Bonuses: the seeds of RPG doom.

[K]

OK, we all know where bonuses come from, but I'll overview:

Back in the day, peeps made wargames that evolved into RPGs. In that context, you'd make a unit of swordsmen or something and then you'd want some elite swordsmen so they'd get a +1 to hit or something to represent their elite status.

And then came computer games. Designers wanted to make swords and magic swords and slapping on a +1 was as easy as a few bits of code and making something unique was like rewriting your whole game engine, os they just followed the convention of handing out bonuses.

And that's how we got the notion that RPGs are supposed to hand out bonuses. Sure, its easy to live them, but are they any good?

Let's look at a model situation: the DM is writing up an encounter for his players, and it involves making a skill check. Let's say it is crossing a rope bridge, and in the gully below the bridge is a river.

The DM faces the following choice when setting the difficulty: how difficult to set this encounter.

Now, he can set it to be as difficult as the character with the highest score in what stat you use for crossing rope bridges. Or he can set it for the guy with the lowest stat. Based on this simple idea, you can predict how many people will fall off the rope bridge.

Sounds simple?

Well, its not because we then have to take into account what bonuses do. Maybe the DM wants to set the difficulty high enough that one or more players will fall into the river and thus see a hidden cave entrance..... well, that's not going to happen because the guy with the lowest score will drink his Potion of Heroism, have a Bard sing him some more skill, spend an action point, or do something else in the game that will cause this relevant stat to be much higher so that he can easily cross the bridge.

Pretty easy to imagine, eh?

Forget falling off the RNG, we actually have a problem where giving people to options to get bonuses suddenly become this zero-sum game where the DM must then account for ALL THE POSSIBLE bonuses that you might use to get the difficulty he wants, and you get boned if you saved your Potion of Heroism. An encounter that should be easy as pie to design suddenly becomes an exercise in applied predictive psychology as you try to figure out which of a player's potential bonuses they might use (the DM might assume the Bard will sing for the dwarf and set the difficulty to that, only to have the Bard sing for himself despite not really needing it).

So my thesis is this: all bonuses should be the result of situational choices, and not the result of direct class feature uses. I'm fine if people want to set bonfires to keep light-hating monsters at a disadvantage (and even using fire powers to make those bonfires), but the "+X sword" mechanic that has been at the core of RPGs since before Gygax is a fundamentally flawed mechanic on top of being boring as hell. We know that DnD fighters can't fight without high-end bonus-giving equipment because the game's difficulty is set to them having it, and people use that design quirk to try to get even more bonuses to go off the RNG.

Discuss.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

So are you arguing that a 1st level fighter should have the same chance of hitting as a 10th level fighter?

You are correct that in games, when characters garner up more bonuses the DM will generally hand them harder encounter against enemies with commensurate +s to match the players' +s. And a DM and players are likely to get bored the party fights lots and lots of 1/2 HD goblins at the players from level 1-20...or whatever.

You're forgetting the psychological effect of increasing bonuses, and the player knows in the back of his head, that at level 10, s/he did go back and fight some 1/2 HD goblins, he'd totally kick their butts. It also serves as a measurement to the rest of civilized society. Few if any of them are level 10 and kick the tar out of creatures so well, so now the player has a sense of superiority to his/her peers which makes them feel special.

[Orca]

And then came computer games. Designers wanted to make swords and magic swords and slapping on a +1 was as easy as a few bits of code and making something unique was like rewriting your whole game engine, os they just followed the convention of handing out bonuses.

I think your history's in error here. Basic Dungeons and Dragons (including +1 swords): 1977. Space invaders: 1978. CRPGs: later still. I haven't seen the original dungeons and dragons but they may well have had +1 swords for all I know.

Now, back to the actual idea. IMO you need vertical advancement as well as horizontal advancement for any game at all resembling D&D. You could put some simplification in to make the situation more predictable for the GM (only the highest bonus on a particular task frex.) but you still need some bonuses IMO.

