Houserule: Non Adventuring Skills

[Lizard]

Well the real question seems to be why have skill ranks at all when their are no mechanics for what those skill ranks actually mean. There are no calligraphy skill check charts to give you an idea of how significant 2 ranks actually are. Do we really need to know that a peasant has +8 farming when the DM essentially has to makeup what that actually means?

Some DMS like to throw in random uses for players skills so they don't feel like they wasted all those points on underwater basket weaving. But often it's extremely obvious that the "obstacle" only existed to be automatically solved by that skill, and if the player didn't have that skill in the first place then the party would have never needed it.

This is true in all but the most purely simulationist games. Every DM I know partially tailors the game to the players. If there's a player who invested heavily in diplomacy, there will be a recalcitrant king to convince of something. If a player is a trap-disabling rogue, there will be traps to disable. If a player is a cleric with Extra Turning, there'll be Extra Undead. Etc.

In a Hero System game set in a Shadowrun-esque universe, I wanted to play a vampire-hunting ex-Jesuit. When the game was first imagined, it didn't have vampires. After I built my character, it did.

Or in my current game (see .sig), i didn't plan to include warforged, but a player had a character concept she wanted to try out, so I wrote my own warforged fluff and added them in. In the process, I made some decisions which shaped the world for the better. So it goes.

The important thing, to my mind, is that there exist mechanics to support player choices. If the player thinks being a master smith (or a barely-competent poet) is an important part of their character, then, this should be --- MUST BE -- more than a scrawled line of flavor text somewhere on the back of the page, to be handwaved away in the unlikely event it comes up. "Yeah, yeah, you reforge the Sword That Was Broken. Whatever. Now, let's see if Fingers can disarm the trap! I've got 15 pages of modifiers to apply for THAT!"

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

The important thing, to my mind, is that there exist mechanics to support player choices. If the player thinks being a master smith (or a barely-competent poet) is an important part of their character, then, this should be --- MUST BE -- more than a scrawled line of flavor text somewhere on the back of the page, to be handwaved away in the unlikely event it comes up. "Yeah, yeah, you reforge the Sword That Was Broken."

Hmm. But then, if my flavour text says "I am a swordsmith" and I fail due to an eleborate skill system and rolling badly, and this might be one of the few occassions I actually got to use the skill in an interesting manner, what does this mean? It sounds/feels like a wasted oppertunity.

For things that don't come up very often, maybe it's better to have a very simple system. Maybe just a binary thing: Either you got the ability, or you don't. You get 2 "flavour skill points", and can choose from a list of crafts, professions or hobbies.

If you still need to roll, roll ability score modifier (modified by level), +10 for having picked the skill. DCs range from 10 to 25. (assumption is that a DC scales at a rate of +1 per 2 levels, so you next to always succeed if you're picked your skill. Higher results than the DC mean you get things done faster or better, as appropriate. I suggest dividing the difference by 5 and dividing the "expected" time by this number to gauge the actual time required, or something similar.)

(EDIT): Example
Now, imagine you're playing a Ranger. You want to be good at bowmaking and like to dance.
So, you pick Craft (Bowmaking) and Perform (Dance).

The PCs are short on supplies, and they have just figured out that they a Battle Ooze ( from Legacy of the Dragons) is moving towards their favourite town.
They know that it's pretty slow, but pretty dangerous in melee. So the party decides that ranged combat is the best choice. But that beast has tons of hit points, and fast healing to boot. They need more arrows. So they decide make them themself. DM decides that the DC is 10, the party is level 10. So, everyone rolls d20 + 5 + his Int modifier. He rules that they can create 1 arrow per hour (I have no idea if this is realistic). So, on average, most party mebers produce 2 arrows, but the Ranger produces 4 arrows per 10 minutes.
The DM also says that masterwork arrows are DC 20, so the Ranger decides to go for that. he doesn't need them for himself (having a magic bow), but the parties Fighter could use them...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Or in my current game (see .sig),

Hmm. I don't see your signature. Did you turn it off or did I turn sigs off?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Well the real question seems to be why have skill ranks at all when their are no mechanics for what those skill ranks actually mean. There are no calligraphy skill check charts to give you an idea of how significant 2 ranks actually are. Do we really need to know that a peasant has +8 farming when the DM essentially has to makeup what that actually means?

10 is for standard tasks. 15 for expert tasks and 20 for masterworks. 25 for extraordinary masterworks and 30 for legendary masterpieces which could attract extraplanar beeings. Simple as that.

(a LVL 1 expert easily beats 15 with take 10 (and maybe 20 with the right tools and skill focus), a LVL 2 expert easily beats 20 (25 with skillfocus and synergy + masterwork tools and int 16)

5 ranks in a skill is expert rank ---> so it grants a bonus to related tasks.

