Actually, this is a case of memory failure on both your parts.
Oriental Adventures (1985), p 51, chapter headed "Proficiencies":
All characters receive a number of proficiency slots . . . some or all of these can be filled with weapon training. Any that aren't devoted to weapons can be filled with other skills . . .
Wilderness Survival Guide (1986), p12, under "Table 1: Character Proficiencies":
A weapon proficiency slot can be filled with a nonweapon proficiency . . . but the reverse is not allowed . . .
That is, it is just as I posted upthread: in 1st ed OA, both weapon and non-weapon proficiencies had to be purchased from a common pool, and in 1st ed "Survival Guide" games, maximising non-weapon proficiencies required trading away weapon proficiencies.
So the fact that feats in 4e cross over between combat and non-combat is not a new feature of the game.
That leaves it an open question whether or not this is a problematic design in general. Too date I haven't found it to be so, in part because the retraining rules give a lot of flexibility to remake a PC as levels are gained and a player wants to change focus/reprioritise.
No it isn't. You initially brought up OA and the DSG and WSG, but lets look
WSG says the use of NWPs are based on DSG....
DSG says it expanded on the OA use of NWPs.
Right now you are in 2 splatbooks, hardcover but splat non the less. Both of these are AD&D1 books.
Now OA was also a splatbook, pretty much its own campaign setting.
So then all of AD&D has 3 moons per planet that guide the use of magic and change it based on the alignment of the caster?
We might as well be saying this. The fact you have to reach out to extremities to get this doesn't make it true of the whole.
Did NWPs exist in AD&D1? Yes obviously, but the problem is they were such corner cases as they didn't exist until 6 years AFTER AD&D came out.
The place where NWPs became common, and still optional, was AD&D2 where they became a part of the PHB.
Fumetti, that was the same in AD&D, where adding a non-weapon prof could be at the cost of adding a weapon prof (in Oriental Adventures, the two came from the same pool of points, and in D/WSG, weapon profs could be spent on non-weapon but not vice versa).
This statement from you isn't entirely true in regards to having to to give up the combat aspect for a non-combat aspect. It just didn't exist for the most part in AD&D1 unless you used one of those special 3 splatbooks.
AD&D2 however is where it was widely used if optioned. Therein then is where best to talk about NWPs "in older editions", rather than talking about them in a special case book like a campaign setting specific one.
Also not so good to say it occured in "AD&D" as AD&D is not one but 4 games, excluding the mountain of settings, depending on if using UA to make a 1.5, and if using a Player's Options game to make a 2.5.
So AD&D didn't do that, OA did, as you initially said.
AD&D2, however, that presented them formally as part of the whole, differed and you did NOT risk a loss of weapon for nonweapon. You couldn't as the NWP system as well the Secondary Skills system was optional.
So as was said the independent systems of AD&D gave the more flexible choices BECAUSE they were independent so that noncombat choices weren't mixed with combat ones, but of two different systems and focuses.
Rather than comparing feats to NWP where they came from, maybe comparing them to feats in 3rd would be best, but then you might again have to look back to AD&D2 where NWP became a actually sub-system the rules accounted for rather than an add-on system the rules did not account for.
But you are right about the cross-over of feats not being new, but that is because 3rd edition that first saw feat did the same thing, did it not?