[RobbyPants]

So my thesis is this: all bonuses should be the result of situational choices, and not the result of direct class feature uses. I'm fine if people want to set bonfires to keep light-hating monsters at a disadvantage (and even using fire powers to make those bonfires), but the "+X sword" mechanic that has been at the core of RPGs since before Gygax is a fundamentally flawed mechanic on top of being boring as hell. We know that DnD fighters can't fight without high-end bonus-giving equipment because the game's difficulty is set to them having it, and people use that design quirk to try to get even more bonuses to go off the RNG.

Discuss.

Assuming you're not taking level into account, I'm with you. I think the bulk of your vertical advancement should come from your level and your horizontal should come from your class and feats.

[mean_liar]

Consumable and situational bonuses make individual encounters difficult, but in aggregate they're still predictable. You want to be careful with encounters with bonuses affecting results that can lead to game-death (as opposed to character death), but outside those accounting for bonuses isn't any true difficulty.

The way I'm reading your post you're basically decrying resource management in RPGs insofar as those resources could be used for anything meaningful in any span of time greater than one encounter, and I don't think I can get on board with that. While I don't like the idea of Daily-use powers, I do like the idea of transient, disposable toys that characters can use. I'm not married to them as essential but I don't think their presence is overly disruptive either.

Regarding deadly encounters I think you've got a point in that improperly-managed resources could lead a party into an encounter difficulty beyond what they're capable of, but outside those I think the case drops off.

[Kaelik]

I would strongly disagree. Fighters should have a +5 class based bonus to AB compared to Wizards, and Rogues should have a +X class based bonus to damage compared to Wizards and Fighters.

If everyone hits equally well with a longsword, and everyone does just as much damage...?

[Psychic Robot]

Fighters should have a +5 class based bonus to AB compared to Wizards, and Rogues should have a +X class based bonus to damage compared to Wizards and Fighters.

Only problem with this is that the fighter already has a higher to-hit bonus due to stats.

[Kaelik]

Fighters should have a +5 class based bonus to AB compared to Wizards, and Rogues should have a +X class based bonus to damage compared to Wizards and Fighters.

Only problem with this is that the fighter already has a higher to-hit bonus due to stats.

1) Does he? This is generalized. It might be a statless system. Or wizards might be able to cast off of any stat, or whatever.

2) If every fighter ability is keyed off of Str, and Str affects Longsword to hit, and every Wizard ability is keyed off of Int, and Int gives extra skill points, then that is a stat based bonus to skill points and to hit. In the sense that any Fighter who prioritizes Int fails at life, and every Wizard who prioritizes Str fails at life.

[Josh_Kablack]

but the "+X sword" mechanic that has been at the core of RPGs since before Gygax

Wait what?

Wumpus Hunt = no +1 swords
Little Wars = no +1 swords - they even discarded coin flipping as too random in their playtests
Shakespeare's Henry the IV = no +1 swords

So do you have some info on Arneson including +1 swords in early Blackmoor or is this just a rhetorical device?

[Username17]

So my thesis is this: all bonuses should be the result of situational choices, and not the result of direct class feature uses.

I don't see how you get there. The logical solution should be hat all bonuses should be predictable, and thus having situational, optional, or expendable bonuses should be kept to a minimum. Bonuses inherent to a character are fine.

They lead to intra-party numerical discrepancies, which is another (and real) problem. But that's not the same problem as the potion of heroism problem. And I agree, the Potion of Heroism largely speaking should not exist.

-Username17

[K]

but the "+X sword" mechanic that has been at the core of RPGs since before Gygax

Wait what?

Wumpus Hunt = no +1 swords
Little Wars = no +1 swords - they even discarded coin flipping as too random in their playtests
Shakespeare's Henry the IV = no +1 swords

So do you have some info on Arneson including +1 swords in early Blackmoor or is this just a rhetorical device?

You got me. I meant since Gygax. I was also being very general.

----------------------------

Here's the thing: you can just have stats which are different. The Fighter can have a bigger Str score that makes him better at swording guys and the Rogue can have a bigger Dex which makes him better at avoiding being sworded, but at that point you have to stop. You can even have those things get bigger as someone levels so that monsters that were once threats are no longer threats.

