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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ccooke" data-source="post: 6236415" data-attributes="member: 6695890">You say you wouldn't expect a cleric to not know anything about religion... but Clerics only get to pick one skill from a set including religion. Sure, they might have chosen a background that includes religion, but there's no guarantee they have. It's completely valid to create a cleric that has no *special* training in religion.The only standard background that contains Religion is "Priest". That background gives you the "Temple services" trait, which means you could call upon any temple to ask for help. This would give you access to temple libraries (which will contain a number of Tomes dealing with religion - so auto-success on any DC up to the value of the tome). You'd also be able to call upon and request help from the most experienced priests in the temples, who may know the answers you seek themselves.The picture here is that *adventuring* clerics are not necessarily any more knowledgeable about religion than any other adventurers (they likely get a circumstance bonus about knowing things about their *own* deity, sure, but nothing special about comparative religion. If I were running this, I'd say that a cleric doesn't even need to roll to know doctrinal stuff about their own religion. Why would they?). Those who started out as priests can probably answer any basic to difficult question given a bit of time and the right location, because they've got a network of resources they can call on.Rogues, on the other hand... get to pick four skills. None of which are Religion. So a level 1 rogue can *only* beat a level 1 cleric in Religion *if they started out as a priest*. Not only that, but Rogues get the Expertise class feature at level 1. That allows them to pick up to four of their tools and skill proficiencies to get a +5 bonus with. A rogue who wants to be better than a cleric at religion needs to pick the Priest background *and* spend a very limited class feature on it. A cleric who wants to know about religion can pick it as a class skill. That's one resource, compared to the Rogue's two. Seems fair that the rogue should be better, having spent considerably more resources on *being* better.The same goes for any other thing the rogue can be "Better" at - they only get "free" choice of four of Acrobatics, Athletics, Deception, Insight, Intimidation, Perception, Performance, Persuasion, Search, Sleight of Hand and Stealth. If they want to "beat" any other class at Arcana, Nature, or something else they will have to select the right background and then *not* select a traditional Rogue skill for Expertise. This seems balanced, to me.</blockquote>

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