Quote Originally Posted by Ziegander View Post
And this brings me to the "three pillars design" that Mearls and company keep touting, but ultimately, I predict, will fail horribly to deliver. If each of the three pillars (Combat, Social, Exploration) were given equal weight with regards to design as well as importance to character and inter-party balance, then sacrificing combat effectiveness for utility in one of the other areas would be acceptable. However, nothing we have seen thus far indicates that the Social and Exploration pillars hold any significance to player characters whatsoever. Which is sad, especially when you consider that the Rogue was originally imagined as, and continues to be designed as if it were, the "out-of-combat guy." We have the Rogue set up to be the skills master, except, just like in 3.5 and 4e, skills don't matter. Maybe they matter a little bit more than in 3.5 or 4e, or maybe they matter even less it's really hard to tell so far. But in the first playtest, because of this, the Rogue was the weakest class. In the second playtest, we didn't get an increased importance to the non-combat "pillars" of adventuring, no, we got a Rogue with increased combat power.
Of course, that balance also depends on the DM. I had one DM who would make combat much less of a thing and exploration and social interaction much bigger things. Skills actually happened, frequently. Role-playing happened more. Other DMs just make a series of combat encounters with maybe a trap or two to appease the Rogue, and most of the game is fighting.