How to play music, forge a sword and so on

[Garthanos]

The Advanced Player's Guide from ERP has a set of crafting rules which includes both building things and creating art. It works somewhat like Rituals - you pay a cost in time and money to learn how to make the craft, and then when you want to actually create an object you roll on the related skill. (For art it's Insight; for smithing it's Endurance.) There are rules for how much the kits to create these items cost and what the DC to create them is.

As for singing, in my game I added 3 skills: Perform (Cha; covering singing, dancing, making speeches, etc), Natural Philosophy (Int; because I wanted a non-magical academic type skill) and Tactics (Wis; mainly for symmetry, but also I like the idea of warriors having a knowledge type skill so they're not all muscle). Then I gave most classes an extra skill choice and made these class skills for some of them, so that players aren't penalized by having the same number of choices spread out over more skills.

I don't know how well this works since none of these skills have actually come up yet. Heh.

Heh, love it.. I like how this thread has brought up some very nice roleplaying ideas, those skills have very flavorful elements to them which invoke something like ancient greece.

 

[Garthanos]

What's at stake? Concentrate on that rather than trying to give traction through the dice or rules.

Some times what is at stake is an an on going thing did the character gain a reputation because of the nice weapon (succeeded at exceeding the normal performance because need in this case really does create a stress situation and he wanted to roll the die)... even if it went against the grain for the nobleman he presented it to and failed the diplomacy check. Artists even those who exploit it commercially are secretly doing art for its own sake. Its a weird thrill being paid to do something you would do anyway. ;-)

 

[77IM]

Well, I had to create a house rule for this: http://www.enworld.org/forum/4e-fan-creations-house-rules/232141-craft-profession-rules-lite.html

Here's the short version:

Overview

• Everybody starts with 2 free background skills of their choice.
• These can be whatever you want, as long as they are useless crap, like baking pies or subsistence farming or being the son of a duke.
• Most of the time, background skills just provide a +2 bonus to some other, more useful skill.

Background Skills
Whenever you make a skill check or ability check, if you have a relevant background skill, you get a background bonus (+2 to a skill check or +5 to an ability check). The DM decides whether or not a particular background skill applies; some checks might actually require a particular background skill (for example, forging a sword might be a Strength check that requires a background skill of blacksmithing or weaponsmithing to even attempt).

Of all my house rules, this one probably gets the most use. It's basically a codified "DM's Best Friend" that encourages players to put a little more thought into their background and personality, in exchange for a very minor mechanical benefit. Somehow it's more effective at this than asking players to write background stories or answer 20 questions about their personality or whatever.

ra-punzel72, as to your initial dilemma of "which ability to use," I solve it on a task-by-task basis, using the ability that is most appropriate, and assuming that the others are factored into the bonus. For example, forging a sword is a Strength check to hold and hammer the metal properly. Sure, it is a skill you learned, requiring Intelligence, but that is what the +5 background skill bonus is for. And it's tiring, so maybe forging 100 swords would be a Constitution check, but for just the one, I'd stick with Strength.

-- 77IM