Its the asymmetry of the resulting adding of various bonuses that messes it all it up. Once the Rogue has magic armor and rings and a Defending sword and ioun stones and the like, battles where he can't be hit will be auto-hits on the Fighter, and you can't design fights that challenge the Rogue without boning the Fighter.

In the 3e Core books, it was difficult but not impossible to add bonuses together to break the game, but as the years went by things got crazier and crazier. Anyone remember the Grapple-wizard who was the bastard child of like ten supplements?

I guess I'm bringing this up because I'm looking at how one would design a game that is expandable without the creep that seems to so easily occur. 3e tried this with typed bonuses, but seemed to go off the rails pretty quickly when the editions ended up in other people's hands.

[Lokathor]

Well there were too many bonus types really. If you say "There's two types of bonuses in this game: Power and Equipment. Use the higher bonus in each category.", and then you stick to that story hardcore, then it's not a problem.

Luck Bonuses? Sacred Bonuses? bullshit.

[shadzar]

And that's how we got the notion that RPGs are supposed to hand out bonuses. Sure, its easy to live them, but are they any good?

I will give that an easy thing to do with computers is to give a +1 to make it better than trying to write out some effect like fire or something that could do other things. But it does have actual advantages in the game.

Why buy this expertly crafted long sword for 500gp if this other long made by a novice smith, can do the same and is just as effective for only 50gp?

Is it really a status symbol, does the 500gp one have jewels or gems in it to make it worth more?

You would expect a better crafted weapon to be more balance, for it to get a higher price, and that extra balance in the right hands can provide better function which is simplest to express in the +1.

In regards to magical bonuses let's go back to miniature games. There really was little else to offer AFAIK other than what 4th edition D&D already does in its tactical miniature game combat. you can move thing or hurt them or destroy them outright, or impeded them. the easiest way like with the computer is to give a bonus for extra effort every once n a while.

Let's say it is crossing a rope bridge, and in the gully below the bridge is a river.

The DM faces the following choice when setting the difficulty: how difficult to set this encounter.

This has to come from a 3rd edition or some other game mindset. Never did I take into account how difficult a bridge was to cross. This kind of thinking is why I despise 4th editions skill challenge crap.

The gully, bridge, and river are no different than the ground before them. They are a part of the world, that the players have to deal with. I don't consider them an encounter in the sense as 4th edition wants to make it some big thing. There will likely be no XP reward, for crossing as the reward was getting to the other side. Likewise remembering to carry rations on travels will not get an XP reward, but will have the reward of not having to hunt for food or dying of starvation and being able to continue the travels...

Not really sure what this would have to do with bonuses at all except for skill challenges.

As for your hidden cave, it sounds like bad design to need them to fall to find it and that be the only way to do so. Like Chris Perkins darkfire incident if you will. Poorly planned game, if they are required for some reason to enter the hidden cave; did not give them ample tools to be able to find it.

This should have nothing to do with bonuses, unless you are trying to railroad them into falling and finding the cave. Maybe it is jsut that example that misses what you are trying to say, but at no point should bonuses matter in it.

If/when/how/why the players cross the bridge/river/gully is up the them. That is why it is an obstacle, not an encounter.

Can you make a bridge more difficult to cross, yes, but what part bonuses play in it means little unless you can force the players to use the method to cross the bridge that your math and mechanical design has set up for them. Odds are unless you tell them how to cross and what they have to do, they will come up with many things you never thought of, so no bonus could figure into the design.

You want them to walk across carefully with some acrobatic skill, but they decide to levitate.

I was playing a return to white plume and got to the point with the inverted ziggurat and my character knew a few things:
-we had to go down
-there was one entrance below and a pit
-he had feather fall

so before everyone else entered the traps the ziggurat held, he took a flying leap and was telling everyone what he saw below and in the ziggurat. they then figured out how to flood the area and pretty much ruin all the traps considering they already have wave and whelm.

While the math may be a good idea for a foundation for such things, never underestimate the power of the players to completely subvert your plans, and no matter what side of the screen you are on, don't think that having the best math figured out will win the day when a carefully planned something else could trump the best math.

