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Message: <blockquote data-quote="tomBitonti" data-source="post: 6284148" data-attributes="member: 13107">Returning to the original question, in D&D 3E (not sure about 4E or 5E), the mechanics of skills and feats rather limits character advancement.Using skills and feats as "game physics", a character must represent new skills (including knowledge) through skill points, and must represent new abilities either class abilities or as feat selections.That is, a character who is hired as a mercenary on a large sailing ship, and who spends a lot of player time on the ship, but advances just one or two levels, doesn't have a mechanism to represent the basic knowledge they would expect to gain for the experience.  If, say, the crew spoke a foreign language, you would expect the character to gain a smattering of knowledge of that language.  Being a sailing ship, assuming the character assisted with basic tasks on the ship when not otherwise occupied, you would expect the character to gain a little bit of Profession: Sailor.(Or maybe not: If the player didn't put points in intelligence, they might be considered to be somewhat thick-headed lunks who wouldn't pick up any of these things.  But, still, you would expect some state updates.)The problem is compounded by the frequent need to reserve limited skill and feat selections to fit their character advancement path, which may require very specific selections, leaving no room for story based selections.Put another way, there is no place for "story based character development" in the character's state.  They can gain a world history and through that gain relationships with particular world agents, they can amass wealth, but otherwise they can only advance and thereby change their character state by leveling.There is a little room on the edges: Wizards can learn new spells (but, often, they don't pursue this, instead taking the default additions as they level, or, they do, but restricted by the wealth-by-level guidelines).With these limitations on story based development, I have little wonder that player motivation focuses on level advancement.  Players need to have some way to advance their character state.Thx!TomB</blockquote>

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