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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4109126" data-attributes="member: 4937">I guess it depends on how much this bothers you.  When you put it like that, I realize that I've been solving the same problem in a different way.  I added to each of the NPC classes the ability to gain 'non-heroic experience' by doing mundane tasks (manual labor in the case of the commoner, for example) which could only be used to gain additional levels in that NPC class.  It didn't really have any importance from the stand point of the players, but it systemize the creation of NPCs.  Likewise, I had a advantage/disadvantage system for character creation, and some of the disadvantages (like 'Noncombatant') were mostly things that helped me create the NPC's I wanted.  A civilized, noncombatant level 20 commoner was really only about CR3 (not that any civilized, noncombatant commoner could necessrily reach level 20). But it never really bothered me that important named craftsman NPC's, or even just random lvl3 experts had some minimal and 'unexpected' resources in a fight.  It fits stories, where the butler, the maid, the cook, the old-shopkeeper, and even the grandama all turn out to be able to give a good accounting of themselves defend thier domain against at least the minion sort of ruffain.  If an expert 5 happened to have 18 hp, so what?  He'd still probably be no real contest to even a level 1 or level 2 PC.  So I never felt the need to just randomly assign skills to a low level NPC, not that I wouldn't have been willing to break the rules had I had the need.Again, that doesn't bother me either.  The cooks that said rogue or fighter are competing against cook 6-10 hours a day, every day, for 20 years.  So of course they can't cook like an actual Cook.  The cook can't fight like an actual Fighter.  If the fighter decides to take some time off from fighter-training to spend time cooking, well then of course some other skill is going to slightly suffer compared to the fighter that does nothing but concentrate on his class training. If the fact that I had no cooking rogue or fighter smith bothered me, I'd give free craft skill points at character creation to represent the characters background before they became an adventurer.   But I did as I noted feel the need to 'silo', in as much as I wanted to make sure that experience at fighting led to skill at fighting, and experience at cooking led to cooking skill.  In fact, if I new of an elegant way to do it, I'd try to silo experience in a skill to that skill even more strongly.   I still think the old Chaoism CoC rules for gaining skill are the most elegant of any system.Yes.  Anything that makes me question the way I'm doing things is interesting.  I do like the idea that you could make skills more hierarchical.</blockquote>

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