Things that just bother me when it comes to D&D.

[Dannyalcatraz]

I am going to say bull hockey on the wizard being like a grad student who studies all the time that may be true about things magical but what about the other knowledge skills. Whose to say that the sorcerer or the monk or even a fighter does not spend their downtime reading everything they can about history or dungeons or religion. I know people in real life who have never really had former education beyond high school who are self educated just because they like learning. One of my family members is a deputy sheriff he has a two year degree in law enforcement his hobby is the civil war he does reenactments. He has read hundreds of books on that time in American history he has actually been invited in to give talks at the local university on the subject of the civil war.

I have seen people choose not to play their wizard with a lot of knowledge skills which is fine like I said PCs should not be cookie cutters that is so boring. And even if the sorcerer chooses to be a history buff they are stepping on the wizard toes since skills and wizard magic come from intelligence they usually have a bigger intelligent stat than the sorcerer so that means extra skill points and bigger ability bonus.

Like I said it bothers me that skills are based on class abilities it is like these PCs never had a life before they became adventurers.

Its not that PCs cannot learn skills that are not part of their class- or, people IRL, their job or profession- its that those classes have as part of their training some formal education in those skills.

My mother is a music teacher, and she knows a lot about music history. I'm not a music teacher, and I know nearly as much as she does, and am actually more knowledgable than she is within certain genres. She knows a lot about music theory, and I know virtually none. But I play 3 instruments and sing; she does voice & piano only.

Similarly, my mom and I both design jewelry as a hobby, but she knows more about grading pearls than some of the jewelers in the area...and as a result, they ask her opinion in pearls with regularity. Me? I know jack all about pearls.

Bringing this back to classes & skills... Classes do not prohibit you from taking any skill. They just describe the skillset that the class is most likely to provide, and therefore, gives you an advantage in learning those skills.

The average wizard, by the nature of the training he requires to become what he is, is an academic researcher. The class gives an advantage to, but does not demand, Wizard PCs learning knowledge skills.

This does not mean that Joe Sorcerer cannot learn the same kinds of things, just that he has a different, non-academic focus.

 

[timASW]

I think pathfinder did a better job with skills. You can take any skill but class skills have a +3 bonus.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Truly whacky double post...

 

[Elf Witch]

Its not that PCs cannot learn skills that are not part of their class- or, people IRL, their job or profession- its that those classes have as part of their training some formal education in those skills.

My mother is a music teacher, and she knows a lot about music history. I'm not a music teacher, and I know nearly as much as she does, and am actually more knowledgable than she is within certain genres. She knows a lot about music theory, and I know virtually none. But I play 3 instruments and sing; she does voice & piano only.

Similarly, my mom and I both design jewelry as a hobby, but she knows more about grading pearls than some of the jewelers in the area...and as a result, they ask her opinion in pearls with regularity. Me? I know jack all about pearls.

Bringing this back to classes & skills... Classes do not prohibit you from taking any skill. They just describe the skillset that the class is most likely to provide, and therefore, gives you an advantage in learning those skills.

The average wizard, by the nature of the training he requires to become what he is, is an academic researcher. The class gives an advantage to, but does not demand, Wizard PCs learning knowledge skills.

This does not mean that Joe Sorcerer cannot learn the same kinds of things, just that he has a different, non-academic focus.

I understand what you are saying but I simply don't agree that this is model well with the way skills are handled in 3.0/3.5.

Take a non knowledge skill like intimidate why is a rogue more scary then a say a cleric of Hextra or worse say a cleric of Vecna the rogue is also more scary than a paladin or a wizard who could turn you into a kobold, bring down a meteor shower on your head or has the power to wish something bad on you. I don't know about you but I find Gandalf a lot more intimidating then Bilbo.

I understand the point of cross class skills as a way of saying that wizards study more so they get all knowledge skills as class skills even if they choose not to take them. But again is not make sense why would a wizard necessarily be better at dungeons than a sorcerer.

Which also begs the issue of if wizards get all these class skills because they study more why do sorcerers get a d4 hit die and the same weapon proficiency as wizards. What are they doing with their time since they don't have to study like wizards do? In 3.0 they were the only class that did not have one class skill based on their prime attribute. And in 3.5 they have become just great liars and have bluff as a class skill.

