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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 4256447" data-attributes="member: 5143">Not if you put craft skills into the game.  Now I have to decide whether or not I want to be able to detect magic using Arcana and be able to make knowledge rolls about dragons to gain some insight into how to fight them when I come across them in an adventure...OR I can brew alcohol.  95% of players will choose the first option given that they are playing D&D and fighting dragons is likely happening more often than brewing alcohol.  However, the 5% who don't are just decreasing the power of their characters in most games.  I'd prefer not to give players to option to make really bad choices like that.No.  Needless symmetry that they are talking about is any time you feel the need to fill in a list of something just to "make sense" to the detriment of the game.Such as:"If we have a plane where there is one alignment of creature only...shouldn't there be a plane for EVERY alignment then?""If there are creatures who live in the LG plane that are unique to there, shouldn't there be creatures who are unique to every OTHER plane."I guess you could look at it like this...if you see a list of skills and feel the need to "complete" it with a bunch of skills that aren't going to be used 99% of the time, then yes...it is needless symmetry.But, yes...if you want a game that handles something other than killing things and taking their stuff from D&D, you ARE rather silly.  That's what the game does.Athletics is used to climb the wall to get to the treasure and Insight is used to figure out if that guy who told you there was nothing dangerous in the forest was lying.Where is Craft(Basketweaving) needed in the Temple of Elemental Evil, Against the Giants, Tomb of Horrors, Labyrinth of Madness, The Forge of Fury(despite the name) or Keep on the Shadowfell?Because the game focuses on adventuring.  In an average campaign, you may make 5 Athletics rolls a session as you jump over traps, climb up trees to get a better vantage point, and so on.  In the same campaign, you are likely to never need a basketweaving skill at all, nor ANY craft skill at all.Yes there is.  For the same reason you don't like the fact that there is no Craft skills, is the same reason I'd really hate it if they replaced combat with one skill roll.  The rules help determine the focus of the game.If a game was focusing on turning lumps of metal into weapons.  I'd get bored and want to quit the game.  On the other hand, this has never happened to me, because everyone I've met and played D&D with has had the same opinion of Weaponsmithing as a game: We'd rather be killing things and taking their stuff.If the game implied that Weaponsmithing was just as valid an adventure as the Dungeon of Dread...I'd have to change my opinion from "I like D&D" to "I like some D&D games as long as they are combat based."  Luckily, I haven't found the need to do that yet.I'm just not sure where everyone got the opinion that D&D should support all playstyles from.  It's been repeated over and over again on these boards, but I've never seen any reason to believe that needs to be true.You can't tell me that that is an invalid approach, nor that that is not D&D. Also, I'd really appreciate it if you didn't use the "that's not D&D" argument, because that'll lead us to a bad place of philosophical meanderings and discussions of just what, precisely, D&D is, and the nature of the game is such that pretty much everyone's definition is going to differ. I'm not trying to belittle you here, it's just that that discussion is going to be long, tedious, and probably not get us anywhere.Sure there is.  In the same way that you don't expect hockey to appeal to people who like racket sports or golf to appeal to speed freaks.  Sure, either one COULD be made to support the other.  You could give players in hockey the choice of a racket or stick and you could always have golfers play the game while in Indy cars.  You don't, because that's not what the game is about.  And the option to broaden the sports to new audiences might make the people who already liked the game stop watching.Having a skill called Brewing in the game implies that it might be useful in the game and that someone should probably take it as a skill.  It will cause DMs to add brewing challenges to the game because that's what they expect the game should be.  It might be a useless choice for the player to take in some games.  In other games, players who are bored out of their mind might still be forced into Brewing challenge #12 because the DM figures the skill should be useful.And that's your choice.  You don't like combat.  But when I first learned about D&D, back when I was 12, I was told that it was a game where you get to have cool powers and kill monsters.  I thought it was awesome and I still do.  However, everyone I've played D&D with, ever, has enjoyed combat to some extent.  That's the reason the vast majority of them show up to play at all.I don't want to have to sit down at my next D&D game and have the DM tell me that his session is going to be all about crafting birdhouses because that's what the new version of the game tells him it should be about.  After all, it MUST be, look at that 20 page list of craft skills with detailed rules on the types of things you can make and how long it takes!</blockquote>

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