Creating Mundane Items

[MaelStorm]

There is very important distinction here. 4E is about the things you want to tell. It has the _rules_ for combat and adventuring. And it doesn't want you to make a tradeoffs between those aspects and the aspects you want to focus on.

In previous editions, to be a blacksmith, you had to give up on your combat/adventuring power. It was clearly suboptimal choice from game perspective. Just because system for combat and mundane activities was shared, you had to do the tradeoffs here. In some cases it was leading to name calling (every group had a certain level of expected 'gimpiness', if you ignored that, you were not 'roleplaying' enough).

In 4e, idea is that you create your character to be valid character in combat and when going on adventures. This point is self-contained system, classes are balanced against each other. Roleplaying/flavor/mundane part is separate part of the system. Nobody requires you to gimp your character at creation to support your backstory. We still don't know the exact rules, but we know for sure that they are outside of basic spell/feat/skill world.

To be honest - there is no requirement for the system for creating a horseshoe. You just know how to do it, or not. If somebody feels like being master-blacksmith and he can back up it with a nice story, let him do it. Don't check his Wisdom modifier against DC of material with modifiers for the tools he is using. Leave it in roleplaying layer.

I would say that by having less rules about it, 4e can support this aspect of play a lot better. Rule combat without rules may mean chaos, milking a cow without a rules is just milking a cow. I'm coming from city and I cannot do it, but if somebody will show me how, I'll learn in 15 minutes. No need to kill 100 orcs to gain a level so I can spend precious skill point on 'rural activities' and get all the other useless pieces of knowledge at the same time (I will refuse to kill chickens by breaking their necks).

If not for the combat, we would not need a system at all. So leave the system in combat and enjoy pure RPG outside of it.

I agree that a trade off between mundane skills over adventuring skills is a big disadvantage. And it need a separate mechanic for this. Does the character as a social status? Can he use it to help is group? What I want is not in the same category as a guy who refuse to kill chicken by breaking their necks, which I agree is pure fluff.

 

[MaelStorm]

I don't want to derail this thread on other issues. I'll tackle my problems by incorporating a flavor from other game systems. As Keith Baker said in his last post on the "Keith Baker on 4E" thread. In essence D&D is all about playing a Dwarf Fighter. I'm going to have to crossover D&D with other game systems and bingo! But it's easier said than done.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I don't want to derail this thread on other issues. I'll tackle my problems by incorporating a flavor from other game systems. As Keith Baker said in his last post on the "Keith Baker on 4E" thread. In essence D&D is all about playing a Dwarf Fighter. I'm going to have to crossover D&D with other game systems and bingo! But it's easier said than done.

If you do go to 4e just add back in a small subset of secondary skills as an adjunct to the existing set and give a small second skill training pool to choose from. It's what I did in 3e and it seems to work fine so far.

 

[MaelStorm]

If you do go to 4e just add back in a small subset of secondary skills as an adjunct to the existing set and give a small second skill training pool to choose from. It's what I did in 3e and it seems to work fine so far.

Exactly what I'm planning to do. But it's going to be more than just for secondary skills, I want, wealth level, social and psychological advantages and disadvantages, quirks, talents, etc, and all the shenanigans that D&D don't care that much.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

If you read the designers' blogs, or look at their resumés, you'll note that the guys who wrote the D&D core rules have experience playing and designing tons and tons of systems, all designed for a number of different things. These guys looked at D&D and said, "What is the core D&D experience, and how can we distill that into an excellent game?" The result is a game that is substantially geared toward sending troupes of adventurers into dangerous environments for fun and profit. In the process, they excised the extraneous bits that don't fit that ideal, and that includes rules for mundane crafting. A good thing, in my opinion.

It's problematic for D&D that it needs to be all things to all people, and 3e did far too much of it. As a DM, I don't want crafting rules muddling up my D&D, because that's not why I play D&D. I'd no sooner expect D&D to support mundane crafting--and make it fun--than I'd expect D&D to let me play a Brujah vampire trapsing about in modern-day Los Angeles. I'll play D&D for fantasy adventuring, and I'll play World of Darkness for dark mystery. If I want a supremely high-powered game, I'll play Nobilis or Exalted. If I want a game that lets me run anything and everything, I'll pick up Risus or GURPS.

My point here is this: a D&D game should be about a group of adventurers of various classes going to dangerous places and fighting monsters in a fantasy setting. I'd rather have D&D do that one thing really well, and I'll play a different game when I want something else. So far, it looks like the designers agree.

 

[kennew142]

I am one of those who doesn't want mechanics for crafting or professions. We are apparently the majority, but that doesn't help when you want something to be included in the game and it isn't. There have been a few pretty good systems in these forums that can easily be house ruled into the 4e game. Since they are separate systems, they can be added without changing any of the RAW (they are extras, not replacements).

I don't like crafting and profession rules for many reasons.

1) I don't like characters getting better at mundane (non-adventuring) skills by virtue of killing monsters and taking their stuff.

