The Impasse

[Scribble]

And I see more work for the DM (me) improvising rules.

Dear Wotc, put back professions in my 4E game, kthxbai...

Did yo honestly have characters routinely making profession checks for some reason? (I really want to know... it seems odd to me.)


As far as more work for the DM though... I don't agree. Again for someone like me (and maybe it's because I grew up in the earlier game doing it this way) it seems like more work having to account for the "official" suggestions for things that don't come up as often?

 

[avin]

Did yo honestly have characters routinely making profession checks for some reason? (I really want to know... it seems odd to me.)


As far as more work for the DM though... I don't agree. Again for someone like me (and maybe it's because I grew up in the earlier game doing it this way) it seems like more work having to account for the "official" suggestions for things that don't come up as often?

In fact, yes.

Last 3.5 campaign, for example, my brother was a blacksmith and insisted in doing small fixes to his armor at night, on their camp. He wanted to roll dice every single night. Well, his taste...

Another player, a druid, insisted to be a baker.

My last 3.5 char, a FIGHTER, (always caps for D&D Fighters!) was a gladiator who finished up in Sigil as a Chef. I tested my skills for pleasing high costumers. The DM allowed me to use this as as a class skill.

In my experience, professions help a lot from the roleplaying point of view and I miss having it on 4E instead of improvising all the time. This is more work for me. I hate to improvise rules (except in GURPS) and rather spend my time improvising roleplaying and forked paths on my campaigns.

By the way, the players I'm DMing now (4E) are more of the kick in the door kill and loot type and they don't miss 3.5 professions.

 

[Scribble]

In fact, yes.

Last 3.5 campaign, for example, my brother was a blacksmith and insisted in doing small fixes to his armor at night, on their camp. He wanted to roll dice every single night. Well, his taste...

Another player, a druid, insisted to be a baker.

My last 3.5 char, a FIGHTER, (always caps for D&D Fighters!) was a gladiator who finished up in Sigil as a Chef. I tested my skills for pleasing high costumers. The DM allowed me to use this as as a class skill.

In my experience, professions help a lot from the roleplaying point of view and I miss having it on 4E instead of improvising all the time. This is more work for me. I hate to improvise rules (except in GURPS) and rather spend my time improvising roleplaying and forked paths on my campaigns.

By the way, the players I'm DMing now (4E) are more of the kick in the door kill and loot type and they don't miss 3.5 professions.

That's the craft skill though... Profession lets you spend a week doing your "trade" to earn a 1/2 your roll in GPs.

Which seems contrary to the whole reason people become adventurers... They'd rather find treasure then be a shop keep earing a few gold a week!

But it goes to show again how different tastes are... To me those skills end up hindering RP... I can't RP a character who repairs his own armor without the profession/craft skill. (Also after a certain level doesn't rolling to repair armor become a moot point?)

So in your campaign could you characters do anything else? Like say playing cards? How did they play cards? Or Dice games? Or Chess or Checkers? What about building a campsite? Or cooking? Or wine tasting? Could any of them do any kind of math?

Just seems once you go down that road, you have to have an enormouse amount of skills, otherwise things seem... whacky.

To each his own though!

 

[Rel]

Did yo honestly have characters routinely making profession checks for some reason? (I really want to know... it seems odd to me.)

I did. And I still do in 4e. I'll be happy to explain but I'm up WAY later than I should be and I've gotta get up with my daughter in the morning. I'll post about it over coffee.

 

[Rel]

*sips coffee* Ah. That's better.

So yeah, in my various 3.x games I had players who took Profession skills. They didn't do it (generally) in order to make extra money, although I recall a few times when they did that when they were in a town for a few weeks. They usually took some ranks in it as a way to describe a profession that their character was engaged in prior to starting their adventuring careers. If that strikes you as the mark of somebody to whom backstory and characterization is more important than PC optimization, you'd be right. That's just how they role. (haha)

However, since that was important to them, I would make sure to include opportunities for those professions to come into play. The PC who used to be an inkeeper would notices that the guy who was supposed to be the inkeeper wasn't doing the job right (cuz he was an assassin). Now of course in 3.x that PC had ranks in Innkeeper. And if another PC also used to be an inkeeper then we'd know which one had the better chance to notice that assassin based on who had a higher skill. So there was a mechanical representation of a trait that wasn't essential to adventuring.

Now obviously 4e did away with this. And I understand why. I just happen not to like it. I'm not a stickler for mechanical representations of everything, which is a big reason that I like the more open architecture of 4e. But in this instance I wanted that. Luckily for me this was the easiest house rule I think I've ever come up with for any game (and I've come up with quite a few):

At character creation the player answers two questions.

"What did your character do for a living before taking up a life of adventure?"

"What does your character do to pass the time when not adventuring?"

The answer to each of these questions becomes an additional Trained skill. The stat appropriate to this skill will be agreed upon between player and GM. At the discretion of the GM the player may, at each 4th level (4th, 8th, 12th, etc.), add another such skill or take Skill Focus in an existing background skill.

That's it. It gives me a mechanical representation, a number to roll with, if needed. It also gives me a way to map things that the PC has a reason to be good at in the case where I want to add a circumstance bonus to another skill. For example if the PC is attempting a History check by doing research in a library and one of the PC's used to work in a library, I may give them a +2 to the roll. Because I've given it structure and not just left it up to the player to describe their employment history, it assures that they have roughly equal chances for these skills to come into play.

And they do! I've got one PC who used to work as a stonecutter in a quarry. His character has been able to discern all kinds of things about how and when the passageways were dug in a mine the PC's recently travelled through. Obviously the same effect could be achieved without having an exact skill bonus determined. But I've learned that my group has the most fun when things like these are determined by rolling because with the chance for failure comes the greatest sense of reward.