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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thomas Shey" data-source="post: 9855144" data-attributes="member: 7026617">Because that was the context my participation came up in, when someone suggested that it was a mistake to have any skill functions beyond what existed with OD&D fighters.  My argument was that you could, perhaps, from a certain perspective make that argument in those days about mental or social sphere things, but not physical sphere things.  Everything I've argued since is derived from my taking issue with that point; anything beyond that are things others have dragged in that I've responded to.They often don't even get to chose who to attack depending on layout, and I don't consider "Deciding when to run away" a meaningful tactical choice; its just acknowledgement that the fight has already failed out.This is a case where my argument has wandered because of others participation and my responses.  Let me re-present it to make where I'm coming from clear:The argument from at least one early respondant at least seemed to be that no other skill beyond what was already present in the combat system was need, because the rest could be handled purely with narration.  My counter was if you could do that with other complex and environmentally sensetive physical skills like climbing, swimming (and though less common riding and boating), you could just as easily do it with combat too (and noted I've been in games where that was how it was, indeed, handled).  That in practice there is not a major self-evident difference where one deserves mechanical representation and the other doesn't.  As you can see from my point of view, the differences you site in combat and the others are not relevant, because the D&D sphere, especially that early on (again, remember this was triggered by a comment about when skills first began to appear in one form or another), most of the theoretical differences were already being abstracted away anyway (and I'm not convinced in any significant fashion that changed up through D&D 4e at least).Is what I'm arguing about here a little clearer at least?  (I'll freely admit I don't consider there being an intrinsic reason handling climbing and some other skills should have a less developed mechanic system that combat is required is necessarily true, but I'm also not arguing in favor of doing it, barring a game that's going to be doing things with climbing very regularly.  But its not really what I'm talking about here in any case).</blockquote>

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