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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5533462" data-attributes="member: 42582">I tend to feel that when I can't easily make a noble wizard or a pirate PC, the game is starting to fail as a game of generic fantasy adventuring. These aren't really alternatives to being an adventurer. They're certainly not in the same boat as basket-weaving.The cause of this particular issue seems fairly easy to diagnose, however - the 3E skill rules, both the cross-class rules and the skill point rules. I gather that Pathfinder tackles both of these, and it seems to me for a very obvious reason.A further complication is that 3E doesn't provide any obvious mechanical route, in its encounter design guidelines, XP rules etc for making some of these skill-oriented issues a core part of the game.I tend to agree with this. 3E has tried to follow games like Runequest or Rolemaster or Traveller or HERO in its character build mechanics - the character's mechanical specification is meant to be a total picture of the character's aptitudes and competencies - but has not really provided adequate resources on the player side (hence the monomaniacal fighter) nor on the GM side (not enough support for fully integrating these sorts of "total characters" into gameplay - and hence frequent complaints like, for example, having to trade off combat optimality for roleplaying richness).1st ed didn't tend to have this problem because it didn't have the notion of the "totally mechanically specified character". In particular, there were no real mechanical constraints on adding roleplaying richness, or a range of mundance competencies, to a character (at least prior to Oriental Adventures and the Survival Guides).</blockquote>

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