Have "cross-class" skill deliniations finally been removed?

delericho said:
Otherwise, I could reliably provide assistance to a doctor performing brain surgery, despite my utter lack of medical training.

But isn't that what the people standing there wiping the surgeon's brow and handing her the scalpel when she asks are doing? Aid another actions. That's why they're there. Brain surgery is tough, and even the highly-trained need attendees there to aid another and get the doctor's skill check up. And surely the attendees are not trained in brain surgery (although they may have some training to know what tolls are what to hand the doctor when she asks).
 

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My guess is yes, but not in the way Emirikol probably wants. In SWSE you can't learn what would be cross-class skills in D&D at all.
 

I'm sure cross class is gone, as in SW Saga, but I've hear what I think is a good fix for it. Bonus trained skills from intelligence are not restricted to your class list. That makes things nicely flexible, I think. If you wanted to go a little further, you could let everyone have one non-class skill trained at level one.
 

beholdsa said:
But isn't that what the people standing there wiping the surgeon's brow and handing her the scalpel when she asks are doing? Aid another actions. That's why they're there. Brain surgery is tough, and even the highly-trained need attendees there to aid another and get the doctor's skill check up. And surely the attendees are not trained in brain surgery (although they may have some training to know what tolls are what to hand the doctor when she asks).

Hmm....yeah I'd say are definitely trained. I'm pretty sure if you took some random guy off the street and put him in the middle of an operating room he wouldn't be any help at all, regardless or how smart or insightful he might be.

As people say there are no cross class skills in SWS, however this actually in many ways works out to be more restrictive because there is no way to aquire non class skills at all (or at least not without first multiclassing and then spending a feat). Of course all your skills go up on their as you level so you can eventually get good at a skill despite not being trained at it.

If I were going to add a cross-class skill rule to SWS it would probably be letting people spend 2 skill training slots to gain one skill on another class list.
 

Counterspin said:
I'm sure cross class is gone, as in SW Saga, but I've hear what I think is a good fix for it. Bonus trained skills from intelligence are not restricted to your class list. That makes things nicely flexible, I think. If you wanted to go a little further, you could let everyone have one non-class skill trained at level one.

It also opens up some nice ground for a feat that adds, say, 3 extra skills to your class list.

Alternatively, some Saga players have suggested a houserule that allows you to use a character (rather than class) bonus feat to take Skill Training with any skill. Those are the feats you get at 1st level and every 3 levels thereafter. So if you want to have an additional trained skill at Level 1 that isn't on your class list, you can. It works kinda like the Force Training feat in that sense.

Lord only knows whether Fourth Edition will keep the character bonus feats at every 3rd level or make them more frequent.
 

Matthias said:
I like the distinction of class skills versus cross-class skills. It's called flavor.

Same thing for trained-only versus usable-untrained.

Would it be any fun if all classes had exactly the same strengths and weaknesses?

For the same reasons, the news of level-based BAB and save progressions being the same for all classes disturbs me.
There will still be class specific bonuses, but they will be static. (Which means multiclassing will work differently, too.)
Disadvantage: once (1st level) a Fighter, always a Fighter.
Advantage: Balancing across classes remains stable
 

delericho said:
I believe these are gone in Star Wars Saga Edition.

Quite the opposite. In Saga it is harder to train in a cross-class skill than in any edition of D&D, ever, with the possible exception of OD&D which AFAIK had no skills.
 

FadedC said:
Hmm....yeah I'd say are definitely trained. I'm pretty sure if you took some random guy off the street and put him in the middle of an operating room he wouldn't be any help at all, regardless or how smart or insightful he might be.

Exactly. I know exactly enough about medicine to know that the most use I can be to a brain surgeon is by being elsewhere. All I could be is a distraction.

Matthias said:
I like the distinction of class skills versus cross-class skills. It's called flavor.

"My Wizard grew up on a small island, and spent his youth on and around boats. His Wizard mentor was an Aquatic Elf, who insisted that lessons be conducted in his native waters. My character has been swimming all his life."

Oh, wait - Swim is cross-class for Wizards. Guess that flavour is invalid, then?

Matthias said:
Same thing for trained-only versus usable-untrained.

In the rules as they stand, any sufficiently Intelligent character can forge a sword, build a bridge, or brew up deadly poison. Any sufficiently Charismatic character can play the violin like a master. But no character, no matter how Dextrous, can turn a somersault without training. No character, no matter how Wise, can make a living as a butler without training.

And it gets worse. Want to track that band of fast-moving orcs, in ideal conditions, when they're not making any effort to disguise their passing? Well, unless you have the Track feat, you can forget it. If your buddy has fallen down six identical pit traps in the adventure so far, and you want to find the next one before it gets him, you'd better hope you're a Rogue, 'cos otherwise you have no chance.

The rules for trained and untrained uses are at present utterly inconsistent, and in many cases just stupid. At the very least, they need a significant overhaul. Frankly, although it damages realism a bit, I'd be inclined to just drop untrained uses, and model things that require specialist knowledge with a higher DC. (Unfortunately, this works better if skills don't automatically increase with level - so it works better with D&D 3.5e skill ranks than SW Saga skills.)

Matthias said:
Would it be any fun if all classes had exactly the same strengths and weaknesses?

Fortunately, not every Fighter is trained in every Fighter skill. Not every Wizard is trained in every Wizard skill. So this isn't actually a big issue - we'll still see almost every Wizard take Concentration and Knowledge:Arcana (or equivalents). This just opens up options, without leading to 'cookie-cutter' characters. (The trick, however, will be to make sure that skills are roughly equally desirable, or else everyone will take Tumble and Use Magic Device.)
 

delericho said:
"My Wizard grew up on a small island, and spent his youth on and around boats. His Wizard mentor was an Aquatic Elf, who insisted that lessons be conducted in his native waters. My character has been swimming all his life."

Oh, wait - Swim is cross-class for Wizards. Guess that flavour is invalid, then?

It isn't, but you can't expect that a wizard practices swimming all the time and studies spellcasting. Either, or but not both.
So either you make a full wizard with maxed cross class swim skill and accept that people who do more physical training because of their occupations will swim better than you or you multiclass (if startingat higher level) with expert and take swimming as one of your skills which resembles that you let your spellcasting study slide to learn swimming very well.
 

I for one hope that cross-class skills stick around, because if a Fighter ever unlocks a door in my campaign, the whole adventure will be immediately derailed and the universe will implode.
 

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