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<blockquote data-quote="Ratskinner" data-source="post: 6159727" data-attributes="member: 6688937">The part that's tricky is &quot;provided the non-combat abilities are clearly meaningful in play.&quot; The problem is that D&amp;D is (historically and critically speaking) a combat/wargame system which permits some roleplaying on the side. Which is to say, combat and non-combat utilize totally different&nbsp; architectures (when there is any non-combat architecture at all,&nbsp; anyway). This makes the application and utility of non-combat rules and features much less consistent than combat mechanics. I've run a game where the PCs were desperate to level up so they could take NWPs (2e) to learn new languages, even though there was plenty of fighting. I've also been in plenty of games like my current one where languages and non-combat are just about irrelevant, merely an irritant to be hand-waived by disbursing a Helm of Comprehend Languages. In a game where both are possible and accepted and encouraged playstyles, I don't see how you could possibly evaluate non-combat features against combat features in any meaningful way.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ratskinner, post: 6159727, member: 6688937"] The part that's tricky is "provided the non-combat abilities are clearly meaningful in play." The problem is that D&D is (historically and critically speaking) a combat/wargame system which permits some roleplaying on the side. Which is to say, combat and non-combat utilize totally different architectures (when there is any non-combat architecture at all, anyway). This makes the application and utility of non-combat rules and features much less consistent than combat mechanics. I've run a game where the PCs were desperate to level up so they could take NWPs (2e) to learn new languages, even though there was plenty of fighting. I've also been in plenty of games like my current one where languages and non-combat are just about irrelevant, merely an irritant to be hand-waived by disbursing a Helm of Comprehend Languages. In a game where both are possible [I]and accepted and encouraged [/I]playstyles, I don't see how you could possibly evaluate non-combat features against combat features in any meaningful way. [/QUOTE]

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