Just Noticed Something Weird...

[Tequila Sunrise]

Info about the Far Realm requires Arcana. Info about aberrants, which in 4e are explicitly creatures of the FR, requires Dungeoneering.

The FR is a very mysterious and arcane place, so Arcana makes sense for it. And aberrants are for some reason usually encountered underground -- yet another oddity that I've never seen explained -- so I guess Dungeoneering makes sense for them.

But still...anyone else find this weird?

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Yes. I think WotC just messed something up there. I would allow either to be used, perhaps with high DCs, but an easy DC option with a risk of madness. (Okay, I'm mostly kidding with this suggestion.)

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yep, which caused some consternation for my Dwarven Stsrlock. Here he is, in a pact with a FR entity, and he can't come up with info on Aberrations. This was a major-but not only- reason he MCed into Psion.

(Stoopid WotC!)

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Yeah, I think WotC made a bad call on this one too.

And another one hits the house rules list...

 

[Saagael]

I don't find it all that hard to understand. Sure, its not very nice from a character standpoint when you have to have a high Wis AND a high Int to know about the Far Realm and its creatures. The way I've split it up is usually like this:

Information about the Far Realm, the actual plane (or anti-plane), and star creatures that Star Pact warlocks deal with is all Int-based Arcana. That's pure esoteric magical-ish info that's very difficult for normal people to comprehend. This is the high-level "book knowledge" about the place and creatures.

Information specific aberrant creatures that dwell underground (mind flayers, aboleths, beholders, etc.) are part of dungeoneering. I see this as the "street knowledge" about how to deal with the creatures, what their habits are, where they live, who they eat, and the like.

Probably not for everyone, but that's how I differentiate the two. Kind of like how one might use History to recall facts about a town from old tomes, but when it comes down to finding the black market, you have to use Streetwise to get there.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I don't have a problem with the skill split per se, just that PCs who might be expected to have expertise in that kind of knowledge- such as my Starlock- have to burn a Feat to get it.

And this is a systemic issue I have with 4Ed.

The design decision to replace freely distributable skill points- even with cross-class penalties- with class skill expansion via Feat only sucks. Feats, while more plentiful in 4Ed, are still extremely scarce, especially since nearly everything to distinguish your PC from another of the same race & class requires using one.

Want to learn an unusual skill? Instead of allocating skill points, burn a feat.

Want your Starlock's pact boon to improve? Instead of it being level-based (like powers), you burn a feat.

Each time you want to improve your competence in your multiclass by choosing a power from it? Instead of simply letting you treat those powers as new ones to pick & retrain from, poof goes a feat.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

Information specific aberrant creatures that dwell underground (mind flayers, aboleths, beholders, etc.) are part of dungeoneering. I see this as the "street knowledge" about how to deal with the creatures, what their habits are, where they live, who they eat, and the like.

Fair enough. I'd be interested in an explanation of why aberrants seem to love hanging out underground so much. Does it feel like home? Do they not like the sunlight? Or do they just have a macabre sense of feng shui?

I don't have a problem with the skill split per se, just that PCs who might be expected to have expertise in that kind of knowledge- such as my Starlock- have to burn a Feat to get it.
...
Each time you want to improve your competence in your multiclass by choosing a power from it? Instead of simply letting you treat those powers as new ones to pick & retrain from, poof goes a feat.

Agreed. Especially the power swap feats -- so lame! Luckily, C4 solves these problems.

 

[Saagael]

Fair enough. I'd be interested in an explanation of why aberrants seem to love hanging out underground so much. Does it feel like home? Do they not like the sunlight? Or do they just have a macabre sense of feng shui?

I haven't had this question come up in game, but I suspect the answer is two-fold, from both an in-world explanation, and a game-design explanation.

In-World: The underground is much less populated, harder to get too/more defensible, and easier to hide in. Aberrants are supposedly less populous than normal races, and so they would want to remain out of sight as much as possible. There'a semi-evolutionary line here: Aberrants live underground to avoid being slaughtered by adventurers, so they adapt to live underground, flourish, and become a high-level threat while in their natural habitat.

I should also note that, at least in 4e fluff, abberants are entirely limited to caves. Foulspawn could just as easily wander the country-side, aboleth could live in sewers, or a beholder could running a religious group from within a city. That's just not the norm as those abberants I just mention get killed faster, leaving the ones underground alive and still reproducing.

Game-Design: Delving undergound is seen by many as more difficult than adventuring above ground. Its scary and atmospheric, so it makes sense that you'd put some of the weirdest, scariest things down there in the depths. Underground can also be seen as an alien place. Have you ever been cave diving a mile below the crust? It gets freaky, and the creatures down there are fitting, so its natural that you'd place similarly alien creatures in that environment (in the same way deep-sea creatures are equally alien and weird).

Agreed. Especially the power swap feats -- so lame! Luckily, C4 solves these problems.

One of the house-rules I use is that multiclassing automatically allows you to power swap. When you level up, you can pick a power from your MCed class, though you are limited to 1 multi-class power per type (utility/encounter/daily). Its been very well-received and makes multiclassing much more common.

 

[SkidAce]

Fair enough. I'd be interested in an explanation of why aberrants seem to love hanging out underground so much. Does it feel like home? Do they not like the sunlight? Or do they just have a macabre sense of feng shui?

They are from the blackest depths of insanity from between the stars, the cold vacuum of misaligned space and time, and the darkness between worlds and our inner minds!!!!!!!!

As such, they are repelled by the warmth and sunlight that nourishes us, causing them to dwell deep in the safety of underground darkness and cold. Where they can set up a little bungalow for the summer, with some patio furniture, and perhaps a shrubbery.

 

[Keeblrkid]

The Drow have the answer

The underdark supplement explains.

Aberrants live in the underdark because the underdark was never finished by the primordials and the Underdark's deepest reaches literally scrape against the edge of existence, this constant chafing leads a door of sort, causing it to be used as a backdoor for far realm creatures.

The reason a creature trained in dungeoneering gets to know about far realm creatures but not the realm itself it the same reason that the language Deep Speech (The language of aberrants) uses the rellanic alphabet (Elven script).
The drow are the only civilization that have to constantly deal with aberrants, and the only thing as powerful as they are in the underdark is Mindflayers and Aboleths. Drow were the first to capture Deep speech on parchment, so they used their own script to capture it, and the drow are the only race who have studied the nature of abberant creatures. The drow never see the stars, and like all races have never been to the Far realm itself, so they have no knowledge of these things. If someone is trained in underdark lore, they probably pick up that knowledge from textbooks and the likes which contain information pilfered from the drow. Or simply put: those trained in surviving the Underdark are trained to survive its denizens.