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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9099917" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Do they really? I'd like to see those. Because the sales figures as reported by former WotC people are that every WotC edition's PHB has outsold the previous. Every single one.I don't talk about D&D on Reddit. The place is a cesspool unless you heavily, heavily curate where you choose to look.And 100 reddit posts are not good evidence for that. The fact that I still to this day have to explain to people that things they love about 5e are actually 4e-isms, or that things they claim are explicit instructions from 4e books but which the books explicitly reject, in no uncertain terms, tells me that that is simply not true.Maybe we are just now seeing the barest hint of the first light of a new dawn, but we're still years away from a general reappraisal of 4e.The thing you say you want? Where it starts at +5 and you get certain options available, and then grows to a bigger number (it was +8 total, IIRC, not +10)?That's exactly how 4e's system works. Training is +5. If you are Trained in a skill, there are certain things you can do with that skill that Untrained folks can't, though certainly not everything related to that skill. There are even some ways to attempt skill checks even if you aren't trained in the associated skill, and the game was generally pretty good about not over-using the "you must be trained to do that" angle.The only real difference is that the next higher tier, Skill Focus, IIRC doesn't add any new "Focus Only" features. I suspect that is because Focus was not expected to be a thing most characters would do, and thus adding a bunch of defined rules just for the few who do that was not seen as a worthwhile design time expenditure. Instead, Skill Powers take up that mantle, being utility things you can only take if you are already Trained in that skill.And, to address an important point, someone upthread (can't find the post now) spoke of how rules like this inherently result in forbidding people from doing certain things. This requires a careful response.On the one hand, it does not inherently curtail creativity. A well-designed system of this nature only limits a few things to Trained only (or Focused only etc.), while keeping the base skills extremely broad. IOW, anyone can attempt to use Religion to communicate with the dead (though it may be difficult to do so!), but only someone actually trained in Religion can correctly perform the sealing rituals for a religious ceremony, unless they find a way around that limitation (e.g., by getting detailed instructions on how to perform it.)On the other... sometimes, yes, it DOES tell players they can't do a thing they would very much like to do, and that's a good thing. As long as this is an uncommon event, one that pushes the players into more challenging or perilous methods because they didn't have the training to attempt the easy way, this is actually good for the game. Because this sort of thing shows how skill training actually matters, instead of being literally just "numbers go brr." It means that players who invested in something feel rewarded, while those who did not now must work around their "weaknesses."Critically, lacking a skill should not be a game over scenario. Instead, it should make the difference between an easy, obvious, or relatively "safe" approach and other harder, more obscure, or less "safe" approaches. Improvisation is still present ant still useful, it provides the essential fallback when the specific tool for that purpose is not available.Also, per [USER=6690965]@Pedantic[/USER], Page 42 and the like are tools for improvising. It's literally impossible to have a fixed DC for genuinely anything anyone could ever attempt. That's where generic difficulty stuff is relevant. But you can and should have real, fixed DCs for things that can be reasonably predicted to show up at some point. Doors are the common example here, and (to the best of my knowledge) every WotC edition has had tables of DCs for them, and most other common things like that.Still don't understand why Skill Challenges are the worst mechanic of all time, but spells that do the exact same thing (fire and forget encounter-deleters) are the wonderful. The former actually permits dynamic changing situations. I have never understood how the latter is anything but "turn off your brain, because you have the 'I Win' button for every scenario."This is one of the perennial problems with the alleged application of "tactical infinity." Well-meaning but flawed execution on the part of GMs who simply don't realize just how obstructive and/or punitive they're being.Alternatively, we could make the mechanics sufficiently transparent and direct such that it doesn't matter whether you think about them in narrative terms or in mechanical terms, because both methods produce the same results. A difficult design challenge, to be sure, but far from an impossible one.</blockquote>

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