However especially profession was a rather redundant skill for adventurers, because some of them included other skills (Profession sailor --> use rope + climb + balance + survival + knwledge astronomy)

In ADnD 2nd edition you could chose a profession in adition to your skills. That was actually a good solution.

 

[Lizard]

Hmm. I don't see your signature. Did you turn it off or did I turn sigs off?

According to my user CP, it's on, but I don't see it on my own posts. Weird.

Anyway, my worldbuilding blog is: http://lizard-shatteredworld.blogspot.com/

 

[Cadfan]

Well the real question seems to be why have skill ranks at all when their are no mechanics for what those skill ranks actually mean.

I half agree. First of all, we have a general framework for certain types of tasks, as mentioned by UngeheuerLich. So some of the time we do have mechanics for what the skill means. Second, there are some skills which really are on/off binaries, or which may reasonably be treated as such in game. These can be skills where an untrained person wouldn't know how to accomplish them, but where a trained person can basically do anything within the skills purvey. This latter category of skills really doesn't need a resolution mechanic, but the skill ranks do provide an objective, in-game justification for why one person can do a task and another cannot. Sure, the actual number of ranks is a wasted detail, but it brings the question into compliance with the rest of the rules.

Some DMS like to throw in random uses for players skills so they don't feel like they wasted all those points on underwater basket weaving. But often it's extremely obvious that the "obstacle" only existed to be automatically solved by that skill, and if the player didn't have that skill in the first place then the party would have never needed it.

I do agree here. I don't think that DMs should go too far out of their way to place backstory related obstacles in player paths. Usually. It typically should be up to the player to incorporate these elements as best they can. But once a player HAS decided to incorporate these matters, the DM can often take them and run with them a bit.

 

[zen_hydra]

For those familiar with it, how would porting the skills and skill contest rules from Burning Wheel work out for covering non-combat skills?

Would a separate skill system be that bad an idea?

One could even come up with lifepaths for characters to pick that have no bearing on ones character class, but do set you up with skills and traits that certainly encourage role-playing.

 

[FadedC]

This is true in all but the most purely simulationist games. Every DM I know partially tailors the game to the players. If there's a player who invested heavily in diplomacy, there will be a recalcitrant king to convince of something. If a player is a trap-disabling rogue, there will be traps to disable. If a player is a cleric with Extra Turning, there'll be Extra Undead. Etc.

In a Hero System game set in a Shadowrun-esque universe, I wanted to play a vampire-hunting ex-Jesuit. When the game was first imagined, it didn't have vampires. After I built my character, it did.

Or in my current game (see .sig), i didn't plan to include warforged, but a player had a character concept she wanted to try out, so I wrote my own warforged fluff and added them in. In the process, I made some decisions which shaped the world for the better. So it goes.

The important thing, to my mind, is that there exist mechanics to support player choices. If the player thinks being a master smith (or a barely-competent poet) is an important part of their character, then, this should be --- MUST BE -- more than a scrawled line of flavor text somewhere on the back of the page, to be handwaved away in the unlikely event it comes up. "Yeah, yeah, you reforge the Sword That Was Broken. Whatever. Now, let's see if Fingers can disarm the trap! I've got 15 pages of modifiers to apply for THAT!"

Well there's a difference between tailoring your game world and encounters to your players and simply throwing in pointless obstacles to be automatically solved by an obscure skill.

Good Example: A player is a vampire hunter and has bonuses against vampires and similar undead, so the DM makes sure to include some in his game. This is fine....even if the vampires might otherwise have been something different, the party still benefits on that fight for having an enemy they get bonuses against, rather then an enemy they do not.

Bad Example: A player has profession: paddleboat captain so the DM puts makes a path through his dungeon blocked by a pirannah filled lake with a convenient paddleboat. Here the player doesn't really benefit from the skill at all.....if he didn't have it the lake would never have existed and his actual paddelboat skill modifier is mostly irrelevent because the DM has to let him make it across the lake.

 

[FourthBear]

I think that for the skill selections in the core rules, one of the things that should be considered is how often the skill will be referenced in published adventures and settings. A DM can, of course, tailor and add skills to his own adventures and published adventures. But I believe that the published adventures associated with an edition set the tone for what a player can expect for skill challenges in a D&D game. In an environment where the DM and the players know each other well and have plenty of time to set ground rules and explain table preferences, it can be simple enough to ensure that everyone understands that Blacksmithing will be a useful skill, but Carpentry may not be called for often. So I see the skill selections in the core rules to a good place for the game designers to let adventure writers know: here are skills that are perfectly reasonable to put as challenges in your published adventures. I hope that this, combined with tighter ranges of skills in 4e will encourage more writers to include skill challenges in adventures. In previous editions it was difficult to do so, since there was no knowing if the party would have characters with +30 in Balance or all in single digits.