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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6167998" data-attributes="member: 5143">I really dislike the game of mother-may-I that this results in.  It puts the onus on the DM to have to make constant rulings as well:"But I was a sailor!  I needed to be able to spot approaching ships well.  I should be good at spot.""Alright, fine you have that skill.""Also, I should have the skill to climb ropes, keep my balance, lift heavy things, avoid obstacles, jump from place to place, tie knots, survive in extreme heat or cold, go for days without food and water, know things about wildlife for when we traveled to strange islands, know about magic for the same reason, know about religion so I knew how to properly appease the gods, know about civilization and politics to know which ports to dock in and what the fees and laws would be, navigate, read maps, know a bunch of languages to decipher ancient treasure maps we discovered, negotiiate in order to get the best prices for the things we brought back, diplomacy in order to gain entrance to ports that might be hostile to us, leadership in order to inspire and hire crew members, woodcrafting skills to repair the ship, sewing skills to repair the sails, and likely a bunch more skills I can't think of now but I'm sure I'll be able to justify when they come up.""So, you're telling me that you basically have every skill in the book and then some because of your background?""Yeah...pretty much.""What about you, player 2?""I was a seamstress.  My skills consists of sewing and choosing proper fabrics.""Right, so if I want to make your backgrounds equal in value to the game, I now have to either say no to nearly every skill the sailor claims to have or make leaps of logic to try to justify seamstresses having a bunch of useful adventuring skills.  Or more likely a mix of both.  Now, how do I make a decision on WHICH skills to say no to.  Also, am I going to have to deal with complaining from the sailor as he feels I'm unfairly targeting him to restrict his skills?"I much prefer a system that says "This background gives you 3 skills...so do all the other ones."</blockquote>

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