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Message: <blockquote data-quote="keterys" data-source="post: 5041125" data-attributes="member: 43019">Needed? Yes.It's still helpful, even when not needed.The example earlier about a system where you have full points and the designers assume one split between combat and social, but then your game uses a different split definitely leads to folks favoring certain abilities over others because the points just don't add up.For example, let's say that someone can spend 5 points in a point-buy system to get either +1 to Fast Talk or +1 to Hit and Damage. In a campaign where Fast Talk is helpful in 80% of encounters and hit/damage in 30%, then fast talk is better. In a campaign where fast talk is useful in 10% of encounters (which is probably slightly above your average dnd campaign, when you factor in all other encounter types vs social, then the number of social encounters where fast talk is the answer over some other method or some other character talking...) - well, you'll find that most characters favor the hit and damage.Even in a campaign where they're equal, people will favor hit and damage because the penalty for a failed fast talk is some other new and exciting situation (sometimes it's an advantage to fail such rolls, in terms of fun at the game table) and the penalty for a failed combat is often death.</blockquote>