Craft/Profession

[ProfessorCirno]

O RLY?

Are you serious?

Looks like I really don't have a response. Oh, waith, I know! I refuse to acknowledge you further

Hmmmm

 

[GnomeWorks]

You are being deliberately obtuse now and I refuse to acknowledge you further

Blame hong, he started it.

 

[med stud]

If you want to have professions as skills, it's dead easy to add them: Make them skills to be trained which add +5 to the relevant ability! Give one of them as a free trained skill at char-gen! Then go knock yourself out with brewing contests to impress dwarven kings.

By adding those skills yourself you can be sure to make them relevant. Profession is a hit or miss skill in a way that few other skills are. Either you are a DM that use profession skills like teamster all the time or you are a DM that glosses over when the PCs are driving a carriage. Skills like Athletics or Arcane are skills that are bound to come up, especially now that magic is limited.

I think of skills like Craft or Profession as skills that cater to the minority and as such I think the minority can come up with their own rules for it instead of the majority having to deal with useless pages in their books.

 

[theNater]

O RLY? Because I'm pretty sure that I just described D&D, except that I switched the mechanics combat resolution with skill resolution and vice-versa. Seems like a totally valid approach to me.

I think you've just solved it!

Reaping Strike Farmer craft 1
By toiling in the fields, you manage to coax them to productivity even in the worst conditions.
At-Will * Martial, Tool
Standard Action Melee tool
Target: One field
Attack: Con vs. Weather
Hit: 2d6 + con bushels.
Miss: con bushels.

 

[GnomeWorks]

The reason why those skills got cut, and not ones like Athletics and Acrobatics is because they are much more necessary and are what I would view as "active skills".

...and crafting a sword isn't an active skill? Maybe the rest of your post will make this term more clear, because that seems an awkward nomer.

D&D is first and foremost a adventuring game, where players go off on stories and adventures. Certain skills are necessary to enable this such as Acrobatics and Athletics, since they are the more active and specific to the tasks at hand, and are more active in the daily workings of a person.

An adventuring game, sure. What that entails could be any number of things. Acrobatics isn't necessary to go traipsing about the wilderness. Athletics, maybe.

Skills such as Profession and Craft, are more rare and are not as active for the daily workings of an adventurer. They also are covered by other Skills. The other Skills have very specific focus, they actively cover and perform a wide range of things within their respective category.

Whose fault is that, that they're not used more often?

As an example: Take IH. Implement a modified magic item system, in which you can use the craft (skill) rules to make plus'd items. Require specific materials (mundane or exotic) to craft items, and abstract the materials required (ie, 3 units of iron to make a sword). You now have a system in which craft skills are totally valid and totally useful.

Profession and Craft, are not Skills that have a specific focus that actively covers and performs a wide range of things in a specific category. Since what they do are already done by the other Skills, they become in essence part of those other Skills, or divided amongst those Skills.

Arcana, Nature, History, and I'm sure a few others could easily be put into the "Knowing Stuff" skill.

Profession, you may have an actual argument for; I've never really been sure what, exactly that one's useful for (aside from breaking the wealth guidelines). Craft, however, is a particular skill that doesn't really fall anywhere else.

A Farmer for instance, would be divided amongst; Athletics, Endurance and Nature.

I might disagree with your chosen skills, but that's not your point. I see where you're going here.

A Blacksmith; Athletics, Endurance and perhaps History or Religion to showcase through what way he was taught.

And I still don't think that works. None of those skills says, "Hey, you can make stuff real good now, mkay?"

As you can see from these examples, Professions and Crafts, do a very specific thing but the focus that they have is already covered by other Skills that perform a wider range of tasks, but with a central focus.

I think I'm going to use the "Know Stuff" skill.

Thus why they aren't necessary, since their already covered.

Yep. Why have arcana, nature, history, and all that other nonsense, when you can cover it all with "know stuff"?

I'm really not trying to be insulting here, but can you seriously not roleplay without a book telling you how to do it? Do you not allow your PCs to anything in which they lack a stat for? Because that would be a whole mess of things.

I am infuriated by your insinuation that I am a robotic slave to the written works of dudes in Seattle or wherever the spooky wizard on the coast dwells. Surely their writ is law, and none else shall be spoken!

Mechanics support the fluff. If there are no mechanics, the fluff is (largely) meaningless. Who cares if you're the "best dwarven brewer evar", if there are no mechanics to back up that claim? It's meaningless. That statement is incomprehensible to the system - it doesn't even rise to the level of true or false. The system can't parse it, and that's the issue I take with it.

 

[GnomeWorks]

Reaping Strike Farmer craft 1
By toiling in the fields, you manage to coax them to productivity even in the worst conditions.
At-Will * Martial, Tool
Standard Action Melee tool
Target: One field
Attack: Con vs. Weather
Hit: 2d6 + con bushels.
Miss: con bushels.

You, sir, have made my evening.

 

[hectorse]

mechanics support the fluff?

Really, now?...

 

[GnomeWorks]

mechanics support the fluff?

Really, now?...

You're doing a bad job of ignoring me.

 

[GnomeWorks]

I think of skills like Craft or Profession as skills that cater to the minority and as such I think the minority can come up with their own rules for it instead of the majority having to deal with useless pages in their books.

Your 300 pages of combat rules are useless to me, since it should just be opposed rolls, anyway.

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

If you want to have professions as skills, it's dead easy to add them: Make them skills to be trained which add +5 to the relevant ability! Give one of them as a free trained skill at char-gen! Then go knock yourself out with brewing contests to impress dwarven kings.

See I like the idea of background trained skills just fine. Seems very 4E, but...

a.) I really agree with Mearls I don't want them in core because I don't want game writers using such overly specific features in their products. It should be a part of the DM to table contract not the WotC to Players and Writers contract.

b.) I do think Craft and Profession skills are stupid swingy. They're spotlights when I'm trying to make an ensemble chorus. If someone takes Trained Blacksmithing it's either worth everything or nothing depending on his proximity to the forge and I'm supposed to reward this character for something that essentially works as an exploit. If the community of players were larger as with WoW there would be a sweet economy of crafting, but it's not it's - Pelor Willing - five gals n guys and sweet little ole me.

Profession skills are even worse:

I spent loads of training slots to have a great suite of skills for just this court room situation!

I took one slot and spent it on Profession: Peerless Rhetorician.

It's prone to spotlightishnss and I don't like spotlights. If you're players can handle it that's cool. I just think it might be a headache for me.

Subtler effects seem universally fine. Circumstance bonuses seem like a way to handle this that reflects a flavorful amount of investment rather than a selfish and permanent investment.

Recipes would be a third option. Something along the line of rituals. Or even Loresheets from Weapons of the Gods. If the whole party helps you acquire the recipe and tech for building Dromons of the Golden Horn once you've taken the Carpentry feat? That's actually pretty fantastic.