It brings Tiers to my eyes

[D_E]

But not the right way.


But I didn't say anything about advancement or what level the PC was.

But, that aside, I find the idea PCs are simply denied pathways that are available to NPCs to be lazy and unsatisfactory. If you want to say that the only way to learn fireball is to swear feality to some demon and evil PCs are not allowed then fine. But to say a simple skill that an npc can learn to +40 requires a PC to be a master of combat as a prerequisite (be it through fighter levels, wizard levels, rogue levels, whatever) would be a completely unsatisfactory design for me.

I think the design is actually a lot like the "learning fireball requires an evil act, which is not allowed in my campain" argument. The Royal Knower of cheeses probably got to where he was by spending 40 years doing anything and everything connected with cheese. He sat in libraries reading about cheese. He spent years making cheese. He visited the cheese captital of the world and sampled cheeses, he visited everywhere else that made cheese and sampled it, too. Then he did it all again. Cheese was this guy's life, and he's the Royal Knower of Cheese because the king knows it.
The PCs, on the other hand, don't have 40 years to devote to the Study of Cheese. It would be a really boring game if they did. For that reason, certain NPC progression paths are closed to PCs.

 

[Counterspin]

Alright, then I'm officially confused ByronD. If a player wants to be the Royal Knower of Cheese he just takes Kno:Cheeses as a trained skill and focused skill. I presume that's as good as you're going to get in 4e, just like the best you'd get in 3e was taking max ranks and Skill Focus.

I don't think that you can deal with such extreme cases without abandoning a level based system. Ad-hoc bonuses to skills for things like extreme study sound great when you're talking about exotic cheeses, and bad when we're talking about tumble or spot. Do you have a suggestion for how this might be done in a level based system?

 

[NewfieDave]

I have never stated out an NPC who wasn't going to be in combat. Why should the Royal Knower of Cheese even NEED a Knowledge: Cheese skill? He should just know everything about cheese that could possibly be pertinent to the campaign. Should the king need to have defined ranks in Knowledge: Tax Collecting or Profession: King? Not in my campaigns. He has no stats unless I plan for him to fight at some point.

Think about it like this: the PC playing the Fighter in your campaign has been on a quest to forge a mighty sword out of a special alloy so that he can defeat some elder evil. After a few sessions he's collected all the necessary materials and located the hermit master blacksmith up in the mountains who can forge the blade. Are you really going to roll a Craft: Weaponsmithing check where there is an actual chance of failure? Just wave your magic DM wand and let the sword be crafted. The PC has earned it, and the "master" blacksmith should know what he's doing. He doesn't need a defined skill set.

For a typical non-combat NPC I would like to see social stats only. If they do happen to get involved in combat they can only be missed on a 1 and die in one hit.