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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Gryph" data-source="post: 6004606" data-attributes="member: 98071">If we want to shift the discussion this way then I agree with your point above. 3e and 4e (4e more than 3e) have rules for creating adventurers. They do, in fact, do a pretty poor job of creating a PC who mechanically reflects being an adventurer with great skill in some craft or profession. I think that even the 3e skill rules for such things were somewhat of a sop to what the 3e designers thought was a small share of the player base. The 4e designers clearly thought it was a really small part. Its an interesting game design problem though. If such skills or abilities use the same character build resources as other parts of the pc build rules, they are almost always going to be suboptimal choices because they are unlikely to effect play that often. Point buy systems like HERO and GURPS have rich systems for creating characters like this and the cost is still swapping adventuring effectiveness for what is often flavor. On the other hand a lot of folks seem to balk at something that looks handwavy (which I kinda of agree with most days). Like just writing master blacksmith as part of your pc background and then letting the player and dm negotiate what that means mechanically when it comes into play. Maybe the backgrounds should include something like a pool of player option "everyman" skills (to borrow HERO's term for it) that cost no build resources and give a trained trait but are restricted from the adventurer skill list. To represent expertise maybe they can be stacked.  For example, Bill the fighter grew up on a ranch he has everyman skills in Grooming, Farriering and Cattle Roping. If a situation arises that he needs to infiltrate the kings castle he can attempt to seek employement in the stables and his grooming and farrier skills can add to his diplomacy/disguise roll to convince the steward to hire him.  His brother Bob grew up on the same ranch but he was a rodeo rider so he puts 3 points of everyman skills into cattle roping. If they situation arises where lassoing something is an important part of the plan he will get a very large bonus to the roll.</blockquote>

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