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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6230134" data-attributes="member: 82106">Why IS it? or why isn't it? Its just movement, the whole point of the 4e rules is to avoid endless restating of things that are already defined. Its movement, and not shifting, so it just always follows all the normal movement rules, no statement is required.No, conjurations aren't creatures, and most of them have no OA, nor any other form of action economy. In order for this to work the conjuration would have to specifically state that it allows flanking with it and/or it can itself benefit from flanking (IE the caster can, a Flaming Sphere could in theory be written this way). It is best to think of 4e skills as focused areas of interest rather than little individual specific niche areas of expertise. The guy with Athletics likes to use physical strength to deal with problems. He may or may not be strong in an absolute sense, but he's got a knack for doing 'Athletic' types of things. Note that pure feats of muscle power such as lifting heavy objects uses Strength, not Athletics, and things like your carrying capacity are determined by raw Strength. Likewise Arcana is a general area of knowledge and practice which includes, potentially, some familiarity with the more odd sorts of otherworldly beasties. Its worth noting that nothing implies characters can't have other very specific things they know about. For instance it would be typical for a DM to give a +2 background bonus to say a character with the Farmer background when dealing with things related to farming. This could apply to nearly any skill or ability check in that context. Each character is allowed to have a background for each of up to five elements, so there is a lot of potential there for a PC to have some advantage in any particular story. There are also things like Martial Practices which can grant characters the ability to do certain specific things very well. Some powers can factor in as well.The other part of this is that the 4e skill system isn't intended to exist in a vacuum of nothing but individual skill/ability checks. Anything significant to the plot is an encounter and thus a skill challenge if it isn't an actual combat. In this way a variety of factors can come into play, a strong but clumsy character might not fare as well as a guy that is modestly strong and also dexterous, especially if that character has a relevant skill. When you put the 4e skill system in its context it provides a lot of utility in a package that also delivers relevance and delivers a feeling of expertise, the wizard knows his stuff, he can use Arcana to deal with most magic-related stuff competently. If a given character concept should have some need to be an expert in an area not related to his main class, its easy enough for a fighter to have Religion or Arcana say without it being a big ongoing drain in skill points as it would be in 3.x for instance.Adventurer's Vault has most of this sort of stuff, you might also find some in Mordenkainen's Magical Emporium, which re-presents a lot of AV stuff. MME is probably the better book overall, though AV1 does have some stuff in it that isn't in any other book (maybe things WotC thought weren't great ideas after the fact like double weapons).</blockquote>

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