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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5657730" data-attributes="member: 54877">It is not the main thrust of the design, but one of the minor problems it solves is on the "realism" front. Mearls called this out. Now, it isn't like this system is hyper-realistic, but it does address one of those things in the typical gaming skill model that chafes a little: It distinguishes natural talent and other such minor abilities as separate from serious training.  They aren't the same thing. Most games treat them as if they were, or so close that they might as well. If you get a +5 to the skill, it doesn't matter how you got it--only that you have it. This system says it does matter, sometimes.  Or rather, sometimes you get the bonus and sometimes you get to a new plateau. Take a gifted, natural athlete. He is strong, fast, smart. He can catch all kinds of balls. He can throw. He can run. He can jump, hit, swing a stick, has "touch". He has played all kinds of things backyard, but never organized. You put him on an (American) football team. Get the pads on him, tell him to run past his guy and catch the ball. He might do it pretty well. Throw him into right field on the company softball team. Show him how to hold a tennis racket. Put him in the church basketball league. He will do pretty well--even against people with modest training but lesser natural gifts. Tell him to run a precise route and arrive at the pylon of the end zone at the proper moment, turn, and catch the ball that is already in the air. He can't do it. This is a complex activity that requires a certain mastery and synergy of multiple skill sets. It ain't brain surgery, but it will do for illustration purposes. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" /> Nevertheless, on simple enough tasks, there are trained people he can beat. Of course, Mearls pointed out that there was a problem with opposed rolls in this article, which he would touch on later. If the problem is the one I think, I'm not sure it is a problem. My experience is that when you are up against someone better trained than you, the way to win is to maneuver the problem down to one that you can handle. That they can also handle it is true, but now at least I have a shot. And who knows, maybe they get by mainly by keeping things complicated, or I catch them unaware? That is, if you play a chess player significantly but not overwhelmingly better than you, you might seek to evenly trade pieces. The less pieces, the less complicated the board. You'll probably still lose. But I guarantee you've got a better shot than if the board is cluttered. He likes it that way. (This of course is not true if you are so untrained that you can't work with limited pieces. But in that case, you are doomed anyway.)  And not that the article is entirely addressing this part, but if you really wanted to remove the rough edges off the model, you wouldn't let training stack with natural ability much or even at all. Training is often an impediment to success in the early going, because your brain is so cluttered with unlearning bad habits (those things that sort of worked for you before)--and the more natural gifts you have, the more this will be true. It is one of the reasons that people hit walls. That's it. This is trying to model that their humps in the learning curve, and when you get to a new one, you usually hit a wall before you find the way over.</blockquote>

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