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.)