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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 2401119" data-attributes="member: 6533">You're missing two things in this equation.First of all skills are far more valuable than they have been in the past.  Mearl's last designer diary made it very clear that the two innovations of easilly available skills and more powerful skills are highly dependant on each other.  They're also more resource intensive since there is no magic to replace or supplement them and DCs are almost universally variable and scaling rather than fixed.Second, there's an Incredibles style issue going on here, if everyone is a combat monkey than noone is.  Now the analogy isn't perfect, but when you look at the classes and builds revealed thus far  there hasn't been anyone who wasn't at least as much of a skill monkey as a combat monkey.  The Berzerker build has six maxed out skills, a similar archer build is going to pick up close to nine or ten, and even the Harrier has at least 8 skill points before you factor in intelligence and skill groups.  Skill groups and optional skills were one of the first considerations Mike described when meeting the picture challenge earlier in this thread.  The skills a character posesses and can bring to a party are obviously a pretty important dynamic in tactics and team building.Now none of that may provide the incentive that the desperate pressure to increase spell save DC does for wizards, but when you look at the promised lack of skill replacing spells even should an archer not decide to invest any points into intelligence he's still not going to use at as a dump stat since even a minor penalty on skill points is going to make it harder for him to enjoy the skill groups that are one of the chief benefits of his class at the lower levels.It's also very possible that IH simply isn't going to have a dump stat dynamic.  Attributes are point build and apparently generously so, but, AFAIK, we've yet to see a starting character with two eighteens or a twenty which seems to indicate that the rules explicitly encourage 'liberally educated' characters over DnD's specialists.  We just don't know enough about how attributes are handled to say.</blockquote>

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