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!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5936576" data-attributes="member: 42582">Good question.I'm not sure about the idiot. But it seems that skills give a +3 bonus - so a character with a 12 INT plus Forbidden Law +3 will be as good as the INT 18 sage, and better than the INT 16 sage.I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "solving problems with roleplaying", but one approach to this, as far as lore is concerned, is to bring backgrounds into play more fully.Page 1 of the DM's Guidelines for the playtest talks about deeming certain tasks impossible. It seems open to the GM to say that a certain piece of Forbidden Lore - say, the secret name of the leader of a particular dark cult - cannot be known except by someone who has read the cult's writings. And then, unless you have a background that let's you stipulate that your PC has read those writings (eg because it gives you training in Forbidden Lore) your PC will actually have to discover the writings in the course of play in order to be given a chance to make a check and work through them to extract the secret name.The general idea is to use backgrounds and training to do more than just provide bonuses - they open up options that other characters can only open up by actually undergoing a certain experience in the course of play.Ideally, this would sit within a broader discussion of when to say yes, when to say no, when to say "roll the dice", and how much narrative freedom the players have in respect of all of this. The 4e DMGs have a bit to say about this, but I don't think it's all that strong. At least as far as lore skills are concerned, I think the advice on GMing "Wises" (= Lore) skills in the Burning Wheel Adventure Burner is pretty good, and could usefully be cribbed by the WotC designers.</blockquote>

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