Like I said I don't like how skills are handled at all they are way to gamest in approach. Like I said they do nothing to encourage any background development and for a lot of characters they don't allow much customization. For example for the most part when I play a fighter I just dump all my skill ranks in swim. The rest seem pointless what good is climb especially if you go the heavy armor route and how often does it come up in game.The same with jump. Now if if roll really good and can have a decent charisma then I put all my ranks in intimidate. And it is not like you end up being the best fighter if the party also has a cleric or a paladin in the party.

The only fighter I actually really enjoyed playing was one that came into the game at 10 level I rolled very well what would be a 46 point buy. The only low stat I had was a 12 and I placed that in wisdom. I took two levels of courtier from Rokugan which gave me a nice bonuses on social skills, took a feat from Kalamar that allowed me to turn X amount of cross class into class skills based on intelligence since I had a +4 I took diplomacy, sense motive, bluff, and gather information. She was great in a fight though the paladin was usually better but she was the spy of the party the paladin may have been the face but she was the one finding out the information and doing all the back ground things the paladin didn't know about. I don't think I could create her under a normal 32 point buy using skills by the raw the way I did. And that was when I started going this is not great you should not have to roll so high to have a character concept of a warrior who is from an educated and royal background.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I understand what you are saying but I simply don't agree that this is model well with the way skills are handled in 3.0/3.5.

Take a non knowledge skill like intimidate why is a rogue more scary then a say a cleric of Hextra or worse say a cleric of Vecna the rogue is also more scary than a paladin or a wizard who could turn you into a kobold, bring down a meteor shower on your head or has the power to wish something bad on you. I don't know about you but I find Gandalf a lot more intimidating then Bilbo.

Intimidation is not about having power, but rather, about instilling in others the belief that someone has the will to follow up on threats made with whatever resources they posess.

The rogue class, in a general sense, has training in making others believe in threats delivered; most classes don't.

But again is not make sense why would a wizard necessarily be better at dungeons than a sorcerer.

One possible rationale: part of the academic study of wizardry involves the study past masters of magic, of where tomes and magic items would be found, and the perils of getting to those locations. Studying the life of (Pre-Lich) Vecna would presumably tell you a bit about what kinds of safeguards he might try to place around his residences or creations.

Which also begs the issue of if wizards get all these class skills because they study more why do sorcerers get a d4 hit die and the same weapon proficiency as wizards.

They don't.

Wizards are proficient with 5 specific weapons: club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, and quarterstaff.

Sorcerers are proficient with all simple weapons. That's actually a fairly big list of weapons.

 

[S'mon]

I think pathfinder did a better job with skills. You can take any skill but class skills have a +3 bonus.

Yes, I find it works a lot better. And a single level dip gives you all that class's skills as class skills. I can make my Cleric with broad knowledge; over time I put 1 rank into nearly every class skill and get +4 to the roll.

 

[Elf Witch]

Intimidation is not about having power, but rather, about instilling in others the belief that someone has the will to follow up on threats made with whatever resources they posess.

The rogue class, in a general sense, has training in making others believe in threats delivered; most classes don't.


One possible rationale: part of the academic study of wizardry involves the study past masters of magic, of where tomes and magic items would be found, and the perils of getting to those locations. Studying the life of (Pre-Lich) Vecna would presumably tell you a bit about what kinds of safeguards he might try to place around his residences or creations.



They don't.

Wizards are proficient with 5 specific weapons: club, dagger, heavy crossbow, light crossbow, and quarterstaff.

Sorcerers are proficient with all simple weapons. That's actually a fairly big list of weapons.

Exactly intimidation is not about power it is about scaring the crap out of someone that you will use that power. It is an attitude that you are willing to hurt someone or at least let them think that. It is a force of personality which is why it should be open to all classes. It has more to do with your personality than what your PC does for a living.

In one of my games the guy playing the necromancer scared the living daylights out of everyone he was creepy and talked and acted in a way that led you to believe he had no real love for the living and was more than willing to add you to his collection of undead playthings. Far more intimidating than the swashbuckling ladies man rogue.

I don't buy that all rogues have training on how to deliver threats. Here again we are making them a cookie cutter class some do but then any class can be trained to be someone who can deliver threats.

I played a sorcerer who was just shy of being completely ruthless and evil. She cut off ears off all her foes alive or dead and wore them. She was known to lick their blood of her weapons and she was not afraid to use certain torture techniques learned since she was a child to make people talk. Yet under the RAW rules she would never be as good at intimidating prisoners as the rogue who was chaotic good or the fighter who only killed when necessary.

