers. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":p" title="Stick out tongue&nbsp; &nbsp; :p"&nbsp; data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":p" /></blockquote>

[QUOTE="FireLance, post: 5192130, member: 3424"] That's just shifting the problem one level down. The 3e NPC building Rules As Written pretty much require high skill ranks and high attack bonuses to go hand in hand. Admittedly, you can get a lot of mileage out of a high ability score, Skill Focus and synergy bonuses, but even that will only get you so far. Beyond a certain point, you have to add more levels (and more hit points, base attack bonuses, saving throw bonuses, etc.) in order to raise an NPC's skill level. Because high skill ranks tend to go hand in hand with high combat skill in 3e, you need to push the limits of the rules to get a highly skilled NPC who is poor in combat. In the interest of fairness, I should note that 4e has the same problem for the PCs because skill checks gain a bonus equal to half the character's level. If skilled diplomat NPCs in 3e are required by the rules to be decent fighters*, skilled fighter PCs in 4e are required by the rules to be decent diplomats. 4e NPCs, on the other hand, can be either, both, or neither, as the DM requires. * EDIT: Insert snarky comment about 3e diplomat NPCs being able to trip, sunder, disarm and overrun, which 4e fighters cannot do without selecting special powers. :p [/QUOTE]

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