Well, for us it is part of the game. Our characters do other stuff than just run around killing things for XP. For us, the story is really important, and each character has their own story going on. They all have their own background, enemies, quests, and reason for adventuring. What they do outside of combat matters a great deal, because most of their lives are not combat. And the questions can get rather detailed. For example, we might care whether someone who knows how to tailor clothing could also mend a rope, or whether the leatherworker would do a better job, and if they have different chances of success. If you choose not to make non-combat activities an important part of the game, that is fine. You don't have to. But for us, most of the fun is there.
By "not part of the game", I meant "not part of the rules". In the same way, kings are not part of the rules, yet they definitely exist. Not by necessity, but plenty of games include them, or at least some sort of monarch. I think you're taking all the wrong things from what I'm saying. Plot and character development outside of combat is fun and some of my favorite D&D. However, to me, a character being "really good at cooking" is no different from having some high bonus to rolls made to cook. The example you give works alongside my role-play strategy. You could simply have the DM decide which skill synergises better, you could role checks to see which character proves to do it better, you could have the DM decide what sort of bonus the characters get based on their character's proposed proficiency, or any combination thereof, and all of that can be done on the fly, with no over-arching rules.
I don't buy it. If extra choices made up for better powers, then 3.5 wouldn't have been so unbalanced. He didn't get extra powers, just more choices between several weaker ones. The build he wanted was just plain weaker.
Off the top of my head, the pally you propose isn't significantly hindered in their choice. They get fewer lay on hands than is preferable, but oh well, that's a secondary ability that's not particularly important. He'll get less secondary effects on a few powers if those secondary effects operate on Wisdom modifier. Fine, that can be entirely mitigated by simply not taking those powers. However, the damage dealt from an enemy ignoring his mark is increased and he gets the full benefits of Str based powers. Also, in this case, his increased effectiveness in all pally powers means he can take the power which he judges to be the best one regardless of which stat it's based on, giving him at least slighty better powers over-all. The biggest hit, the one that I'd say actually matters, is in his reduced potential to rebuke or turn undead. Unless it's a highly undeaded campaign, that won't be useful very often anyhow. However, if the character still felt their decision left them underpowered, the DM could come up with a simple solutions such as reversing the uses of Chr and Wis, or Str and Wis. I thought of that just now, and it'd completely fix the problem from focusing on one stat instead of the other.
Incidentally, I made a half-elf pally once. He had a low Wis and a low Str, yet he was still both fun and effective operating only on his high Chr. Was he a tad underpowered? Perhaps, but one of the benefits of 4th is that even less than optimal characters are still good characters, mechanically speaking.
Except there was, because the paladin was unbalanced. The other option would be to force the player to create a character he didn't really want.
I would disagree about the pally being significantly underpowered.
The impression I get is that in your games, non-combat situations are kind of breaks in between the actual plot and character development stuff, which happens during combat. The rest just ties it together.
They do tend to separate into two distinct "sections" of the game, but neither is ultimately more important than the other. I would say combat is the meat of the game, but without context and character it's all meaningless.
For us, the non-combat stuff is where the plot and character development take place, and combat is an important but not central part of that. So we clearly have different game styles.
Yes. One that makes me curious why you'd play 4th edition when, as you said, there are games that deal with that stuff mechanically, and that's what you like.
Actually we are trying to avoid micromanaging. It is interesting that you think non-combat rules are micromanaging, while the combat rules are awesome.
No, not non-combat. Profession and crafting skills.
I don't really understand your question here, sorry. I get that you are being sarcastic again, but I don't know what point you are trying to make. Is it that adventurers don't know how to cook as well as chefs? If you are in the middle of a dungeon crawl, there aren't many restaurants around, so why would it matter who is better?
Going by the mechanics of 3.5, characters gain levels, and so skill points, primarily by killing enemies. Skills are a measure of how good you do something. A chef who chefs his entire life might make level 5 or so of commoner or noble or something, may have a high relevant stat, may spend whatever resources he has learning to cook better. Let's assume his bonus is 12 to cooking. A mighty fine chef. On the other hand, a level 10 wizard who spends most of his time blasting monsters and also pops a skill point into cooking each level does less actual cooking, yet has a bonus of at least +15. Yes, it can be role-played that he spends time outside of combat perfecting his art, traveling the world to become the greatest chef, but that's not how the rules spell it out, and it's an inconsistency in the mechanics of the game. I contend that skill at an art or profession or craft should be based on how much actual experience and knowledge the character would actually have, which is best determined through role-play, not level based bonuses to a skill.
Actually, I did once play a master chef adventurer (in RuneQuest) because I wanted to prove you could use cooking as a role-playing skill. It worked, too.
That's not why I did it, but it's not really something you'd need to prove. The mechanics say you can, and you could just as easily role-play the cooking practice and study. I had a character who did the same, though I had a different reason. This is besides the point.
Do you have one big campaign setting where all your games take place, then?
I did, but then I got sick of all the terrible things happening to that world and retired it. Now I have a new campaign world every campaign or two.
Our D&D games are, in fact, about economy or history or society. They are the point. We put effort into maintaining reputations, and propping up the civic leaders we prefer, and developing trade routes to improve the economy and martial resources of the valley where we have our keep. Most of the combat comes from enemies who want to invade or otherwise threaten the area we are sworn to protect.
And you made it work. You guys want rules to cover professions, so you made some. I've personally ran and have been part of many different types of games of D&D, and combat was generally a central part in them. That's most D&D. There's nothing preventing anyone from playing your kind of campaign. What I contend are that rules are necessary to cover that sort of thing. At least, rules further than what are in the game. Diplomacy, bluff, and insight are pretty much all you need for any social/political encounter, a few different checks depending on circumstances, maybe a utility skill to help out in some way, whatever. Trade routes can be drawn on a map, the dealings to make them being covered by those three skills I listed, etc. Oh, and maybe some streetwise and knowledge checks. Whatever the situation calls for.
Do you also like to read fantasy? I do. I prefer it to make sense, or at least be internally consistent world-building.
Sometimes, and I agree. I don't think you understand my points.
Well, here is a paragraph from the Underdark book, p. 59:
Pain and suffering are omnipresent. Whether or not an individual drow takes pleasure in inflicting pain, she uses it unquestioningly as a tool of first resort. Acts of cruelty are casually undertaken. Every interaction plays out as a dominance challenge. The strong get what they take; the weak receive the drubbing they deserve.
I assume that stuff like this is why you don't use drow much. They were part of my character's background, so they got incorporated.
Well, that is a pretty dark picture, but I get the impression there's some literary intent, there. Regardless, there's never been enough information to run a proper world in any book I found, so I don't and never have relied on them. I rely on common sense and planning. I actually don't use Drow much because I don't really like the Underdark, and that's where Drow live
Well, I don't understand settling for a bunch of arbitrary rules. But if all you do is combat, then 4e is certainly adequate. I do think you are confusing setting with world-building, though.
World-building is a term for establishing how the world works; it isn't about the name of the tavern. We find it very annoying that a finely made non-magical sword is basically valueless, and that if you pay 4000gp for a magic item, it is only worth 1000gp if you go to sell it. No one would be anything other than a middleman, in that case, and no one would make magic items if they couldn't make enough money to support themselves, so the middlemen wouldn't have any stock to sell. None of the economics of 4e makes any sense, and that is just bad world-building.
Why would a well made and
useable sword (which means it's not so fancy that it's made from gold or has jewels all over it, as that would be functionless, albeit valuable) be worth an amount comparable to a well made and useable
magic sword?
I agree with the buying and selling thing, though. I simply ignore that rule.