2) In 3e characters were forced to make a choice between taking adventuring skills and skills that reflect a background. All backgrounds used the skill system in some way, and all skills shared the same pool of skill ranks.

3) It has been my experience that characters had more detailed backgrounds in earlier editions of D&D, before combat related abilities (tumble, spot, etc...) began competing with character background. In most 1e and 2e campaigns I ran or played in, characters had very detailed backgrounds that came into play often in RP situations. I had toyed with the idea (before the 4e announcement) of giving every character 4 ranks in the appropriate craft and/or profession skills to reflect their background, and then not allowing them to increase the ranks through adventure, but rather through training and time spent practicing the skills. I will likely do something similar in 4e, but won't call it skill points.

4) I don't think an adventurer should be a mastercrafter. Becoming a skilled master requires years of hard work and discipline, not just practicing a few days or weeks between adventuring. Furthermore, how did the character spent the time and effort to become a grandmaster glass blower? Didn't all that weapon or spell training get in the way? Characters in my games often have a lot of downtime between adventures. Some of them like to idle the time away drinking, gambling and wenching. Others hold down real jobs. But none of the players has ever made the argument that they should be as good a crafter/professional as someone who spends all of their time doing the same job.

One of my characters in 3e taught at Morgrave University, but he was actually one of those brilliant professors who had no pedagogical skills at all. We had many scenes with hapless students who had no choice but to seek help from Professor Maximus Quan, even when it was the last thing in the world they wanted to do. My upcoming 4e game will include one character who is a pastry chef. Because he was trained in the family business, he is a competent maker of fine pastries himself. The player understands that his older brother (less heroic in every way mechanically enumerated) will always be a better pastry chef than he is. That won't stop him from using his skills in RP situations (to chat up a cook, to disguise himself and get a job in someone's kitchens, to make a gift for someone special, etc....)

I think most of us would agree that these sorts of backgrounds are important and desirable aspects of the characters. What we disagree on is the necessity of mechanics to model them. I fall firmly in the camp of those who believe that the mechanics can impede the RP, thwarting the very aspect they are intended to illuminate.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

And what happens when a player wants to build a fortification? Or for that matter when they have to mine their way into an ancient tomb to rob liberate its treasures from the arch-lich? Or when they've been beaten and left for dead on another plane and need to slap together some improvised weapons quickly. Without a set of rules to adjudicate how competent they are at such things there's nothing to judge these sort of tasks by. Until you at least have a baseline for comparison it's pure random fiat, there's nothing to differentiate digging a ditch around the castle from digging a ditch to the elemental chaos.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

And what happens when a player wants to build a fortification? Or for that matter when they have to mine their way into an ancient tomb to rob liberate its treasures from the arch-lich? Or when they've been beaten and left for dead on another plane and need to slap together some improvised weapons quickly. Without a set of rules to adjudicate how competent they are at such things there's nothing to judge these sort of tasks by. Until you at least have a baseline for comparison it's pure random fiat, there's nothing to differentiate digging a ditch around the castle from digging a ditch to the elemental chaos.

What happens when a player wants to build a fortification? The same thing that happens when a player's character wants to aim for his enemy's knees, perform surgery, drink so much alcohol that it impairs his senses, open a business, troll a lake, write a novel, teach another character a sword-fighting style, leave a trail of bread crumbs leading back to his tent, or make a few gold pieces chilling people's beers in the pub with a ray of frost.

This is a game of make-believe, and if you aren't comfortable with making things up on the fly, you'll have to stick to activities that are clearly spelled out in the rulebooks. The book can only contain so many pages of rules before it's physically difficult to carry the requisite materials around. Somewhere before that point, the game will have so many rules that it's an exercise in masochism to try to run the thing. And somewhere before that point, you'll reach a depth in the rules that gives you mechanics for everything the game should be doing, and very broad guidelines for improvising everything else. Running 3.5, adhering to every rule for all the most mundane activities, brings you to the level of "physically difficult to carry," and well beyond the point of masochism. If I understand the designers' commentary correctly, and they're serious about making an elegant system, then 4th edition will fall into that third category, maintaining deep, useful rules for running a group of adventurers around in a fantasy setting while providing guidelines for improvising the rest.

 

[Xethreau]

Perhaps you can create items based on various skill checks. For example, Nature might provide you with the knowlage of how to make hunting bows, or Theivery might teach you how to make theives tools and knives. Religeon might teach you how to make your god's favored weapon, and arcana obviously teaches you how to write and bind books.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I am entirely comfortable making things up on the fly. The problem is when they make that the entirety of an entire subset of the rules WHY SHOULD I PAY THEM TO TELL ME TO DO THE WORK. Those sort of questions can be important, how long does it take the armorers to equip that army the PCs have set in motion? Can the bard sing a song so beautiful it makes the goddess of love weep and give them a vital artifact? They may not be combat tasks but they still impact the setting and campaign.