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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lurker37" data-source="post: 4022329" data-attributes="member: 9522">Faster or not, the fact remains that most pivotal plot points in an RPG are resolved through combat.Furthermore, almost every single published adventure so far has hinged on combat. Hardly a session goes by without combat, and while social skills and rope climbing are means to expedite your progress, it's all going to culminate in a final battle with the Bad Guy.If you're weak in combat then it really doesn't matter - AT ALL - what else you're good at. This game isn't built to resolve Big Plots with social rolls. There's going to be combat, and it's going to be those times that decide if the party triumphs or perishes. If you can't fight, then you're sitting out for not only large chunks of the game, but usually for the most important encounters in the game - the moments that players are going to get caught up in and talk about later. (You know that if they get together to talk about the game later, they'll be talking about that thrust through the beast's rib that turned the battle in their favour, not the witty retort made to the local Noble.) If the player deliberately chose to be a poor combatant, then they're probably having a great time while their character hides under the table. If, however, the player chose a class unaware that it was not going to be combat effective, then they will not be having fun, but will instead be disappointed, bored, and (since new players are most likely to make such a mistake) likely to look to other pursuits for their entertainment in the future. Designing a character to promote such incidents is sheer folly. Such classes should be for NPCs, not players.The second issue is that combat outcomes are not influenced by roleplaying, but social  interaction roll difficulties usually are. The grunt fighter can handle the negotiations if the player roleplays it well. In combat, however, the Bard can't improve their chances of vanquishing their opponent no matter how well (s)he roleplays the parry and the thrust of their dagger.So it logically follows that the option most likely to appeal to all players is to give each character class the ability to participate meaningfully in combat - to take actions each round that will have visible and identifiable impact on the outcome of the fight. A player can chose to make a specific character less combat worthy, or to deliberately not play them to their full potential (deliberately is important - effectiveness should never rely on some specific combination of optional feats and skills), but that's their choice - the base class itself should be fine.Now as to the siloing - the quote we have to go by is that mages will not have to choose between fireball and phantom steed - they'll choose combat spells and utility spells separately.So by extension it seems that all classes will have utility options that do not affect their choice of combat abilities. Some of these non-combat abilities may be social, but there's no reason they have to be. So there's no longer any reason for Bards to be weaker in combat because they chose a strong set of social options. Instead, those social options will have come at the cost of some other form of non-combat utility, such as a travel ability or perhaps some form of augmentation to their ability to entertain an audience.And when the manure hits the windmill, the bard can be in the thick of the fight with the rest of the party, instead of wandering out to the kitchen to pillage the snacks.</blockquote>

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