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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ZzarkLinux" data-source="post: 6862227" data-attributes="member: 77932">Alright, I'm comparing D&D skills to DwarfFortress skills. This is gonna make me rant about the D&D worldbuilding rules again, so get ready.And it's an Azmodeous dammd shame too! D&D has had decades to build an evolving fantasy world with rules for building construction, profession management, general irrigation, and skill practice. Early D&D's presentation, flavorful settings, and random weather charts helped move D&D away from it's roots As-A-War-Game. But the PHBs of later editions have since gone player-option-heavy and combat heavy, and campaign roleplaying  has suffered.Dwarf Fortress gives the players "Axefighting" and "Spearfighting" and other fighting skills. Where are those stats found? Right next to the "Farming", " Stoneworking", and "Jokeing/Comedian" Skills. Fighting is a skill! And sometimes it's hard to find the fighting skill because the dwarf has so many other stats besides combat! The Dwarf has earned a lot more than Fighting, he has earned "Novice Brewer" and "Competent Leatherworker" and "Expert Weaver". This dwarf has a future!D&D 3e and later trended to hiding worldbuilding rules from the PHB, and in it's place added more combat and char-gen rules to the PHB. Are there PHB rules for the fighter to increase his strength at the gym? Nope, but here are several pages of feats for chargen.  Suppose a wizard goes on a year-long journey, and never even sniffs a library. Does the wizard lose intelligence for avoiding libraries? Nope, but here are a dozen pages of spells. Shouldn't Martial Combat be a skill?  Nope, combat gets it's own separate system, and lots of weapon artwork too! What happened to the Spellcraft skill? No dawg, I heard you like vancian. Can we split Charisma into subsets like negotiating, entertaining, and nonverbal? Nope, sacred cows, and the combat system needs charisma.  Can we split Dexterity into hand-grasp dexterity and leg-movement dexterity? Can stats go up or down during the game? Nope, can't change stats in-game because the characters are too complicated to build. What about a generic wounds system? Nope, but you get HP and stuff. Yes, there are generic downtime rules. One page, wohoo! But load on more pages of ways to increase your combat stats. Is there any wonder why 3e PHB and later encourage murder-hoboism?Sure, the PHB has rules for holding your breath, but what about rules for endurance prep-work to travel a desert? Teleporting goes poof, but what about rules for jet lag or summon sickness? The PCs see a lot of porticullises, but where are the rules to craft a porticullis? How does my strength modifier help me barricade a door? How does my Intellegence modifier help me build a bridge over a chasm? Nah, they just handwave it by saying "PlateMail takes 100 days to make". It saves pagecount.Those days have been lost. WotC removed worldbuilding rules from the PHB because they didn't want to say "rainfall lasts d3 days" and someone on the internet gets offended. They included exhaustion, but only in snippets. Clerics are not required to visit temples. Druids don't lose wisdom for starting a forest fire. Paladins can't fall. If your fighter is a member of the town guard, then there are no rules for reporting for duty.Showing "worldbuilding rules" in the PHB would engage the player's imagination about the world. What does the PHB actually say? Talk to your DM. The biggest handwave ever. Then it goes on to list 100+ pages of character-building rules, because those don't need an in-game world. The only consequence of not sleeping at an inn? The DM might DM Fiat some exhaustion rules onto you. There are no hard consequences for ignoring the game-world.TLDR WotC needs to put "worldbuilding rules" and "worldbuilding consequences" back into the PHB. One line of exhaustion for the barbarian isn't enough. Expand the skills system, even if it means simplifying combat or char-gen.</blockquote>

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