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Message: <blockquote data-quote="xechnao" data-source="post: 4681566" data-attributes="member: 58105">Let me first make clear that the problems I was noting in our previous discussion, regarding 4e's limitations due to the implementation of MMO combat is not the same problem with the problematic of this discussion. It might be connected but it is not the same thing.Having said that I will try to clarify by what I meant with the connection of combat and no combat or lack thereof.It is a matter of expanding the battlefield: does confrontation really starts and ends at a local point or is it something that can be extended to a bigger web or net of sorts? By the power one has to move on the web he can defend himself. Someones may be able to reach a higher speed towards a given direction and so due to their superior momentum win others in this direction. But someones may have a bigger flexibility at changing directions. And since we are dealing with a web here conflict can happen from various directions. The D20 system is not build with this in mind. It is rather build on the idea of local confrontations (regarding victory or defeat) and utilizes a number of different localities -and the choice of specializing for them- to make the game interesting. Those who choose to specialize in more than one but cannot reach the levels of a more focused specialization end up to be subpar in practice (they will face more defeats than their counterparts-without intervention of the DM to try to build by himself a web of sorts to balance things out). In fact the measure of time in the D20 system uses a standard of absolute values rather than relative ones. Everything is balanced againt a standard of rounds and the economy of actions and the balance of the economy of actions is build around this standard to help with the managment of the model of different localities I was talking about.     So what a web has to do with non combat? It is about the specialization I was talking about. Non combat abilities are the less local ones in relation to the combat abilities which seem more local. This means that if one attacks you at a certain local point his attack trumps your diplomacy. This is the way the system is build. Of course in a web like system the distinction among combat and non combat would make no sense. So I was trying by using the standards of the 3e model to describe an effort towards the different web like model.EDIT: To make it more clear: one in a web like model could manage his resources to gain some leverage from diplomacy to gain a better position in combat -if he has such a resource and wants to resort to that resource: to what resource one resorts has to do with his position on the web. And here is where the game takes place (it is a game where positioning matters so I would call it a game of strategic positioning )</blockquote>

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