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

[small pumpkin man]

Note about the crafting thing, I get the feeling they're trying to get rid of the whole "spend character resources on things which don't actually help you", currently it's implied that a Wizard who wants to make magic items just goes out and learns the appropriate ritual, without having to spend feats on it, hopefully crating will be the same, a fighter who wants to be able to make swords just goes out and learns to make swords, without having to spend one of his "trained skills" or skill points on it.

As for class skills, I do feel they work well, since I've always seen classes as professions, (somewhat of a throwback to Rolemaster I guess), while the Wizard who grew up on an island should have quite high swim, pretty much every other wizard shouldn't, but then again, we've always allowed anyone to take a feat like Cosmopolitan or Versatile for the cases where their class doesn't quite match their concept, and the base rules are severely lacking in that respect, I guess I have to say I like the idea of class skills, although I agree that the way they've been implemented isn't perfect.

 

[Li Shenron]

"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?

The game just needs the option of turning one cross-class skill into a class skill. There are feats to do that, or you can easily modify a class with a variant, for example based on region of origin. The core material doesn't have these, but that's because it assumes certain archetypes and cannot cover all the possible ideas. You can claim that you have all the rights to play an aquatic wizard on a small island, but not that it's such a strong archetype that it invalidates the whole skill system.

I think it's a bad example. Conversely I could just say that the rules allow for a Fighter who has lived all his life in the desert and has never seen a pool of water deeper than 1ft, to have full ranks in Swim and Skill Focus as well. I think you're just pretending too much for the rules to cover.

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.

What is the meaning of training? For me, a skill becomes trained when you get 1 rank, and you get 1 rank when you are trained. They are the same thing. You can turn a somersault when you can turn a somersault. You can work as a butler as soon as you work as a butler. At that point you have 1 rank. There is no butler who doesn't have 1 rank in "Butlery", and he gets that rank as soon as he starts to make a living with it.

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.

Search and Spot are available to anyone. Track and Trapfinding are just an improvement and open for better results. You can Search for tracking, you're just not as good as someone with Track. You can Spot a trapped terrain or Search for mundane traps without Trapfinding, and circumstances may lower the DC enough for everyone if it makes sense. All you need is in the rules.

 

[Carnivorous_Bean]

Personally, I like cross-class skills, particularly with feats to add exceptions (I can always train these skills because of my background).

Trained/untrained always made sense to me. I mean, if you have no training in smithing, how well are you going to make a sword? Or playing a lute?

There are lots of skills where even a minimum of training allows you to do things that an untrained person simply can't. And then there are skills that anyone can do (like Spot), but training enhances greatly.


I'm one of the conservatives on the skill issue, and am pretty happy with how skills work in 3.5e. I'm totally on board with combining skills, but some of the other indications make me nervous.

I'll agree with this. There are skills that anyone can try, like swimming, climbing, listening, etc., and there are ones that you just can't do without training and/or experience. I, for example, would fail miserably at any kind of riding skill check in real life .... I'm not sure I could even get up on a horse's back!!!!

 

[Will]

As an example, I am a very poor illustrator. But I took a night class for fun.

After ONE hour, what I was capable of drawing was ASTOUNDINGLY better; looking at the 'before' and 'after' looked like two different folks had done them.

I view that 1 rank to go from 'untrained' to 'trained' as similar; realistically, skills have a variety of very different 'training vs. capacity' curves. It is a reasonable simplification to divide them between 'untrained ok' and 'trained ok,' though it might be more accurate to have a variety of 'what 1 rank is worth' results.

Another approach would be something like trapfinding or a rogue's disable traps being usable on magical traps (only by rogues!), which is for each skill listing the scope of what can be done with ranks and without.

So, for example, a knowledge check with 0 ranks might be 'general knowledge on this topic, but nothing specific, no details about a monster beyond the name and general nature.'

The same would go, then, for butlering and all the rest; anything you could pick up from observation and chatting with people could be done untrained. It'd still require a judgment call, granted.