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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5800180" data-attributes="member: 82106">No, I know I have a +3 ability bonus for STR and a long list of possible bonuses to various things that come up once every 6 months and have to be added to that so I can come up with the modifier for swimming (after we discuss if swimming the river would use the STR or the CON bonus). Whereas in 4e I look at the skill section of my sheet and it says Athletics +9. I can also be a good swimmer in 4e without having a high STR score. IRL I'm a pretty good swimmer, but I'd be kidding myself if I said I had a high STR or CON. Not that there aren't theoretical upsides and downsides to 4e-style skills, but they are far easier to handle in play and thus get used a lot more than in any other system I've run. I think people who spend a lot of time thinking about the game worry about this kind of thing FAR more than players do. Most of them are not that concerned about things like swimming and climbing happen to get lumped together than they do about the easy fun of just knowing where to find the one number they need in the current situation.The same issue comes up with ability scores as defenses. It is MUCH quicker to have a number fully calculated on your sheet for each defense already. Saying &quot;I'm doing away with defenses and using ability scores&quot; means actually you are just refusing to give the defenses a name, because they'll still exist mechanically in play, except by not writing them on our sheet and putting a label on them we both slow play down and lose the ability to refer to them again in other rules. This is the &quot;middleman falacy&quot;. Those 'middleman numbers' DO exist and logically WILL exist. Pretending they don't exist is simply a loss to playability and rules clarity, straight up.IMHO those numbers will resurface pretty soon (and maybe they do exist now for all I know, you'd be more able to say than I).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 5800180, member: 82106"] No, I know I have a +3 ability bonus for STR and a long list of possible bonuses to various things that come up once every 6 months and have to be added to that so I can come up with the modifier for swimming (after we discuss if swimming the river would use the STR or the CON bonus). Whereas in 4e I look at the skill section of my sheet and it says Athletics +9. I can also be a good swimmer in 4e without having a high STR score. IRL I'm a pretty good swimmer, but I'd be kidding myself if I said I had a high STR or CON. Not that there aren't theoretical upsides and downsides to 4e-style skills, but they are far easier to handle in play and thus get used a lot more than in any other system I've run. I think people who spend a lot of time thinking about the game worry about this kind of thing FAR more than players do. Most of them are not that concerned about things like swimming and climbing happen to get lumped together than they do about the easy fun of just knowing where to find the one number they need in the current situation. The same issue comes up with ability scores as defenses. It is MUCH quicker to have a number fully calculated on your sheet for each defense already. Saying "I'm doing away with defenses and using ability scores" means actually you are just refusing to give the defenses a name, because they'll still exist mechanically in play, except by not writing them on our sheet and putting a label on them we both slow play down and lose the ability to refer to them again in other rules. This is the "middleman falacy". Those 'middleman numbers' DO exist and logically WILL exist. Pretending they don't exist is simply a loss to playability and rules clarity, straight up. IMHO those numbers will resurface pretty soon (and maybe they do exist now for all I know, you'd be more able to say than I). [/QUOTE]

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