So my thesis is this: all bonuses should be the result of situational choices, and not the result of direct class feature uses.

I will agree to this insofar as it pertains to on the spot choices, but those in which math is about the only thing uses under standard function, then a bonus for like a better grade of weapon, makes sense. say a sword gets its bonus "to hit", and you can add to that if you want the situational "to hit" bonus, or even "damage" bonus. But there will be better things where the bonuses will work.

I don't think bonuses are necessary for the other things such as a bridge crossing, and never liked the DC system with its arbitrary combat where the player would be fighting the bridge thus making it an encounter. when there were other methods to do the task built into the basic ability scores. Before bonuses are sought, the way to handle thing should be looked at.

jumping, balance, etc and the entire NWP system that became the skills system for 3rd and later editions of D&D, was based on the idea that people wanted a list of thing they could do, and that entire NWP system was optional and made up, because you could always just make up your own mind without needing a rule to tell you how far you can on your tippy toes with acrobatics.

As the AD&D 2nd edition preview states, the game should be about choices, and thus why the entire NWP system is optional, because it may be too confined and you can still just "wing it" and use DEX to do anything that requires dexterity. So unlike the forced choices of skills/feats in 3rd, and powers in 4th, there is a much simpler way to handle those non-combat "encounters" unless you want to purposefully limit the choices of the player to something you might think up ahead of time for them to do and pull a Chris Perkins and just say "No you cannot try that".

So having your own rope to cross the bridge is likely to help in balance and not falling to your death or the river, maybe even climbing down to inspect it with that rope will offer something, but whether it is a bonus to actually getting across without falling, will need to make sense when it comes to the situation modifiers/bonuses.

$0.02

[Starmaker]

$0.02

No wai. That's $100. Counterfeit $100.

How's a gully and bridge not an encounter? There's a fucking gully, you have to get to the other side and there's a very real possibility of falling off the bridge and breaking your neck. Of course, there's a very low but real possibility to fall and break the neck when walking down an empty paved street in broad daylight, but no one actually wants to die to that, so we dismiss it as zero-chance. If we are to have rope bridges in games, we are to have game mechanics which differentiate them from open fields.

[shadzar]

$0.02

No wai. That's $100. Counterfeit $100.

How's a gully and bridge not an encounter? There's a fucking gully, you have to get to the other side and there's a very real possibility of falling off the bridge and breaking your neck. Of course, there's a very low but real possibility to fall and break the neck when walking down an empty paved street in broad daylight, but no one actually wants to die to that, so we dismiss it as zero-chance. If we are to have rope bridges in games, we are to have game mechanics which differentiate them from open fields.

By the definition of "encounter" varying between people, such as that of "core rules" varying when WotC decided to redefine it.

This is how it is not an encounter. I have never considered terrain to be an encounter. Coming to a locked door is not an encounter, but an obstacle. So the bridge would be too.

A bridge or an open field are no different, only how you interact with them. There needs no special rules. Falling exists as does gravity, though many do not want to discuss it.

Is there rules for walking and tripping and fall to break your neck? Yes there is, they are just overlooked and you don't roll your dexterity for every step taken, but you could. The rule exists, but is hand-waived for ease of play. So there are no rules that differentiate, it is just that we don't use them under normal circumstances where the odds of a problem are slim.

How often do players walking suddenly hear "when you step there give me an X check" from the DM? There is an obstacle that causes this outside of normal walking around, and this could be used for the bridge, ice, or whatever. Fail your DEX check and slip and fall or loose footing, balance, forward progression, whatever.

If you go looking for bonuses for everything, then you are causing a problem with bonuses. They are there to help when all else fails, not the tools to perform every task. Just like the list of NWPs from 2nd. If the NWPs were so special, why are they all still based on the 6 main ability scores anyway? Because they are extensions of them and examples of what the ability scores represent. It doesn't mean you need a bonus for specializing in Agriculture.

So can you name a task that could not be performed with just the ability scores and a check against them? If so, then there might be a need for some kind of bonus. The bonus you get for coming up with creative ideas, is like I said before, XP for coming up with an idea, not a better chance for it to work, or just getting you to the other side of the bridge. And it doesn't always mean that bonus will be granted, because not everything done is XP worthy, just because you crossed a bridge, and should be something that made the game fun for all.

