Craft/Profession

[FireLance]

Remove all methods of gaining plus'd items. Make Craft the only way to attain plus'd items, and item enhancements.

Useful yet?

You can always make Craft and Profession useful, and in a previous post, I mentioned that my group did just that in 3e. However, the fact that you design the rules in such a way as to make it useful still wouldn't change the fact that when the average person thinks of fantasy adventure, making stuff is usually not what they have in mind. If the rules are done well, experienced RPG players might appreciate it as a good sub-system or mini-game, but I still don't think it needs a lot of attention in the core rules.

 

[hong]

The killing of dudes and taking of their stuff does not have to be the core function of the game.

And yet it is. You may now launch a crusade about it in your sig.

It can be a core function, but it does not have to be the be-all and end-all of the game.

Nobody said it was the be-all and end-all of the game.

If it was, then why are you playing D&D, when Gauntlet or WoW offer much faster, more graphic alternatives?

Why are you playing D&D, when the SCA offers much more immersive opportunities for baking bread? They even have HAWT CHYXX0RS, or so I've heard.

Everyone being good at craft and profession kills off any kind of worldbuilding and versimilitude. You don't need training to make anything, you just need to kill enough things. Because that's totally sensical </sarcasm>.

Psst. Sensical is not a word.

I do not disagree that 3.5 did a rather crap job at presenting a crafting system; I won't argue that. But it was a step in the right direction.

It resulted in cruft. That cruft has now been excised.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The killing of dudes and taking of their stuff does not have to be the core function of the game. It can be a core function, but it does not have to be the be-all and end-all of the game. If it was, then why are you playing D&D, when Gauntlet or WoW offer much faster, more graphic alternatives?

My imagination usually has better graphics (even a bit blurrier) then my computer. Even with my new 22 Inch display and a SLI capable graphic cards with 700 MBs RAM. Oh, and it can do more then graphics, but can also create new stories. My computer can't do that...

 

[med stud]

If you want to emulate myths and such, that's cool, your style and mine differ, both are valid. It is not so much an issue when a game (as in, the DM and the players) treat the PCs as special snowflakes; it's when the system does it that irks me.

About Superman: I have never read Superman, I have only seen the movies. I guess I don't know enough about superheroes to comment about how lame he is compared to other superheroes.

Regarding the quote: It seems like our playstyles differ. I can understand that you feel miffed about the rules not catering to your style of play, but I'm happy as a clamp that they cater to mine

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Split them up. You have two separate pools from which to take fireball and phantom steed. Do the same with "know stuff" and brewing.

And if I had no other choice but to have crafting skills in the game, this is the option I'd take. I'd likely just allow every character to choose one background profession and give them rolls if that activity should ever come up in game as if they were trained. Although, I expect the activities to come up never whether I give them the option to choose or not.

My understanding of the 4e understanding of needless symmetry is that it's needless if it isn't awesomesauce and/or related to combat.

Then you have an incorrect understanding. It's always been referring to feeling the need to complete something that doesn't need to be completed. Like "We need an Martial Controller...or the table won't be complete!" or "We need Smoke Elementals, because EVERY elemental plane needs a type of elemental."

If you use all of the material in all the books 99% of the time, you impress me, good sir.

When was the last time you used an athach? An achaierai? An allip? An assassin vine?

Each about 2 or 3 more times often than anyone has made a craft check.n In that I've used each of them about 2 or 3 times. And no one has ever made a craft check.

Now you're being silly. Because if I want to play a game where I kill things and take their stuff, and that's the be-all end-all, I might as well go play gauntlet.

Only one attack button in Gauntlet. I like more variety in my killing things and taking their stuff. Plus, I think the Red Wizard is bulimic, he always seems to need food badly.

And brewing is used for celebrating after the fact. And craft (blacksmithing) for making the weapons you use to kill the dudes guarding the treasure.

Yep, that's what the NPCs are for...to make the alcohol for the PCs to drink and making the weapons for the PCs to buy. The PCs do heroic stuff.

Why does climbing a tree require a check?

When it is important to the story if you can spot the monsters you are following before they get out of sight.

If the system adequately covers several areas of gameplay - combat, social encounters, crafting - and covers each of them in roughly the same level of detail, with each afforded the same level of options, then the focus of the game can be any of them or all of them. Having crafting rules at all doesn't detract from your 300 pages of teh combat.

It does when I make up a character good at combat only to sit down and play a game based on basketweaving. I would like the game to focus on one thing that it does really well so all players and the DM have similar expectations about the game.

Why do I have to sleep through an entire session of basketweaving while another player sleeps through a session of combat when I could have 2 games: one on basketweaving and one on combat and I can play the basketweaving one if I like basketweaving and the combat one if I like combat. Therefore, I know that I'll have like minded players sitting at the table with me when I play my game. Then no one at the table has to sleep through sessions.

Hey, what do you know! We said the same thing, and even worded it exactly the same!

Damn...and I just applied for a position searching through books for errata. Now my editing skills are in question.

D&D doesn't have to be a specific sport. It can be the whole of the field of sports, and you could pick the specific sports you like and only pay attention to them. You don't have to exclude the racing fans just because you hate it. Their likes are just as valid as yours.

