Doesn't work for me.
As another point, skills are also a part of character customisation for me. Too much condensation and I start to feel like a clone.
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Profession/Crafting skills: Why?
- Thread starter Rechan
- Start date
Doesn't work for me.
As another point, skills are also a part of character customisation for me. Too much condensation and I start to feel like a clone.
See, now my take on 3e profession is that it's useless. As written, the only thing it's used for is to generate a little money per game week. That's it. Sure, there are a host of implied uses for it, which also happen to overlap with other skills, but the rules-as-written offer no guidelines, advice, or actual rules regarding that.
Giving a character a Profession skill in 3e was like describing him as "fat" or saying "he likes wine". Mere description. Except that it cost a valuable, limited character-building resource (and yes, all but one of my 3e characters had Profession skills because it "fit" the character).
Other aspects aside, such a distinction is important for some. I like having different characters, and spending "valuable skill points" on something not everyone has helps.
For a more 4E point of view: Having to spend skill points on such skills makes the "non-combat roles" clearer. The performer, the crafter, the sailor are different from the adventurer.
Can I ask why not? Too elegant?
That's fair, but the "clone" issue doesn't really affect me. My character are differentiated mainly through loud, daft personalities (and as much re-skinning of character abilities as the DM/GM/system will allow).
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Rel said:
I'm pretty much with you on this. Yeah, one of the big flaws with the 3e system was that the resources you spent on being a blacksmith's son were resources you didn't spend on killing goblins. In the early game, this was supposedly acceptable, because it had a very "play to what the characters are" DM strategy behind it. But by the advent of 4e, much of that had turned into "accidental suck," because there's only so much catering a DM can do to skill points in Blacksmithing, while skill points in Spot get used almost whether you want them to or not.
An adjunct system is a very good, very solid idea.
Something that maybe replaces your class skill list with its own "Profession Skill List" would be a useful way to do a profession. Or the proposed system above of getting a "Profession Bonus" to certain skill checks works pretty nicely, too.
Crafting might need a little more than that, but that's a solid start!
That said, the trade-off isn't worth it for some people. I'd much rather deal with 3e's minor skill problems by, say, giving automatic Spot ranks, then fix 4e's inclusiveness problem with a wholly new subsystem or two. But if some other party wanted to make 4e profession and craft rules, I might pick it up, and be more inclined to run and play 4e because of it.
But for those who love 98% of 4e and just kind of miss the profession skill, these are pretty good ideas.
No need for snark, please.
I simply do not think diplomacy and intimidate should be able to replace a talent for art. Call me snobbish, but I don't want the same skills that make a good politician also make the character a good artist. There should be a trade off (a sacrifice in some eyes) to be good at something important. Performance, crafting, profession - those are important for me, and shouldn't be replaced with skills that also serve in important other roles, such as diplomacy and intimidate.
Sure. The thing is, though, every campaign will strike a different balance between - as Rel so succinctly put it - guns and butter. That means that if you're picking "gun skills" and "butter skills" from the same silo, there will be balance problems in most games no matter what. If I run a campaign that's mostly about guns, and you run a campaign that's mostly about butter, there is no balance the designers can strike that will work for both of us.
If guns and butter come from separate silos, the question doesn't even arise. Everybody has guns and everybody has butter; they're no longer in competition. My players may not use their butter-skills much, and your players may not use their gun-skills much, but nobody has to worry about trading effectiveness for character development.
Furthermore, a separate silo for butter-skills pushes all players to flesh out their backgrounds, which I think is always a good thing. You can't make rules to mandate roleplaying, but you can nudge people in that direction.
Wicht
Hero
Hrrm. My daughter's wizard, having bought a tavern is making a pretty nice little income on those days she's not adventuring (100-300 gp+ a week). She also has her cooking maxed out and is continually eager to make her weekly check for profit. Her goal in adventuring is to finish making the payments on the tavern. Her goal with the tavern is to provide income to supplement her magical research and pay for new magical creations.
Now, sure, I could handwave away the rules and just say, you're making 200 gp a week. Or I could say, you lost 200 gp this week. One the one hand, I would feel like I was just giving her money. On the other, she would feel like I was making running the business undesireable on purpose. Her putting lots of skill points into both crafting and profession lets me, as a DM know, that she really cares that her character knows how to do these things. Having her make a random skill roll means that as a DM, I'm not playing favorites or giving unwarranted monetary gifts.
If you feel that the craft or profession rules are stealing valuable adventuring resources, my own houserule before beginning to playtest the PFRPG rules was that each character was allowed one extra skill point per level but it had to be used in a craft, professions, or Knowledge (local, religion, nature, history, geography) skill. Problem solved.
The way that I use profession/craft skills in my games is (roughly) as follows;
Let's take the popular choice of sailor. What does taking profession(sailor) actually mean in terms of the character's abilities? In short, it makes the character familiar with and capable of executing the tasks common to the operation of a sailing vessel. This undoubtedly covers a number of things that are also expressed as separate skills, such as rope use, climb, and balance. So does the sailor in effect get these three skills for free? In my games no, and here's why.
If we read the “Character Skills” text that is broken out at the bottom of page 62 in the 3.5 player's handbook, we come across a quote that, to me, is very important here; “Performing routine tasks in normal situation is generally so easy that no check is required.” In this context what profession skills do is to expand the definitions of “routine task” and “normal situation” for the character in question. Is tacking against the wind or executing a gybe a routine task? For your average rogue, no, for one with profession(sailor), absolutely.