If you cannot think of anything that would be unable to be performed with just an ability score check, then tell me what you would propose could be used for bonuses for crossing a bridge any why? Also consider that K stated falling form this bridge would in fact not be bad because there would be a hidden cave there. So were those things that helped cross the bridge without falling really be bonuses, or would they be penalties, that reduced the chance of the players finding out what was in the hidden cave as they passed and it went unnoticed?

[violence in the media]

I don't know shadzar, I think NWPs arose to put some end to arguments about whether or not a player could do any specific thing. The perennial "UH HUH!/NUH UHH!" debate. Old school D&D tended to be governed by the "realism" bugbear, at least in regards to PCs, and you wouldn't get a lot of DMs back then that would agree that your character was able to jump farther than any Olympic long jumper, stronger than any human in our history, more acrobatic than any gymnast, AND be smoother than 007 in the process.

"Nobody can be all that!" they'd say.
"Dude, I've got a 19 Str from my gauntlets, a 15 charisma, an 18 dexterity and I'm a 10th level Thief-Acrobat! Give me a fucking break!"

Introducing rules for what the PCs could actually do served to cut down on the DMs ability to arbitrarily decide that Lancelot couldn't balance on the log because of his armor (and regardless of his superhuman stats) but that Legolas could walk on water because he was an elf in leather armor. The rules allowed players to point to the result and say, "Look, I know you can't envision how I might have actually pulled off swimming in plate mail, but the rules say I was enough of a heroic badass to be able to, so let it go. Or does your "plot" require that I drown here so some wanky NPC can save me? Was I supposed to guess a random number to prevent the hallway from flooding? Was there a specific stone you didn't describe that I needed to overturn?"

[hogarth]

Well, its not because we then have to take into account what bonuses do. Maybe the DM wants to set the difficulty high enough that one or more players will fall into the river and thus see a hidden cave entrance..... well, that's not going to happen because the guy with the lowest score will drink his Potion of Heroism, have a Bard sing him some more skill, spend an action point, or do something else in the game that will cause this relevant stat to be much higher so that he can easily cross the bridge.

I'm all for cutting down the number of excess bonuses in D&D, but your example is terrible. What kind of moron DM can't set a high enough DC to make a PC fail a Balance check? (A DC of eleventy-million bazillion should be high enough.) And what kind of moron PC is going to going to keep crossing rope bridges after the first time his moron DM makes one that's impossible to cross safely?

At any rate, the Mutants and Masterminds technique of saying "your maximum power rating is X after all* bonuses have been included" is one way to do it.

*Or almost all, with a few exceptions.

[Cielingcat]

His point was that he wanted some PCs to fall, but not all of them.

[Manxome]

I don't know what K's point was; he seems to be touching on several different problems and not making a clear case for his proposed solution being a good way of handling any of them.

There's the issue of the DM not being able to build an encounter that generates a specific result he wants:

Well, its not because we then have to take into account what bonuses do. Maybe the DM wants to set the difficulty high enough that one or more players will fall into the river and thus see a hidden cave entrance..... well, that's not going to happen because the guy with the lowest score will drink his Potion of Heroism, have a Bard sing him some more skill, spend an action point, or do something else in the game that will cause this relevant stat to be much higher so that he can easily cross the bridge.

There's the issue of the DM not knowing what difficulty is appropriate for an encounter, which I would argue is separate from the issue of trying to ensure a specific scripted result:

Forget falling off the RNG, we actually have a problem where giving people to options to get bonuses suddenly become this zero-sum game where the DM must then account for ALL THE POSSIBLE bonuses that you might use to get the difficulty he wants, and you get boned if you saved your Potion of Heroism.

There's the issue of an encounter becoming harder than it reallly is because the PCs misuse their resources:

An encounter that should be easy as pie to design suddenly becomes an exercise in applied predictive psychology as you try to figure out which of a player's potential bonuses they might use (the DM might assume the Bard will sing for the dwarf and set the difficulty to that, only to have the Bard sing for himself despite not really needing it).