Not when I'm forced to sit around and watch racing for 4 hours when I don't like it. I'd prefer to find a bunch of people who like hockey and watch it with them once a week rather than being forced to watch tennis one week, soccer the next, racing the next, in order to be able to watch hockey the week after that.

I don't want to sit down at my next D&D game and have the DM tell me that his session is going to be all about killing dudes and taking their stuff, and that we can't go and do any non-killing character-related stuff because there aren't rules for it, so we can't do them.

Heh, not sure you'd like my games. I know I had one player request to have an NPC craft a magic item for him and the entire campaign was over in 2 weeks of game time after that. The item took 3 weeks to craft. They had gained 5 levels in those 2 weeks and the item wasn't even useful for him anymore.

Plus, I never said I wouldn't allow the activities. I just like to keep them behind the scenes and out of the way. I don't have a problem with a 30 second long "forging montage" in my Conan movie, but it better not have 30 minutes of watching Conan shape the hilt.

You want to make a sword? Sure, you can do that. It costs about the same as a sword from the book in materials and takes a couple of days to finish. Unless you want to buy one for the same price from the store. They have one right away.

Oh, and there's going to be an athach, because it's in the book, and there's no reason not to use it.

Yeah, but fighting an athach is heroic, exciting, dramatic, prestigious, and so on. Having one in the book gives my players surprise and suspense if they've never seen it as they try to figure out what powers it might have or what it might do next.

 

[med stud]

My imagination usually has better graphics (even a bit blurrier) then my computer. Even with my new 22 Inch display and a SLI capable graphic cards with 700 MBs RAM. Oh, and it can do more then graphics, but can also create new stories. My computer can't do that...

The graphics are one thing, what makes TT RPGs far superior to CRPGs is the AI IMO. It takes about 20 minutes to figure out how you outsmart the AI, then the game often becomes stale. Opponents ran by a human brain? That's challenges for a life time, right there

 

[GnomeWorks]

And yet it is. You may now launch a crusade about it in your sig.

And again, it doesn't have to be.

Nobody said it was the be-all and end-all of the game.

Then why insist so much that, as a player in this game, I should just go kill things?

Why are you playing D&D, when the SCA offers much more immersive opportunities for baking bread? They even have HAWT CHYXX0RS, or so I've heard.

...Scottish Canoe Association?

Psst. Sensical is not a word.

But nonsensical is. Sensical not being a sensical word is nonsensical to me.

It resulted in cruft. That cruft has now been excised.

Which was foolish, since it only needed a bit more expanding upon in order to be useful. Some ideas are worth working on, even if you screw it up a few times in the process.

 

[hong]

And again, it doesn't have to be.

Feel free to launch a crusade about it in your sig.

Then why insist so much that, as a player in this game, I should just go kill things?

Because I am concerned for your wellbeing in the way that you seem not to be having fun. Aren't you lucky?

...Scottish Canoe Association?

Of course.

But nonsensical is. Sensical not being a sensical word is nonsensical to me.

Feel free to launch a crusade about this in your sig as well.

Which was foolish, since it only needed a bit more expanding upon in order to be useful. Some ideas are worth working on, even if you screw it up a few times in the process.

Feel free to build your own RPG where you will expand and expound on the rules for baking bread.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Throw in the hunt for materials to work with. You need to gather or purchase iron and wood and such to make mundane items, while more fantastical items require more fantastical materials: a weapon that freezes and deals cold damage requires an alchemical paste made from flowers that only grow in the heart of winter in the far north, etc etc.

When do I need Craft or Profession Skills for a treasure hunt?

Or are they there to create a possible anticlimax?
"Wow, now that you have found all these parts for a great weapon, make your Craft Weapon Smithing roll" "Dang! A natural 2! Does a 19 suffice?" "Nope." "Ah well, all those adventuring for nothing..."

 

[med stud]

While I do certainly hope that for a version of rituals that would closely that would draw upon a smith's skill and exotic components to craft unique and interesting items in a reasonably balanced way.

You know what is boring, crafting horseshoes. You know what isn't, at least in my opinion, forging a sword of legend from steel drawn from the darkest heart of a mad earth elemental and cooled in the tears on an asimon, and then riding into battle to butcher demons. That seems neat for me.

And for those who find crafting boring, let me ask about slightly more combat related topics. What about engineering, combat and otherwise? Say we want to build a terbuchet or other siege weapons. What about military tactics and manuvering? Say the characters need to defend a town from marading monsters, but don't know where they are? Can they build defenses?

What about gnomish inventions or other slightly higher bits of science? What if a character wants to make nonmagical devices?

Smithing a sword of legend can be nice, but then it will happen off screen or as a dramatic passage. Rolling five Craft-rolls in a row is out. Getting the materials? That's OK, it's standard adventuring-stuff. The smithing itself? Off screen.

If the PCs want to build a catapult it comes down to a skill challenge. Military tactics and stuff, in the case they came up, would be a matter of untrained skill checks. This is so that any PC could bring up a bunch of armed men and lead them to battle without the player going "but I don't have the skills for this!" Same thing with building defenses, if the players have good ideas, let them go at it. Maybe a warlord would be automatically considered trained in those cases.