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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Matthias" data-source="post: 5749653" data-attributes="member: 3625">I used the term 'brewing' instead of 'chemistry' because the latter has a more modern connotation. The same for the term 'textiles'.Studying the Craft skill subtypes, I got the impression that they often aimed to refer simply to the end product that is produced (rather than dig up the sometimes quaint and obscure historical terms for the craftsmen who made such things). Chief existing examples are Armor, Locks, Traps, and Weapons. I suppose it seems redundant to say Craft: locksmithing or Craft: shipbuilding because we are already aware of the context.In other cases, the original writers referred to the base material that was used to make a wide variety of items, frex: cloth, glass, leather.Concerning creating the Brewing subtype, I felt there needed to be a Craft subtype to cover any primitive chemistry that didn't result in a (sometimes fantastical) alchemical substance or item, and which didn't result in a food or drink of some kind (which is covered by Cooking, a skill that also encompasses knowledge of making alcoholic beverages of various kinds, such as that practiced by the historical 'brewer' and 'vintner' professions).Within the Craft subtypes, as within the non-Craft skills, there is a constant balance between realism and abstraction. Wherever we have multiple separate but related skills instead of a single abstract one, there is at work a perception that the divided skills represent 'flavor' that's important enough to the underlying genre and playing style of the game that greater focus is needed for these individual fields of expertise. Thus we have special skills like Spellcraft and Use Magic Device or Handle Animal and Survival in addition to the broader fields of Knowledge: Arcana or Knowledge: Nature. While it probably wouldn't hurt Pathfinder to switch over to how d20 Modern does its Craft skills, we would lose some of that 'flavor' that comes from having separate Traps and Locks skills instead of the more abstract Craft: Mechanical skill that d20 Modern has.</blockquote>

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