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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4530041" data-attributes="member: 710">Skills like Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate or Streetwise are not Dungeon-Crawling Skill. Nature and Perception are used for hunting or foraging. Focusing on your militia example: Question is - how much do you want a purely mechanical skill factor into "equipping and managing militia men", and how much do you want this to be defined by player skill (understanding of planning, tactics). You could have a "Leadership" skill, but doesn't it sound better to use a mix of Diplomacy, Intimidate, Insight or History here? In a way Leadership is a very narrowed down skill. But if you limit solving "leadership" problems to just one skill, this is now the solution to all Leadership problems. On the other hand, you wonder "why can't I use my Leadership skill to get the act of these Nobles together, and use it instead of Diplomacy or Insight? I should know about handling people, after all!  It's like "Profession (Sailor)": "Hey, I have Profession (Sailor), what's with this Use Rope stuff? Do I get it automatically, or do I have to take it extra?" The alternative is to just use the existing skills - combine Diplomacy, History, Intimidate and Insight, and if you want to "solve" a leadership situation, consider making it a skill challenge - or just pick one skill that fits the situation best. And this can be applied to many other aspects, too. For example, you can have a Tracking skill. But if you only have this, why don't you have a clue about hunting, stealthy movement or other perceptiony thingies? But you could also mix skills like Endurance, Perception and Nature to handle this (unfortunately, the system doesn't do this, Perception is used for tracking.)if you really wanted, you could also recreate "Craft" with a skill challenge like approach - using skills like History (traditional forging techniques perhaps?), Endurance (if you#re working metal, it sounds useful, for other stuff maybe not), Athletics (again, applying strength sounds useful for some crafts), Acrobatics (maybe more for pottery, weaving and arts?).The skill challenge system is the way to improve the entire skill system. You can mix skills and this can give the entire approach to the task or conflict you want to resolve a certain flavor. If you're preparing the militia, you can use a lot of Insight and Diplomacy and come off as the wise leader that makes his men trust and understand his plans, or you can use a lot of Intimidate and History, barking orders at your men and making them fear you more then their enemies, and relying on tactical and strategic traditions to formulate your battle plans. In a way, it is a mix of conflict and task resolution - the fact that you solved the challenge resolves the conflict about "are the men ready for the attack", while the individual check represent the smaller tasks you completed (and they tell us how, and this might inform later parts of the adventure - maybe your insightful commands have helped a spy, or your barking orders caused someone to defect to the enemies because he just couldn't stand it any longer. Or it's a plot hook for a later adventure...</blockquote>

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