There's the "off-the RNG" problem, which he specifically told us to forget in the first post before making it his major talking point in his next post:

Its the asymmetry of the resulting adding of various bonuses that messes it all it up. Once the Rogue has magic armor and rings and a Defending sword and ioun stones and the like, battles where he can't be hit will be auto-hits on the Fighter, and you can't design fights that challenge the Rogue without boning the Fighter.

Here's my proposals:


1) Encounters are there to add tension and/or sap party resources. They add tension because of uncertainty in the outcome, and they sap resources by forcing the players to use up resources to control the outcome, either proactively (e.g. by drinking the potion of heroism before crossing) or retroactively (e.g. by expending HP to survive a dangerous fall).

If the DM wants to make sure the heroes discover the cave by falling off the bridge, that's not really an encounter; he can and must do that by fiat. He can dress it up like an encounter, but in design terms, it's a plot cinematic.

Maybe he tells everyone to roll, and then declares that the two PCs with the lowest modified rolls fall off, without ever bothering to set a DC in advance. Maybe he makes the rolls secretly or has an NPC fall off so the players don't get any weird ideas about what the DC "must have been." It's a little cheezy, but if it's not overdone, I think it's fine.

If the DM only wants a chance that the heroes discover the cave by falling off the bridge, and is willing to accept the possibility that they might not, then this becomes problem #2.


2) Setting the difficulty appropriately requires that you have some idea what resources it's going to sap in a typical and average case (and probably in best and worst cases, if you're being careful), which means you need to know what permanent bonuses the PCs have and something about dice and probabilities.

Accounting for transient bonuses gained by using up resources is something you also nominally need to do, but you shouldn't generally need to know exactly what resources the party actually has at this moment or predict which ones will be used--part of balancing the game engine is establishing and following precedents for what resources it costs to get a transient bonus and balancing that against the resources you'd lose for failing the roll because you lacked the transient bonus. Which means when you're designing the encounter, you need to know what the expected trade-off is and how the trade-off you're actually offering your players this time compares to it (maybe the potential fall is more deadly than usual, for example), but except in special cases you shouldn't need to predict how the party will manage their resources, because:


3) Managing resources is part of the game. Players are supposed to learn the rules and make intelligent decisions about how to expend their resources, and making better decisions is supposed to result in doing better in the game. If you don't want resource management to be a part of the game, then certainly, remove the resources. Otherwise, this is only a problem if (a) your players suck at the game, or (b) the game isn't giving them adequate information to base a decision on.

In the case of (a), the designer can't help you. In the case of (b), we need to figure out a way to modify the structure of the game to dispense adequate information. Maybe that means the DM should just tell you the DC of crossing the bridge, maybe something more subtle. But once we've decided we're handing out the right amount of information, then when the bard sings for himself, either he made a bad call and deserves the consequences, or he made a reasonable guess based on the available information and it's no different than failing a die roll.


4) The fact of having a finite RNG is that certain differences in bonuses stay on it and others don't. If you want people to stay on the RNG, you need to constrain bonuses to differences that stay on the RNG. It does not matter whether you get those bonuses by choosing to put your attribute points into strength (instead of intelligence) or choosing to spend your gp on a better sword (instead of a ring of invisibility), but yes, you do need some system for constraining the total net bonuses and preventing them from snapping the game in half. Enforcing that is an organizational problem for the designer(s).

[shadzar]

I don't know shadzar, I think NWPs arose to put some end to arguments about whether or not a player could do any specific thing. The perennial "UH HUH!/NUH UHH!" debate. Old school D&D tended to be governed by the "realism" bugbear, at least in regards to PCs, and you wouldn't get a lot of DMs back then that would agree that your character was able to jump farther than any Olympic long jumper, stronger than any human in our history, more acrobatic than any gymnast, AND be smoother than 007 in the process.

"Nobody can be all that!" they'd say.
"Dude, I've got a 19 Str from my gauntlets, a 15 charisma, an 18 dexterity and I'm a 10th level Thief-Acrobat! Give me a fucking break!"

