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Message: <blockquote data-quote="jessemock" data-source="post: 1438706" data-attributes="member: 15694">I've always considered this notion pure nonsense:  the game is the rules, and it isn't anything else.  The line that D&D offers us something marvelous by making explicit the tacit fact that we can play it however we like in the privacy of our own homes strikes me as rather a specious recommendation.Yes; I can use the D&D3.5 rules to roleplay social situations; I can also use a screwdriver to hammer a nail.   No; they don't.  The marketing of D&D tells us, via various ways of expressing 'Rule 0' that the screwdriver they've sold us may serve perfectly well as a hammer.  It's not true.The only balance issue is balance in combat.  The purpose of the social skills is to resolve the role-playing of social situations in as near a method to that used in combat as possible, i.e. in a way that is as free as possible of the DM's judgement.Maneuver-type feats are the same:  they are designed to codify a tactic, in order to prevent a DM from making any decisions about them.  Sometimes this is reasonable, other times not.Yes; feats and prestige classes offer a valid means of establishing a way of expressing a character concept, but, just as well, they often diminish the role-playing options available to a player--which is also what they are meant to do.  They serve as a brief, game-mechanical exposition of an idea that could have been role-played; they replace that role-playing precisely because D&D doesn't emphasise the importance of it.  D&D recognises almost nothing that doesn't make an appearance in the kind of role-playing that it favours, which is combat.Not that there's anything wrong with that!</blockquote>

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