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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6571255" data-attributes="member: 42582">Just another thought on this.With my group, and I suspect with [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION]'s group, generally the "how do you want this to go" is approached and answered by the player from the perspective of the character. ("Advocating for the character".)Relating this to your question about best skill bonuses, I think this shows a difference in this style (which at least arguably is what 4e is the best at by default(?)) between PC building and actual gameplay.When building a PC, a player isn't (I think) primarily advocating for the character. S/he is thinking about what sort of character s/he would like to play, what sorts of events does s/he want to be involved with during play (want religious events, build a cleric or paladin; what to be at the centre of a vortex of steel, build a fighter; etc). It's a bit like choosing your Beliefs and Instincts in BW.Sometimes, though, PC building does get driven by advocacy. In my BW game, the player of the wizard has worked out that casting spells in Fight! is hard, and so he wants to learn melee skills. And the wizard character himself worked this out too, when he tried to lightning bolt some zombies and ended up taxing himself to unconsciousness instead. So when the player then sets as a Belief 'I will get my hands on a melee weapon" (or something like that), there is a strong sense of playing and advocating for the character as well as choosing what sort of story to engage with at the meta-level.In 4e I see this happen too. On levelling to 28th level and choosing feats, a couple of the players - knowing that they were going after Orcus and Lolth - chose poison and necrotic resistanc feats. This has a meta-element, of building a certain sort of vehicle for play, but it also has a character-advocacy element ("Moradin, I'm taking the fight to Lolth, but I need you to ward me against her deadly poisons!").In gameplay, I think the priorities mostly reverse. Sometimes a gameplay choice is made because it would be fun at the meta-level (in the 4e DMG's player typology, that's the instigator), but mostly it's an exercise in advocacy. The player wants the story to go this way rather than that way because that's what serves the needs/interests/desires of his/her PC.</blockquote>

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