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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6105970" data-attributes="member: 6688937">Dogs in the Vineyard came up in the FATE discussion, because it views physical combat as a strict escalation of social conflict a very similar to what your saying here. I think, for any game claiming to be narrative, a strong distinction between conflict resolution in and out of combat gets to be a problem. Which is not to say that distinctions can't exist. FATE, at least, would allow you to have a scenario or setting aspect like "talk is useless when bullets are flying" that could be tagged by any character to make social moves harder in physical combat. You could also have the reverse, "Scandal beats pistol every time!" (pinched from a recent Dr. McNinja strip) However, low-level hard-coded distinctions between resolution systems seem to discourage the sort of mixing that the thread was talking about. Sure, this is definitely the way to go wrt recent D&D design. However, it is rather limited to the DM-side of things. Would it be "legit" to p42 an Intimidation check in or before combat as dealing damage? I'm not sure. Would any player ever find it advantageous or tempting to do so, rather than use a combat power? I'm even less sure. It might be interesting to go through the 3.5 or 4e skill list and make sure all the interaction skills had combat uses. This is where HP gets into trouble. On the one hand its a pacing mechanic, but on the other it isn't.</blockquote>