Introducing rules for what the PCs could actually do served to cut down on the DMs ability to arbitrarily decide that Lancelot couldn't balance on the log because of his armor (and regardless of his superhuman stats) but that Legolas could walk on water because he was an elf in leather armor. The rules allowed players to point to the result and say, "Look, I know you can't envision how I might have actually pulled off swimming in plate mail, but the rules say I was enough of a heroic badass to be able to, so let it go. Or does your "plot" require that I drown here so some wanky NPC can save me? Was I supposed to guess a random number to prevent the hallway from flooding? Was there a specific stone you didn't describe that I needed to overturn?"

If it was to quell arguments, then why not just make a list without an entire system?

Looking just at NWPs, and not secondary skills, why not just say strength affects these sorts of things a person, like a human, could do in the game world? Then since you have examples to stop the silly arguments, you could continue on.

I never played in a game, or not for very long, where the DM tried to state that you couldn't try anything because he could not envision it. If i wanted to jump, i didn't need a special rule to do so. We could use real world math if we wanted, or the DM just decided, we didn't need an acrobatics NWP in order to make jumping better, or for some bonuses to it to try to collect em all like Pokemon, in order to over specialize in something at the cost of other things.

We used NWPs in so much as the secondary skills as ideas. Why would a character who had not spent the points on it [fire building], not be able to build a fire? If you could prove there was a reason you could do the thing as your character, then you could do it. If there wa a skill not listed, you thought would work, then that goes the same way as well. You just didn't get the fancy bonus for the NWP existing, but got the chance to do something and the resolution mechanic was just rolling against your appropriate ability score to see how well you could do it.

It was simple and works, and does not confine you to a box or list of NWPs/skills that you can do those, and only those, and did not trap you into trying to collect bonuses.

With NWPs, you couldn't swim in plate mail anyway even with the swim NWP. Plate was too heavy and said so in it's description IIRC. This is where common sense comes into play.

Did you ever run across a time when you did not heal your 1 HP at night because you forgot to take your armor off so you could be comfortable, or did your DM just hand wave that away?

Is it up to the rules or the DM, or maybe the player to make a decision that what is more important, the character living to continue the game, or the character living with this exact set of armor (likely wanted for its bonuses)?

You may be right, but if the system was to fix so much arguing, then why was it all optional, rather than part of the larger system such as skills later became and then skill challenges?

It just seems driven by the quest to get as many +1's as humanly possible, moreso than trying to work for some dispute resolution reason.

I think another problem there is those not able to think outside the box. As my sig says, play the game not the rules...you have to be open minded and not just think all that is present in the books is the all that can be done.

My favorite example to deal with NWPs/skills/etc is fire building/starting.

Why would someone not be able to start a fire? Say they have done it before, so why can they not now? Is all the wood wet? Is wood the only thing that burns? I use this example also to demonstrate how to not get stuck in the rules, because if a player can figure out within the confines of the game world, that his character could do something, then he should be allowed to try to do it. Therefore it goes to say that a player can try anything within reason. Within reason, because after so many silly attempts at Monty Haul things, you just declare outright why it would probably not work or not be successful if they REALLY wanted to try, but would still be willing to let them try it once within the game...never would any of it take a bonus to do. In the wet wood example, maybe they know something about fires that would let them have started one with wet wood, you do not know, or use something else to start the fire as the wood dried out.

There are too many possibilities for things, to get stuck or caught in some finite incomplete list that might just give some kind of written bonus.

I would rather have no bonus and a chance to try, than have no chance to try many things, but for the few I can try, i get bonuses to.

[Ice9]

Strange to say, but I have to agree with shadzar, at least regarding this example. Having a bridge "encounter", that the players must solve the way you wanted them to, and not do anything unexpected, seems like why 4E gets boring.

What if people fly or levitate over the bridge?
What if the most agile person goes across first and ties a rope, so that the less agile people are holding onto a rope as they cross and won't fall even if they slip?
What if they get tired of bridges that always drop them and decide to go another route?

Honestly, bonuses sound like the least of the problem here.