Houserule: Non Adventuring Skills

[Cadfan]

One of the things I liked about 3e was that you could give your character skills in Profession: Undertaker (or whatever) and have it actually reflected in the character's statistics, along with an actual mechanism for using the profession.

One of the things I hated about 3e was that if you wanted to give your character skills in Profession: Trial Lawyer, you had to give up skill points in Hide, Spot, or Open Locks. You know, the skills you were going to actually use as an adventurer, and which counted as part of your character's potency in the campaign.

Using 4e lingo, it seemed like poor siloing to me. I wanted to be able to give my characters ranks in weird professions or crafts, but I didn't want to do so if that choice made my character more likely to be eaten by a grue.

4e seems to be offering this solution: Just have ranks in adventurer-type skills, and negotiate with your DM to get him to permit you to have roleplay-related abilities like "expert preschool teacher." That satisfies the second point I made about 3e, namely, you no longer lose out on the ability to ride a horse because you chose to be good at taste testing chili contests.

But it doesn't satisfy the first part- there's no longer a mechanical reflection of this ability in your stats.

So, given that we know a good deal about how skills work, what about this houserule for the games I DM?

Create a number of non adventurer skills equal to the amount of skills you can convince me make sense before I start getting annoyed. You count as having ranks in these skills equal to your level divided by two, plus a logical ability modifier. If you can come up with a cool way to actually use these skills in the campaign, you will earn a +5 in these skills as if you were trained.

You count as having zero ranks in non adventurer skills that you do not select upon character creation, but if you find a way to obtain practice or training in their use during the campaign, you may gain the benefit of the use of this skill as listed above for skills chosen at character creation. Upgrading such a skill to a "trained" skill requires additional accomplishments.

 

[Lizard]

I was thinking of something like:

Feat: Professional Training
You have training in a "mundane" profession such as blacksmithing, sailing, or poetry-writing. The primary attribute should be decided on by you and your DM, and logically fit -- for example, Strength for Blacksmithing, Dexterity for Sailing, or Wisdom for writing poems. Your roll with this profession is equal to the base attribute+1/2 your level+5. In addition, you may make this check using Intelligence (regardless of the normal skill attribute) for general knowledge of things related to the skill, such as "How are smith's guilds normally organized?" or "What kind of warship has sails like that?". The DC for these knowledge checks should be set by the DM following the guidelines for other knowledge skills.

This feat may be taken multiple times, each time adding a profession. After first level, the DM may require you to have taken game time to train in your new profession.

(This is based on SWSE mechanics, and obviously is pretty vague w/out actual 4e rules access.)

Since you get a lot more Feats in 4e, giving up one to add a Profession seems fair.

 

[WyzardWhately]

Everybody gets to be "trained" in one or two skills that are largely irrelevant to adventuring. That is, not substantially impinging on the territory of the canonical skills. These can often be used to make a living if your character takes time off from adventuring for whatever reason. Just write them down somewhere. And, yes, figure you and the GM can negotiate what stat it runs off of.

 

[Meeki]

Spycraft has something like interests or something similar to that. Your character picks a certain number of interests he has, they can be professions, crafts, what have you. I'm might just use this system, give characters interests to right down in case it ever comes up.

 

[Voss]

Since you get a lot more Feats in 4e, giving up one to add a Profession seems fair.

I'm not sure that wasting a feat is any better than wasting skill points. Even if there are more, you're still blowing a finite resource on something that amounts to flavor text.

 

[Lizard]

I'm not sure that wasting a feat is any better than wasting skill points. Even if there are more, you're still blowing a finite resource on something that amounts to flavor text.

My rule is, if you spend points on it, you get to use it. If someone has a profession, craft, etc, skill/feat/talent/whatever, there will be situations when it comes into play as more than background fluff.

Removing all mechanics from background skills is, in effect, patting roleplayers and character-builders on the head and saying "There, there. That's so SWEET that you wrote up all that background material. Now let's just kill some orcs, OK?"

 

[JohnSnow]

How about something like giving every character a background?

Backgrounds can give you, say, 2 professional or craft skills that were useful to you before you became an adventurer. You might have been a farmer, a hunter, a sailor, a merchant, a scribe, a student, a soldier or whatever. Your profession naturally could tie into your class (a ranger might have a background in something rural, for example), but there's no reason it would have to.

 

[Szatany]

From what we know rituals can be learned without spending any character-based resources (perhaps just gold and time?), so flavor skills could use the same mechanic as well.

I'd also use it for languages.

 

[Pale Jackal]

How about something like giving every character a background?

Backgrounds can give you, say, 2 professional or craft skills that were useful to you before you became an adventurer. You might have been a farmer, a hunter, a sailor, a merchant, a scribe, a student, a soldier or whatever. Your profession naturally could tie into your class (a ranger might have a background in something rural, for example), but there's no reason it would have to.

This is what I'd do, or something similar.

Just give out "free worthless adventuring skill slots."

Everyone gets two to four or whatever you think is appropriate. I wouldn't limit them to professions, necessarily, but Knowledge: Heraldry may apply (though it depends on how politics based your setting is) or other such skills.

 

[SteveC]

I have to entirely agree with Cadfan here. I have a problem with any system where your direct adventuring or "stay alive" points are pooled with your "cool background" points. Most systems, especially point buy systems like GURPS, HERO and Mutants and Masterminds do this. It frustrates me. D&D is especially bad at this because it gives many characters (fighters and their ilk) almost no resources for "stay alive" skills. The result is characters who can climb, jump and spot, but have little use for a profession.

The solution, I believe is to create an entirely different resource for backgrounds that round a character out in ways that aren't reflected as a part of the adventuring life. This is an excellent opportunity for a third party publisher to work on, as I'm doubting that WotC will have it on their release schedule.

--Steve