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Message: <blockquote data-quote="painandgreed" data-source="post: 1876140" data-attributes="member: 24969">Remember, I’m assuming that NPCs operate by the same rules of experience and advancement as the PCs. Advanced training requires more ranks which require more levels. To get any substantial increase in ranks requires lots of levels due to “Class Skill Max Ranks” as per Table 3-2, PH p.22. If they’re getting these levels from someplace, what challenges are they overcoming to do so? If they’re simply doing their jobs and rising so high, then why aren’t other classes dropping their professions to take up what the commoners are doing? Treasure/income generated by such challenges should be equivalent to those performed by adventurers. As well as use of materials and dangers, otherwise they’d be different level of challenge. Yes, building stuff of various degrees of difficulty is required and thus will require more ranks or a higher bonus. What could be happening is that one commoner (or expert) ends up with a better bonus than others. He gains in reputation and therefore gets more and tougher jobs which results in more experience and more pay. Thus there is a commoner with an 18 Int who learns his craft and picks up skill focus bonus. His total bonus (including ranks) is +11 so he can hit a DC 20 by taking 10. With helpers and masterwork tools he can make 25. If he has a synergy bonus for certain tasks, say by having ranks in math, then he could make it higher. His high Int basically gives him four levels on the other commoners, which cuts out the vast majority of people in his field. Because of being better than everybody around, he gets more work and gets more done. He therefore gets more XP and becomes higher level, feeding his ranks and giving him more work and XP. Other excuses for such advancement could be family connections, access to resources or plain luck. Perhaps there is a fashion trend that a craftsman happens to have a synergy bonus with due to other skills. He’s now better and can get more work and thus gets better allowing him to hold that edge once the trend dies down.How can commoners make XP from practicing their trades without acting as a draw for PCs? We could give out XP by figuring their rate of production in GP and comparing Table 3-3, Treasure Values per Encounter, DMG p. 51. On the average, gaining money is going to have an equal challenge no matter how it’s done, otherwise everybody would go off to do it easy way. Making money the old fashioned way of practicing a trade has less risk  but takes much more time and effort. Mugging a CR 1 encounter in an alley and taking their stuff takes a few seconds while raising a 300 GP crop takes most of the year but we can assume the CR for both can be treated as equal. This basically comes up with the old 1GP = 1XP conversion from old D&D. Of course, this isn’t for treasure after the battle, but this is the battle itself. Assuming that raising such a crop is a shared enterprise between four people, his family or other farmers, our average farmer is gaining 65 XP a year. Which means that he gets to go to 2nd level in 15 years. An average expert or craftsman who is constantly busy should be getting 364 XP a year for advancement up to 2nd level in 2.7 years or so. This doesn’t include masterwork tools or helpers but it also doesn’t take into account time off, so I figure everything equals out. Considering that the number of 2nd levels is almost half that of our 1st levels, we’re either suffering around a 20%/year death rate among most our experts or they’re not at full capacity for work year round. Anyway, I don’t think 364 XP per year will tempt our PCs to quit adventuring (but may be tempting enough for a DM to give out as a reward for down time).Our prodigal craftsman with the 18 Int, saying he’s at full workload is going to be making 650 GP worth of stuff a year and therefore gaining 650 XP a year.  He goes up to second level in about a year and half and in three is 3rd level, about the time that his less skilled neighbor would be reaching 2nd with full work load (which he’s not getting because there is a better craftsman in town).  Still, our 19th level craftsman would still only be making 1014 GP a year using this system with helpers and masterwork tools. Which means that it will take him 19 years to reach 20th level. Not good for any race except for an elf. If we take your idea of different ‘name ranks’ with some ideas I had for feats, we might have a solution. Basically a series of feats that require the Skill Focus feat as a requirement. We’ll call these Apprentice, Journeyman, Master, and Grand Master as you’ve stated earlier. Apprentice requires Skill Focus in a Craft or Profession and 3rd class level to take.  Each higher level has a prerequisite of the one below it. Each feat gives an additional unnamed +5 bonus for that craft or profession. Then our 19th level expert gained the Grandmaster feat at 16th level and has a total income of almost 30 GP per week and is making 1534 XP per year, which is still going to take 12 years to go to 20th level. We still haven’t found a solution and may have created another problem. If we’re going to allow such feats to experts and commoners, can we allow such feats to PCs? Would it unbalance the game to let a PC have an additional +5 or +10 in a Craft or Profession? I don’t think the money is a problem, but what about using said skills. They may make stuff with them but even if a wizard took such in Alchemy, they’d be giving up the ability to make other magic items. A fighter who tool such feats in Profession (sailor) for a nautical campaign would be able to perform heroic acts on the high seas in commanding a ship but would suffer in the fighting ability. I really don’t think it would matter so long as you limited them to Crafts and Professions.Then we have the situation that a 19th level expert probably can’t get experience from normal work as he’d need at least a CR 12 to get any experience. The 19th level expert or even commoner will be also doing near heroic things. The 19th level commoner with Profession(sailor) will probably have worked his way up through the ranks, be captain of a chip and sailing it through the hardest voyages. Perhaps ferrying adventurers to remote parts of the world. The stonemason would be creating the largest and most impressive castles. The craftsmen will be creating items of unparalleled beauty and value. If everybody is pushing their skill limits we can expect that the average DC of the work done by a 19th level commoner or expert would be close to 55 with the above feats, or 35 as per RAW. Could be that pursuing work at high a DC would be considered a high CR.Let’s say that working a craft or profession for a week is a 1/10(DC-20) CR, allowing for fractional CR XP. This would allow those who work without stop to go up a level in a little over two years if they put a feat into Skill Focus and got more bonus either through assistants, masterwork tools, or an Int bonus. Your average commoner without a high Int or masterwork tools and assistants would rarely be able to work at that challenging of a level and rarely go up in level. A highly Int commoner with advantages such as masterwork tools could work up to 20th level in 50 years or so if he was constantly working at the best of his ability. But what about the PC who takes some downtime? An 18 Int 4th level wizard with max ranks skill focus in Alchemy decides to spend four weeks working while others are training. Working at a 24 DC that would be four CR 2/5 encounters putting him 480 XP for his troubles. A little unbalancing and enough reason for PCs to drop adventuring for regular work at least part of the time. We could make it so that it only counts as a CR if they are working for somebody else, but the PC might still be willing to do such. We could say that it only counts as a CR if they roll rather than take 10, effectively halving his successes and netting the wizard 240 XP for a month’s work. If we take away fractional CRs and say that such a work level must be maintained for 10 weeks to count as a CR. It still allows for commoners to take up such effort but puts PCs in a bind as they might not be able to spend two an half months doing such things at a time.</blockquote>

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