RangerWickett
Legend
A friend of mine is working on an expansion of the rules for tool proficiencies, and asked for my thoughts. I'm at a bit of a loss, because I basically never worry about them. If your character is proficient in some tools and I'm the GM, I might try to fit in one or two scenes where it's narratively pertinent, but I think I've never really made them critical to the success or failure of an adventure. I see them as existing for flavor, and frankly for a tabletop game I can't imagine them mattering on any regular basis, so I'd rather they have as minimal a ruleset as possible.
But do you use them in your games? Do you want more expanded crafting mechanics? Would you be interested in, for instance, an adventure where some competing guilds have set up traps or puzzles that are easier to deal with if you have the right tool proficiencies?
In Pathfinder I played the Iron Gods adventure path, and my character's goal was to build a sword as a dowry for his fiancee's father, using exotic materials from crashed spaceships. I'd kinda hoped it would be an ongoing element of the plot, but the GM never really engaged with it, and somewhere around part 4 of the AP I made a quick skill check and had a nifty sword that was, like, useless to the party, since we had laser guns and rocket launchers. Maybe that soured me to the whole conceit of tools and crafting in games.
But do you use them in your games? Do you want more expanded crafting mechanics? Would you be interested in, for instance, an adventure where some competing guilds have set up traps or puzzles that are easier to deal with if you have the right tool proficiencies?
In Pathfinder I played the Iron Gods adventure path, and my character's goal was to build a sword as a dowry for his fiancee's father, using exotic materials from crashed spaceships. I'd kinda hoped it would be an ongoing element of the plot, but the GM never really engaged with it, and somewhere around part 4 of the AP I made a quick skill check and had a nifty sword that was, like, useless to the party, since we had laser guns and rocket launchers. Maybe that soured me to the whole conceit of tools and crafting in games.
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