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<blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 5040985" data-attributes="member: 58197">The game designers aren't dictating anything. Nobody's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use every ability on your character sheet. If nobody in the group is interested in domain management, or social interaction, or whatever - then nobody does it! Those mechanics simply sit idle and the rest of the system carries on as if they didn't exist....So, what you're saying is that 4E doesn't silo enough and therefore siloing is bad?I agree that 4E isn't properly siloed. The silos in 4E consist of a great big ultramodern grain elevator for combat and a tar-paper shack for everything else. The designers should have made a strong effort to create separate silos for combat, exploration, and social abilities. (And possibly a fourth for resource management.) But that's a complaint against 4E, not against siloing.In a point-buy system, the designers' priorities are enforced on the players, because the designers choose how much weight to give to each category. If the designers think the game will be split about 50-50 between combat and social interaction, for instance, and I'm playing a hack-and-slash game where the split is more like 75-25, then combat abilities will be underpriced for my game and social abilities will be overpriced.If the system were siloed, it wouldn't matter. Social abilities are in one silo, combat abilities are in another, and there's no trade-off between them, so it doesn't matter if the split is 75-25 or 25-75 or anything else.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Dausuul, post: 5040985, member: 58197"] The game designers aren't dictating anything. Nobody's holding a gun to your head and forcing you to use every ability on your character sheet. If nobody in the group is interested in domain management, or social interaction, or whatever - then nobody does it! Those mechanics simply sit idle and the rest of the system carries on as if they didn't exist. ...So, what you're saying is that 4E doesn't silo enough and therefore siloing is bad? I agree that 4E isn't properly siloed. The silos in 4E consist of a great big ultramodern grain elevator for combat and a tar-paper shack for everything else. The designers should have made a strong effort to create separate silos for combat, exploration, and social abilities. (And possibly a fourth for resource management.) But that's a complaint against 4E, not against siloing. In a point-buy system, the designers' priorities [i]are[/i] enforced on the players, because the designers choose how much weight to give to each category. If the designers think the game will be split about 50-50 between combat and social interaction, for instance, and I'm playing a hack-and-slash game where the split is more like 75-25, then combat abilities will be underpriced for my game and social abilities will be overpriced. If the system were siloed, it wouldn't matter. Social abilities are in one silo, combat abilities are in another, and there's no trade-off between them, so it doesn't matter if the split is 75-25 or 25-75 or anything else. [/QUOTE]

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