Profession/Crafting skills: Why?

[Fifth Element]

Those who find them fun will use them while those who think they are foolish will hand-wave them away.

That's easy enough to say, but you should know as a publisher that if you decide to include one thing, something else has to be left out. It's a question of putting in the content that most of the players will find the most useful. Finite resources prevent the inclusion of every little thing.

 

[Fifth Element]

And yet somehow you missed the 2nd part in (3.5 SRD): "Try Again: Varies. An attempt to use a Profession skill to earn an income cannot be retried... An attempt to accomplish some specific task can usually be retried."

Of course, the rest of the skill description does not contemplate such checks. The only check mentioned in the SRD is the one to determine how much income is earned in a week of dedicated work.

Any other check would be left to DM fiat, and since that's the case, there's not much point to having the skill. The DM will just have to decide anyway.

 

[steenan]

I agree that Profession skills in 3.x were done poorly. It was very unclear what they let you do, some overlapped heavily with some of the "adventuring skills". The disadvantages of this system are numerous and have all been listed by previous posters.

Craft skills, on the other hand, are something I feel a need to have. They may be done in such a way that they have well-defined scopes and are, at least occasionally, useful for characters. My 3.0 characters used crafts quite often:

My ranger crafted traps and repaired leather items (boots, cloaks, bags etc.). Repairs may be handwaved as a part of his background, but traps need a numerical measure of effectivenes, hard to get without a skill roll.

My sorcerer crafted many different things in his career, being a trained jeweller, tailor and cook (and boosting these skills with self-made magic items). Most of time it was useful, but not very important and could go without a test. There were some cases, though, when I had to reach the heights of arts:
- Creating a dress for a party cleric when we were to meet a king and she had nothing to wear that would be approproate in court. Of course, we could order it from a tailor, but it would take two or three weeks and we needed it for the next day. Craft (tailor) DC 30 did it.
- Preparing a killed aboleth to be edible - because we were in a middle of a sea, at least a few days from nearest coast, and most of our food had been dstroyed during a fight.
- Fashioning gold we gained in a not very honest way into a from that could be sold for a good price while not looking similar to what it was before.
- Creating jewellery good enough to be enchanted when we had neither time nor opportunity to buy it.

 

[Fenes]

Then they probably weren't put there for you.

I see no need for psionics, but I don't begrudge their fans the existence of psionics rules, because I noticed at some point that I'm not the only person who plays D&D.

Other people like stuff I don't. Good for them. I'm not going to petition for every rule that I don't use to get axed from the game, nor post long-winded explanations for why something that *other people like* is better off removed from the game, because *I'm* not using it.

Game and let game. It's like 'live and let live,' only with dice.

Good post. The forums would be a far nicer place if people would stop trying to tell people that what they like is stupid, wrong, or both.

Some people like craft & profession skills. Some people like shifting enemies accross a grid.

 

[Zustiur]

Sorry if I'm repeating, I haven't read this thread in full, but I think the OP and many others have missed the most important use of craft.

What do you do when you're stranded without equipment?

Hope you have someone who can make good enough equipment to get you by for a time so that you can get real equipment. That's what.

Stuck on an island and need a canoe or raft to get off? Hope you've got a carpenter.

And similar situations. They're survival skills.
They're also down-time skills if you play that leveling up takes time and not all of your characters have synchronized experience.
One players spending a month levelling up? Might as well sell some baskets while we're waiting.

Trying to make an iron golem? Do YOU know how to forge metal?

Profession has much the same set of uses. They're survival(city) skills.
Need to spy on the nobles but don't have high enough diplomacy to act like one? Try being one of their cooks or cleaners or any number of other tasks.

The possibilities are endless if you actually bother to look for them.

 

[scruffygrognard]

I retooled Profession skills in my current 3.5 game to become more of a catch-all skill that allows you to use them, with varying penalties, if you can justify their use. So, Profession Sailor allows you to make Balance or Climb checks. You would be better at climbing if you had the Climb skill, but, your check will be better than an untrained Climb check.

It works for us.

