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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5898828" data-attributes="member: 42582">Good story.What are class skills for? At least two things, I think:(1) They aid in balance (at least ostensibly): a PC might be good at fighting (one way of resolving disputes with others) or good at Diplomacy (a different way of resolving disputes with others) but not both. Depending how a game treats the 3 (or more) "pillars", and also depending on whether balance is about effectiveness, screentime, or something else, this may or may not work as a balance mechanism.(2) They establish elements of setting. Fighters are grim and scray (Intimidate but not Diplomacy as a class skill). Wizards are all nerdy klutzes (Knowledge but not Acro, Stealth etc as class skills). Paladins are chivalrours knights (Diplomacy but not Steath as a class skill). Etc.Weapon proficiencies can be looked at the same way: confining wizards to daggers is both a balance issue (fighters will do more damage in hand-to-hand combat) and a setting issue (around here, at least, wizards don't fight with swords).The tension between these two considerations crops up all the time in D&D discussions, I think, and in one particularly frequent way: if you want the setting/story aspect to be mechanically expressed (eg daggers aren't just different colour from swords, but do d4 rather than d8, or martial exertion and luck isn't just different colour on your daily power compared to a wizard's spell, but needs a hero point mechanic rather than a spell mechanic), then you're likely to make achieving balance more complicated.For example, one thing that is going on, I think, when people complain about 4e PCs being all same-y, is that for them at least setting (ie a sense of differentiation and distinctiveness about story elements) has been sacrificed to balance. I imagine that these people would have the same complaint about HeroQuest revised, in which setting aspects are not expressed via mechanical differences at all, but simply by the descriptors used to characterise effectiveness.Another way it comes up is with multi-classing, or classes more genrally. People want a ranger (a forest-y, hunter-y bow-user) to be expressed in a mechanically different way from an archer (a bow-using fighter). Which means, for example, that the fighter won't have Stealth as a class skill. But may need DEX to use a bow. But perhaps also STR to get an XP bonus. Which introduces stat imbalances. And with no Stealth as a class skill, the fighter needs to multi-class Thief to get an urban guerilla vibe (or is that an urban ranger?, which some people think is incoherent).3E's solution here is rampant multi-classing, which creates balance problems (as well as increasing complexity). 4e's solution here is to multiply the number of classes, plus to support fairly liberaly reskininning by D&D standards, which creates at least two problems - What if the exact flavour I'm looking for isn't there? (or to put it another way, the game's default setting isn't quite the one I'm looking for), and What if I want my differing story elements to be mechanically expressed with a degree of difference that 4e (especially pre-PHB3, pre-Essentials) doesn't support?It seems that D&Dnext will drop (most?) class skills and put them into Backgrounds, and drop (most?) other aspects of class flavour and put them into themes. What will be left for classes to represent, other than power source and technique?One consequence of this (and Rolemaster exhibited this back in the 80s) is that we can expect a proliferation of magic-using rather than martial classes, because different approaches to magic can be labelled as different sources and techniques, which need to be represented as distinct classes. Whereas all martial heroes use the "Hit them hard with luck and effort" technique - and setting colour will be primarily background/theme.At which point, cue debates! Because at least some D&Ders won't be happy that their particular vision of the D&D setting hasn't been expressed through the class rules, but instead has been offloaded onto backgrounds and themes.Also cue debates about balance! Because as backgrounds and themes are used to establish setting colour, and do this via different forms of mechanical expression, it seems likely that some will end up being more mechanically effective than others. (You already see this in complaints about the balance across 4e themes, and mechanical differentiation presumably will be greater in Next, given its apparent trajectory away from 4e in certain respects.)</blockquote>

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