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<blockquote data-quote="mlund" data-source="post: 5936094" data-attributes="member: 50304">The degree to which someone who is unskilled, moderately skilled, or professionally skilled can help in a task is completely situational. Someone bringing you food and coffee while you try to finish a paper overnight is helping even if they aren't literate. They aren't as helpful as a seasoned copy editor with a background in the subject matter.On the other hand, someone who is an expert can be a giant micro-managing pain in the behind that only makes a task harder - like a back-seat lock-picker.A player really has to come up with some answer for &quot;how&quot; they help with a task, and then the DM has to adjudicate the appropriate bonus (or penalty) based on the methodology.Trogdor the Illiterate is not going to help as a proof-reader. Any common person who uses his letters in his career can probably spell-check and proof-read a document. A veteran court scribe who works for the intended audience is going to be super-helpful (possibly to the point of making the check negligible).That's why you push it back on the Players by asking them, &quot;how?&quot;If they give you a plausible explanation give them their cookie and move on - after carefully taking note of whatever details in their explanation could prove useful to harken back to later (IE, &quot;my mother was a scribe,&quot; &quot;I once dated a barrister back in Wizard College,&quot; etc.) - Marty LundP.S. - I totally want a player to over-use the &quot;I dated a [profession title here] back in Wizard School,&quot; explanation in a game - just so I can start drawing NPCs from a pool of exes whenever it would be suitably dramatic and/or frightfully awkward. Bonus points if the PC's cavalier attitude towards NPCs implies a long line of disgruntled lovers. &quot;I have a lady in every port. That's why I stay at sea, friend.&quot; <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin&nbsp; &nbsp; :D"&nbsp; data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /> Good times!</blockquote>

[QUOTE="mlund, post: 5936094, member: 50304"] The degree to which someone who is unskilled, moderately skilled, or professionally skilled can help in a task is completely situational. Someone bringing you food and coffee while you try to finish a paper overnight is helping even if they aren't literate. They aren't as helpful as a seasoned copy editor with a background in the subject matter. On the other hand, someone who is an expert can be a giant micro-managing pain in the behind that only makes a task harder - like a back-seat lock-picker. A player really has to come up with some answer for "how" they help with a task, and then the DM has to adjudicate the appropriate bonus (or penalty) based on the methodology. Trogdor the Illiterate is not going to help as a proof-reader. Any common person who uses his letters in his career can probably spell-check and proof-read a document. A veteran court scribe who works for the intended audience is going to be super-helpful (possibly to the point of making the check negligible). That's why you push it back on the Players by asking them, "how?" If they give you a plausible explanation give them their cookie and move on - after carefully taking note of whatever details in their explanation could prove useful to harken back to later (IE, "my mother was a scribe," "I once dated a barrister back in Wizard College," etc.) - Marty Lund P.S. - I totally want a player to over-use the "I dated a [profession title here] back in Wizard School," explanation in a game - just so I can start drawing NPCs from a pool of exes whenever it would be suitably dramatic and/or frightfully awkward. Bonus points if the PC's cavalier attitude towards NPCs implies a long line of disgruntled lovers. "I have a lady in every port. That's why I stay at sea, friend." :D Good times! [/QUOTE]

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