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Message: <blockquote data-quote="The Crimson Binome" data-source="post: 7482464" data-attributes="member: 6775031">The distinction is an artificial one, made for the sake of gameplay. Within the world that the game takes place, there's no such distinction between combat skills and non-combat skills. If it makes sense in that world for a wizard to get better with their sword without ever swinging it, then the exact same logic should apply to their skill with picking locks. Either you can learn without practicing, or you cannot.It depends entirely on which edition you're talking about. A quick check of AD&D shows that Disintegrate didn't require an attack roll at all, and from that I will infer that spells in general did not rely on your combat bonuses (or THAC0) in either of those editions. The ranged touch attack was an invention of third edition, an in effort to reconcile the math at hand into some sort of unified system.And yet, in every single edition of D&D, a wizard will get better with their melee weapons, even if they never use them. That third edition elf wizard will have a +12 bonus with their longsword. There's a space for you to write that number on your character sheet, and everything. But why are we bothering to write down that specific value - not talking about your BAB, or ranged touch attack bonus - why does the game want you to write down the wizard's adjusted attack bonus with their melee weapon, if you're not supposed to use it ever?If it was only proportional to the expected participation, then wizards would only advance by HP rather than attack bonus. Or are you now saying that a wizard should sometimes swing their sword? Because if you're saying that wizards should get better at swinging swords, because sometimes they swing swords, then the question goes back to how quickly they improve. And the aforementioned follow-up question to that is, what's the point in them getting better with swinging a sword, if the bonus is so small that they can't actually hit anything with it?Are wizards supposed to make melee attacks, or not? If so, then what's the point of giving them a bonus so small that they'll never succeed at it? If not, then why are they proficient with melee weapons in the first place? A well-designed game would have an answer to this question, pick a side, and implement rules to support that goal.</blockquote>

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