As far as the aforementioned “free skills” go, can the sailor tie exotic knots, climb through the rigging, and keep his balance on a heaving deck, sure. But that doesn't mean that he can scale a stone wall as if he had the climb skill, nor does he have any advantage at setting a grappling hook, binding an angry orc chieftain, or crossing a chasm on a beam three inches wide. The profession(sailor) skill grants him proficiency with climbing, uses of rope, and balance only in so far as they relate to the practice of sailing.
Let's say that on board a ship a character with profession(sailor) and one with ranks in use rope are securing some lines. The sailor has no need to roll a check, this is for him a routine task in a normal situation. The character with use rope has to make a check, even if only to state that they are “taking ten”, because while their skill at using rope may make this a rather trivial task, it is still outside of “normal” for them.
So when and why does a character with profession(sailor) roll that particular skill? Let's say that your ship is facing into a hurricane west wind, and you're trying to make it to Whitefish Bay... this could end badly, time to roll that skill check. If no one in your party has the skill, you'd better hope that you hired some good sailors. For a less fatal example, let's say that you wanted to race another ship, or coax some extra speed out of your vessel to shorten a journey, this is also an excellent time for a profession check.
Craft skills work similarly, anyone with skill in blacksmithing for instance, can service basic equipment and turn out horseshoes, nails and the like if need be, as to him these are routine tasks in a normal situation. If it becomes important to know exactly how quickly a character makes a given item, or if the item is more complex/specialized then it's time to roll a craft check.
As far as how often these skills are used in my games, I can honestly say that in all the years I've run D&D games, I can't recall a single campaign in which no characters took a craft skill. There have been several instances in which no one selected a profession skill, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
Let's take the popular choice of sailor. What does taking profession(sailor) actually mean in terms of the character's abilities? In short, it makes the character familiar with and capable of executing the tasks common to the operation of a sailing vessel. This undoubtedly covers a number of things that are also expressed as separate skills, such as rope use, climb, and balance. So does the sailor in effect get these three skills for free? In my games no, and here's why.
If we read the “Character Skills” text that is broken out at the bottom of page 62 in the 3.5 player's handbook, we come across a quote that, to me, is very important here; “Performing routine tasks in normal situation is generally so easy that no check is required.” In this context what profession skills do is to expand the definitions of “routine task” and “normal situation” for the character in question. Is tacking against the wind or executing a gybe a routine task? For your average rogue, no, for one with profession(sailor), absolutely.
As far as the aforementioned “free skills” go, can the sailor tie exotic knots, climb through the rigging, and keep his balance on a heaving deck, sure. But that doesn't mean that he can scale a stone wall as if he had the climb skill, nor does he have any advantage at setting a grappling hook, binding an angry orc chieftain, or crossing a chasm on a beam three inches wide. The profession(sailor) skill grants him proficiency with climbing, uses of rope, and balance only in so far as they relate to the practice of sailing.
Let's say that on board a ship a character with profession(sailor) and one with ranks in use rope are securing some lines. The sailor has no need to roll a check, this is for him a routine task in a normal situation. The character with use rope has to make a check, even if only to state that they are “taking ten”, because while their skill at using rope may make this a rather trivial task, it is still outside of “normal” for them.
So when and why does a character with profession(sailor) roll that particular skill? Let's say that your ship is facing into a hurricane west wind, and you're trying to make it to Whitefish Bay... this could end badly, time to roll that skill check. If no one in your party has the skill, you'd better hope that you hired some good sailors. For a less fatal example, let's say that you wanted to race another ship, or coax some extra speed out of your vessel to shorten a journey, this is also an excellent time for a profession check.
Craft skills work similarly, anyone with skill in blacksmithing for instance, can service basic equipment and turn out horseshoes, nails and the like if need be, as to him these are routine tasks in a normal situation. If it becomes important to know exactly how quickly a character makes a given item, or if the item is more complex/specialized then it's time to roll a craft check.
As far as how often these skills are used in my games, I can honestly say that in all the years I've run D&D games, I can't recall a single campaign in which no characters took a craft skill. There have been several instances in which no one selected a profession skill, but this is the exception rather than the rule.
Why would you use Diplomacy for that when it is covered by one of the Knowledge sub-skills.
The problem isn't that Balance doesn't cover sea legs (Er, looking at the Balance skill again, if it doesn't cover sea legs, what the hell does it cover then?)
It's the fact that you can apply Profession (Sailor) to the other SUB-skills and basically "cheat" the system.
As an aside, it should be pointed out that MOST sailors actually couldn't navigate either. Most deckhands had rudimentary reading skills.
Furthermore, the SRD defines "directions" under survival (Knowledge -geography provides a synergy bonus) as the Survival skill is the skill you roll against to both determine Weather conditions for the next 24 hours AND directions...
In fact, so I was wrong...
Profession (sailor) not only makes Use Rope, Balance, Climb less valuable skills but also Survival and Knowledge (Nature)....
re: Profession (waiter)
Um, you're actually spending skill points in this? Never mind that the scenario you listed is covered by either Disguise and/or Perform (Acting), and/or Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty).
The 3E system has such fine granularity that a BROAD skill like Profession sticks out horribly.
As an aside, would anyone allow this in the game, Profession (Circus/Carnival Performer or Court Jester). Circus performers are one of the oldest professions in medieval life and also one that I think is actually more common to appear as background fluff in modules than say Sailors.
Even before we had many other professions, theee were travelling carnivals so does this mean that I get to "cheat" out by not spending points on the skills like Tumble and Balance?