As far as "is it needed in D&D"? Not really. It comes up far too rarely to be honest. Yes, I know YOUR game uses them all the time, but, I'm going to say fairly confidently that the majority of games barely used the rules, if at all.

I've done something similar in my C&C game (which uses 3rd edition skills to a limited extent). Profession checks are made in order to gain a +2 bonus to a related skill check.

Examples:
A character with Profession: Sailor who makes a DC10 skill check (which can be modified based on the circumstances) gets a +2 bonus to a related skill check (such as Climb, Knowledge: Nature, Balance, etc). Of course the Profession check can only be used in situations that directly relate to that profession.

A character with Profession: Herbalist who makes a DC10 skill check gets a +2 bonus to a related skill check (such as Craft: Alchemy, Heal or Craft: Cooking... yes, cooking is a craft check in my game as craft is the ability to convert raw materials into a finished product).

 

[mmu1]

Wow. No use for Craft and Profession style skills - not just in D&D, or in fantasy RPGs, but in any RPG?

I can't think of - for example - a single game of Shadowrun I was in in which various professional knowledge, design, and repair/technical skills didn't play a part. They also came up plenty of times in various Storyteller games I played in - or in Burning Wheel...

Basically, the more grounded in the real world an RPG is, or the more it emphasizes narrative control, the more likely that those "useless" skills will come into play - not every game assumes you're spending all your time going on "adventures" involving killing things in holes in the ground and taking their gold.

Not that there's anything wrong with killing things and taking their stuff, but even in the D&D games I played in, Craft and Profession - mainly Craft, though - have played a part often enough to matter.

 

[Rel]

I was just having a conversation about this with Henry over the weekend.

Why do I feel a need for Craft and Profession skills in my campaign? Because they add depth and interest for me and for some (though probably not all) of my players.

While I wasn't wild about the system in 3.x, I was a bit disappointed that they weren't included in 4e. This disappointment quickly vanished however when I realized that this was the easiest house-rule fix I'd ever make. Here's how the Rel System works:

I ask each player two questions. "What did you do to make a living before you became an adventurer?" and "What do you enjoy doing as a hobby that doesn't involve killing bad guys and taking their stuff?" Then I say, "You can consider yourself Trained at those two things."

That's all there is to it.

If they say, "Well, I was a blacksmith. And for fun, I always enjoyed decorating the stuff I made with engravings," then they write down those as Trained skills. If we ever come across a situation where they need to make something with blacksmithing or want to engrave it, they can use those skills against whatever DC I assign. For easy stuff I might not even have them roll. For very difficult stuff then I at least have a number I can use.

Moreover, they have given me a tool to make my adventures more interesting. When the PC's go searching for the Missing Prince, they may not find him right away. But the fact that the party blacksmith can tell that the sword the Goblin Slaver was using has a Royal Forgemark on it tells them that they are on the right track.

As to the problem of overly broad profession skills, I can see that as a potential issue but not an intractable one. If somebody wants to have been a Sailor, I'm not going to let them substitute that for all Balance and Climb checks. But, if they are on a SHIP, then I'd certainly tell them that "Your training as a Sailor gives you a +2 circumstance bonus to your Balance and Climb rolls while you're on the ship." Would I do that if I was running an entirely nautical campaign? No. But I think that if the relatively rare circumstance comes into play where they are having a fight on the deck of a ship then I'm happy to give them the bonus.

 

[Fenes]

Sometimes though you need that precision 3E gives. If there's a crafting competition, or a bard challenge, if you're trying to outdo the king's cook to gain access to the royal household, etc. etc. then you need to know how much better - or worse - your meal, performance, sword was than the competition.

 

[jgbrowning]

That's easy enough to say, but you should know as a publisher that if you decide to include one thing, something else has to be left out. It's a question of putting in the content that most of the players will find the most useful. Finite resources prevent the inclusion of every little thing.

Of course. But what some consider a little thing, others find enjoyment from.

I think the OP is quite incorrect to believe there's never a purpose for profession or crafting rules in all RPGs. It's a very broad brush to be painting with, IMO, burdened by the difficulty that the only "purpose" in an RPG is "fun" and some people find profession and crafting rules "fun" so there would appear to be at least some purpose in such rules.

joe b.