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<blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5693159" data-attributes="member: 54877">Right. If you try to cure the two player with different expectations problem with rules, well ... see that earlier Legend and Lore article about when rules help and when they don't. (That's yet another way in which reading this articles too specifically instead of holistically can obscure what is being talked about. Those articles are related, even if the specifics don't make that immediately obvious.)&nbsp; This skill idea has nothing to do with stopping an arms race.&nbsp; It isn't designed for that.&nbsp; Talking about arms races is completely missing the point.&nbsp;As to where this can be useful, it is not at the level that most of you are discussing it, which is action resolution solely. Rather, it is only marginally useful solely on action resolution grounds, compared to current options, in that it makes it easier for the DM to manage the challenges. Well-defined labels of well-defined concepts aren't critical to DM success, but they are useful. So if &quot;expert&quot; means something definite, and it can be called out that way, it is marginally useful in action resolution.&nbsp;But mainly, this kind of thing is more useful in how it fits into the rest of the system and communication about same. It means that when the players pick skills, those skills are highly useful flags. Right now, skills are somewhat useful flags for a DM that has been around the block a few times, but this doesn't really permeate the rest of the system. Nor should that be surprising, given the relatively late development of skills in D&amp;D.&nbsp;It is not clear exactly how skills should work in a class-based system, and you can't entirely steal from skill-based systems to get every idea you need. Is anyone claiming that somewhere between 3E to 4E skills, we have the perfect answer? If you are, then Mike and Monte aren't talking to you. Like some of the rest of us, they think they can do better. If you are going to refine what is there, then poking around at the boundaries of why skills aren't quite perfect is going to take this kind of thinking. The failings are often subtle.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Crazy Jerome, post: 5693159, member: 54877"] Right. If you try to cure the two player with different expectations problem with rules, well ... see that earlier Legend and Lore article about when rules help and when they don't. (That's yet another way in which reading this articles too specifically instead of holistically can obscure what is being talked about. Those articles are related, even if the specifics don't make that immediately obvious.) This skill idea has nothing to do with stopping an arms race. It isn't designed for that. Talking about arms races is completely missing the point. As to where this can be useful, it is not at the level that most of you are discussing it, which is action resolution solely. Rather, it is only marginally useful solely on action resolution grounds, compared to current options, in that it makes it easier for the DM to manage the challenges. Well-defined labels of well-defined concepts aren't critical to DM success, but they are useful. So if "expert" means something definite, and it can be called out that way, it is marginally useful in action resolution. But mainly, this kind of thing is more useful in how it fits into the rest of the system and communication about same. It means that when the players pick skills, those skills are [B]highly[/B] useful flags. Right now, skills are [B]somewhat[/B] useful flags for a DM that has been around the block a few times, but this doesn't really permeate the rest of the system. Nor should that be surprising, given the relatively late development of skills in D&D. It is not clear exactly how skills should work in a class-based system, and you can't entirely steal from skill-based systems to get every idea you need. Is anyone claiming that somewhere between 3E to 4E skills, we have the perfect answer? If you are, then Mike and Monte aren't talking to you. Like some of the rest of us, they think they can do better. If you are going to refine what is there, then poking around at the boundaries of why skills aren't quite perfect is going to take this kind of thinking. The failings are often subtle. [/QUOTE]

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