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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6096580" data-attributes="member: 42582">My puzzlement was over why this should be so, when combat is not handled the same way (contrast eg Rolemaster or Runequest or Classic Traveller, where combat ability is handled the same as other skills).And this is the answer to my puzzlement. Thank you.I personally tend to prefer situations both in and out of combat that engage the whole party - social ("In the court of the duergar king!"), physical ("The temple is collapsing around you!"), etc. 4e certainly allows this. At 20th level, the lowest skill bonuses in my game (poor stat, no training, perhaps an armour penalty) are around +8 to +10. The highest skill bonuses (good stat, training, item etc) are +20 to +29.The Thievery (= lockpick) skills for the 5 20th level PCs in my game are +7 for the paladin in plate and shield, +8 for the invoker in hide armour, +13 for the fighter, +15 for the ranger in hide, and +16 for the chaos sorcerer, or +18 with his tools (he is the only the PC to carry thieves' tools).That's a non-negligible gap before we even get to the effects of training or items (none of the above PCs is trained in Thievery). Arguabyl it's too big a gap! I gather that 3E was even worse for scaling gaps, but those gaps can make it hard to set group challenges, though the DC charts and group check rules do their best to work around the big numbers.A system like MHRP, for instance, scales only from d6 to d12 in ability - that's 4 steps (normal d6, enhanced d8, superhuman d10, godlike d12).Related to what you say here is the following: when the group without a high lockpick rogue wants to get past a locked door, do you want the gameplay to be focused more on "What other mechanical resources, like crowbars or knock spells, do we have access to?" - a fairly classic D&D approach - or do we want the gameplay to be focused more on "What story can I tell about my PC that makes it plausible that s/he is picking this lock?" - which is closer to the MHRP approach.4e is somewhere in the middle between these two approaches.</blockquote>

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