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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4086783" data-attributes="member: 4937">Not that I have referred to the differing opinion as mindless hack'n'slash, but if I had it would be no worse than the claim that something I've been doing is impossible.You can't?  Maybe, as you level up, you can't throw a skill test at the party where everyone has a significant chance of failure, but you can still throw skill tests.It's also worth noting that a great many challenges you might throw at a group don't lend themselves to group solutions.  Only one guy can attempt to disarm the trap.  If he fails, the trap is sprung.  Only one guy gets the initial attempt to convince the mountain giant to let them pass unmolested.  If he fails miserably and the giant becomes actively hostile, the oppurtunity for anyone else to succeed has probably passed (unless there is someone in the party much more skilled than the first character to attempt diplomacy).  Only one guy needs climb the ice wall.  Everyone else need only climb a rope ladder or knotted rope.  Only one guy needs to recognize the painting is a valuable antique... or a fraud.  Only one guy needs to securely tie the prisoners, while the rest stand around looking intimidating, or grapple the foe, or whatever.  Only one guy actually steers the runaway mine cart through the old mine.  Everyone else is busy fighting off the pursuers.  Only one guy really needs to jump on the horses and bring the run away stage coach to a halt.  You only need one guy to craft whatever it is you needed crafted.  And so forth.  Even when you present a skill challenge rarely is it the case that anyone but the most skillful player's skill is at stake.The exception are skills like spot, listen, and balance where something is happening in the environment and everyone is to some extent being tested on thier own behalf.  That's why these are some of the skills that you most often see being bought cross class.Yes, I agree.  It doesn't make alot of since for a wizard to invest in climb, when he has alternative means of transport and when he doesn't he can rely on the rogue to send down a rope and in the worst case the rogue and the barbarian can pull the wizard up.Funny, but I encourage fighters and clerics in my campaigns to invest heavily enough in balance to get back to zero so that they won't be falling down continually when under stress in uneven, slippery, or steep terrain.  A -4 balance check is good enough when you can take 10, and you aren't too worried about stumbling.  But it sucks when you are fighting in a dark muddy cave filled with flowstone and loose breakdown.How many people need to be able to translate the runes?  Can't the one who is good at it report his findings to the rest?  Why should the fighter have nearly as good of a chance as the wizard?If the whole party needs to be disguised, why can't the one good at disguise use his skill to disguise the others?  Isn't that how it generally works?  The master of disguise applies his skill to disguising his comrades?  If you have someone actually good at disguise, why do it yourself?I don't think people who play differently than me do mindless hack-n-slash.  Heck, I don't even denigrate hack-n-slash.  Monte does very thoughtful hack-n-slash.  But as long as I'm going to be accused of looking down on other people anyway, I might as well risk people thinking that and telling you what I do think.  I think that alot of this argument of how necessary universal skill improvement is is just a front.  I think its just a cover argument, and that people don't want to admit what thier real problem is.  I think that the real problem is that if you want to play a superheroic game, and you want to play a superheroic character that can do all sorts of cool stuff, that you don't want to be inept at anything.  I think that alot of players think that when thier character is inept at something, that it reduces the coolness and therefore the fun.  I think that what you are seeing is perception of ineptitude scale with ability, so that you see people playing characters with 8 or 10 intelligence with exagerrated stupidity, or 8 or 10 wisdom with exagerrated silliness, or 8 or 10 charisma with exagerrated abrasiveness.  And the reason that they do this is that they think of heroic ability as normal, and so anything less than heroic is 'dumb'.  For example, consider the way that the 'less smart' characters in OotS are played to comic effect.  You would think that these characters have like a 4 Wis or something, especially given how the wiser characters describe thier ability, but from what we can gather from the narrative even someone like Belkar has no worse than an 8 Wis.  That works fine for narrative spoofing the tropes of gaming, but that isn't really what is implied.In any event, there is nothing wrong with wanting to play a superheroic game where no one is really inept at anything.  However, insisting that that is the only way to play flies in the face of my own experience.</blockquote>

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