It really should be a player choice not a choice decided by a game designer based on some weird type of balance.

And again I ask why would a sorcerer be unable to study these thing as well they have more time on their hands because they don't have to learn complicated formula to cast magic.

The fact that sorcerers get a few more weapons than wizards really means very little they still only have a d4 hit die and the same BAB I always thought they should have the same hit die as bards and if you are not going to give them that then at least give them a better selection of skill choices. Again the entire reason is one of made up balance.

It is a gamest approach that I see as a flaw.

We have been doing the open skill list for a long time now under various DMs and players and have yet seen anything really broken about it. Like I said what we have seen is a way to really be able to open up your character concept. I noticed that once we did it people were more likely to play core classes because it made them interesting again. After awhile it gets boring to play the class the same way over and over again with just a name change and maybe a different weapon or different spells.

One of the reasons I still like 3E over older editions is that it opened up player choice far more than you had in older editions I just think they didn't go far enough with it.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I am plagued by double posts today...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Exactly intimidation is not about power it is about scaring the crap out of someone that you will use that power. It is an attitude that you are willing to hurt someone or at least let them think that. It is a force of personality which is why it should be open to all classes. It has more to do with your personality than what your PC does for a living.

I don't buy that all rogues have training on how to deliver threats. Here again we are making them a cookie cutter class some do but then any class can be trained to be someone who can deliver threats.

Your argument is flawed: not all rogues are trained in delivering threats. Only those who allocate skill points are...just like anyone else who allocated skill points to that skill.

It is just that members of the rogue class- as defined in D&D- are more likely than members of most other classes to have been given an opportunity to train in that skill.

This is part and parcel of all archetype/class-based systems: they generalize and genericize concepts.

Why, to return to your last post, would a swashbuckling ladies man rogue (which i think of more as a bard anyway, but it doesnt really matter) need to know basic anatomy as well as a hired killer type so that they are equally good at backstabbing? The answer is that there is no reason, but for the class system.

And again I ask why would a sorcerer be unable to study these thing as well they have more time on their hands because they don't have to learn complicated formula to cast magic.

Having time to study and having opportunity to study are 2 different things. Schools of wizardry have libraries. Religions and governments have archives.

All of them control access to the documents within. Unless you pay tuition or teach there, you're unlikely to have access to a wizard school's library.* Clergymen and a precious few others will be allowed to see a church's prized documents. And governments are just as jealous about access as those two are, if not moreso.

Don't get me wrong- I don't think the 3.5Ed version of the sorcerer is the best out there. I actually agree with you that sorcerers should have had a d6 HD...and actually prefer the Stalwart Sorcerer and Battle Sorcerer to the PHB one.

And I think that Pathfinder's inclusion of "bloodline" features- similar to the feats introduced in Dragon- was a good refinement.

Overall, for class skills, I probably would have made the sorcerer's selection into a "Pick 4", reflecting the amorphous nature of the class. In a way, they're the ultimate tabula rasa class.








* and if we look at the apprentice or independently taught wizard, the problem is still access. No teaching Mage will let just anyone see his tomes. People who spend hundreds of GP teaching themselves are also unlikely to share books & scrolls.

 

[delericho]

Sometimes I think to myself "if the town guards are higher level than us (and it's obvious they are because they beat the bejesus out of one of us for breaking the law,) why is the king bothering to hire us to fight goblins?"

There's a simple answer to that: he wouldn't. The king would have teams of specialists that he would send out on his special missions. Low-level PCs just wouldn't get the call. (Although later, once they've become known, and thus gained higher levels, they might well be invited to join the ranks of the king's agents.)

Low-level PCs would be hired by people who don't have access to a town guard: merchants might hire them to guard a caravan or recover a lost shipment, gang bosses might hire them to fight a proxy war, they might be asked to help out by their friends and neighbours back home.

Or, very often, they would be self-motivated. After all, it's not hard to imagine that if you're young, hungry, and with no appreciable job skills (like most adventurers), you might look at the prospect of labouring for decades for 1sp a day, and decide that's not for you. When the alternative is a high-risk, high-reward strategy, adventuring sure looks like a viable option (and even a single successful adventure will likely net more gold than they've ever seen in one place before).