NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Epic Meepo" data-source="post: 9384144" data-attributes="member: 57073">You claim someone of noble birth "has greater learning" than an urchin, then you quote a description of the urchin background which literally says "you learned to provide for yourself." That description of the urchin calls out learning as an important milestone in the life of an urchin. And the urchin has learned something the wealthy noble may not have learned at all.I believe the disconnect we're having involves the definition of "learning." You cite math, science, and magic as examples of things urchins would have little chance to learn*. But math, science, and magic are all part of the Arcana skill, and the Arcana skill is not a placeholder for a character's Intelligence score. A character can have 20 Intelligence without ever acquiring proficiency in Arcana.An urchin can learn things that have nothing to do with Arcana, and there's no reason (other than arbitrary game rules) they shouldn't have the potential to be just as capable in their non-scholarly field of knowledge as a mathematician is in theirs. I don't see any reason to believe book learning is the only kind of life experience that hones the ability to recall and analyze knowledge.Now, I understand why people might disagree with me. It doesn't bother me that other people, in general, have a different interpretation of the urchin background. In the context of this thread's topic, what annoys me is WotC enforcing that one specific narrative by adding arbitrary restrictions that didn't exist in 2014. Note that a 2014 character with the urchin background could have the same Intelligence as a 2014 character of the same species with the noble background. The disparity in Intelligence between (renamed) urchins and nobles is a new, unnecessary restriction.* As an aside, I've gamed with and had philosophical conversations with someone who earned a college degree in physics while living on the street, with no guaranteed place to sleep and no guaranteed source of food. As a result, there is nothing you can say to convince me a person living on the street, with no support network, cannot learn as much as a wealthy person with a private tutor. I have been shown incontrovertible evidence to the contrary.</blockquote>

Verification