I love skills because they provide nuanced story control tied to the wargaming part of the game. In your case about the fighter floating on the log; there are several approaches that the fighter could take. Knowing padding or canoeing (for example) is one approach to the problem. A swim check is another, while a raw strength check provides a third. Each is a different nuance on the solution. “You wrap yourself around the log and propel yourself to shore with mighty breast strokes” vs. “your mad kicking somehow moves you out of the main current and you float safely to shore.” Obviously a knowledge of astronomy isn’t going to help here, which is a good thing and helps build the back story of the pc into the encounter itself.

I personally love to go into details and so we developed a very detailed skill-system but we still use from time to time a less detailed version.

I never liked the idea of classes and their exclusion of certain skills for others. So in our system each one knows EACH SKILL on some basic level, depending on his attributes – even if he never used them in life before the situation arises where he must use it. You can say each one may be more talented in one or other skill but each one can use any skill.
When your character knows rowing he gains a raise to his skill of paddling, simply because he knows how to behave on water. So his paddling skill will be higher than the one of the Mountainman who paddles for the first time – even when their basic skill in paddling will be the same.
Ah I just love when things work smoothly and players have the liberty to do what they want to do without getting crushed to death with tons of rules.

A while back someone wrote that players in “the olden days” would look at the ceiling and engage their imaginations when confronted with a non-combat situation, but ever since 3E just the opposite happens. Now players look down at their character sheets, checking their laundry list of skills to see if they have an answer. Once it was pointed out in the forum, it only took until my next game for me to confirm that it was true.

For players (and GM’s) who aren’t good at thinking outside the box, this might be a comforting way to play. However, I think most RPG players are pretty happy to get outside the box – that’s why we favor RPG’s over Monopoly and Risk.

So I guess I’m clever enough to see that there is need for improvement, but not clever enough to actually bring about that improvement.

Personally, I prefer to use skills as I described in my first paragraph. However, skill checks are not always required or appropriate.

Yes, it does come down to a judgement call by the DM.

It will vary from challenge to challenge, game to game, with each story that is being told.

That is why it is important to understand the ideas and concepts behind the rule and its application. That way we make judgement calls as are appropriate to the setting, game, and inspirational sources in each instance.

On the subject of balance:
Balance is there to keep the game playable and fun, not to limit the creativity of the players. If gamers find a loophole that solves almost every encounter, the game looses challenge and ceases to be fun (see “couter monkey squirt gun wars” on youtube for example). However, you can work around loopholes without limiting player options. If they make a poison, don’t limit how often they can use it. Make an antidote. You get the idea.

I do agree that RPGs are an exercise in systemizing chaos. That is why it is important to understand the ideas behind the rules. Don’t just memorize lists of rules. Try to know why they were put into place, so that you will understand when they should be applied.

Each edition of d&d has wrestles with new rules and game mechanics, each with valid reasoning and ideas behind new changes or additions. From Ghostwalk’s option of playing your character after death, to 4th edition’s application of at will spell powers that kept mages in the game the whole time.

My brother tends to think that the rules of any RPG represent the physics of that world, based upon inspirational literature. This leads to the conclusion as is stated in both d&d 3.5 and PFDRPG: Use the rules that are appropriate for the stories you are trying to tell. Use what works for you and leave the rest. If your stories say that all mages know a limited number of spells and cast them from memory, then use the sorcerer class and eschew wizards.

Never forget that it is the gamers who play that make any game work, not the developers.

So where does the need come from? For certainly there are other games were they feel necessary, were there would be no game without rules for everything.

One widespread theory seems to be that they got invented, little by little, and once there it was impossible to un-invent them, and them we were stuck with them and somehow they limited our way of thinking. But that is only true if you have a strict D&D-centric perspective.

I grew up in Sweden and started out on a translation of “Basic Roleplaying”. Basic Roleplaying has skills. Lots of skills. (And for good measure, the Swedish publisher added even more skills in later expansions…)

Yet I know that in those first glorious years we weren’t so encumbered by these rules that we couldn’t let our imagination run free. In fact both me and some of my friends made up our own games when we needed to – some using skills, some don’t. We certainly didn’t depend on them to much.

After a few years we had tried a lot of other published games as well – not least D&D which we stuck with for years to come. And THEN we had that problem, more and more frequently no matter whether it was about skills (if the game had those) or some other mechanic.

So I think there are other factors as well. Many games published expansions, additional rulesets – and somehow many games, more or less at the same time, started to become more and more streamlined, resistance became more and more “level appropriate” and the notion of balance appeared.

Now, if you expect balance between the players and their opposition – then you wouldn’t NEED to think up super-exceptional deeds to survive. That’s what balance is! Those crazy stunts might even be considered upsetting the balance – they might take a perfectly balanced encounter and turn it into a stroll in the park.

I think the expectation of balance, was the back door were rules-lawyering in general crept in. Before that, if you came up with a good idea or if you found a loop hole to exploit – good for you! (But don’t expect the loop hole to work again…)

And when it was in, it stayed in. We guarded our treasured capabilities, because they were now part of the resource management, like spells per day or charges or stuff like that. It became part of the infrastructure of the game. We weren’t relaxed about it anymore.

So – no, you don’t need skills. (Unless you want to use their mechanic in a certain kind of game.) There’s a lot of things you don’t need. Preconceptions about a balanced setting is certainly one of them.