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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hellcow" data-source="post: 4124157" data-attributes="member: 15800">Sure. The question is whether in a game like D&D - in which combat is expected to play a significant role in the typical campaign (how many adventure paths have you see that are entirely social?) - should it have to be a choice? Or should characters be able to shine in both melee and noncombat - just in different ways? Looking at the party I mentioned before, in combat each character has their role. The paladin is healer and steadfast defender. The warlock is the eldritch blaster raining down destruction from afar, while the ranger gets in close and does the dicing. The cleric heals and provides general support on both attack and defense. The wizard adds a level of versatility andis extremely helpful when dealing with large groups. Yet all of these characters has something unique to offer out of combat. The ranger is the expert in stealth and reconnaissance, backed up by the (changeling) cleric. Not only can he scout unseen, his sharp eyes will notice things the others may miss. The cleric is the expert diplomat and master of insight, able to read the people around him with ease. And yet, he's a good-hearted person with little understanding of the ways of intrigue - that falls to the warlock, expert in Bluff, Intimidate, and Streetwise. He knows the streets, he lies with ease, and he's the bad cop to the cleric's good. Beyond this, as a historian, he can recognize relics and ruins. The wizard is a linguist and scholar, version in all forms of arcana and academia. And the paladin is as intimidating as the warlock, but has the physical might to face challenges of strength and endurance (and could have gone in other directions if he so chose; it's not "Paladin = Jock", but rather that the group otherwise was lacking jockness). And then there is noncombat magic, about which there's little I can say at this point. The wizard is a expert in Arcana. Not only is he substantially better at the skill than any of his comrades, he can perform trained actions with this skill that none of the others can. If he wants to be a true MASTER of Arcana, he'll eventually want to put a feat into Skill Focus, and this admittedly would be a minor drop in combat efficiency. But by and large he doesn't have to make a sacrifice to shine out of combat. So the system ISN'T designed to let you make a character who just basically sucks, aside from willfully putting bad scores in your key attributes and the like. All characters should have something useful to contribute to any situation, combat or otherwise. You DO have certain choices which lean towards combat or noncombat - for example feats. They don't have a HUGE impact, so you're neither crippled in one area nor overwhelmingly powerful in the other - but it is still a point at which you can choose whether you want Skill Focus (Diplomacy) or something with some direct combat application. And as I've said all along, it does let you creating interesting and colorful characters; three fighters aren't all cookie-cutter combat clones. (Bear in mind, I didn't list every skill each character possesses; the description focusses on the skills that define their characters and non-combat abilities. As it turns out, the Ranger is also trained in the Heal skill, but it's not hugely relevant to the point.)And NOW I'm going to step out of the discussion. Really. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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