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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5663672" data-attributes="member: 54877">The description of how it would work somewhat muddies the water, because there is still that provision in there for the person with the higher training to get a bonus to the roll. Ignore that part for a moment. Mr. Athletically Inclined has a +4 from Str. He needs to dog-paddle when dumped in water. He gets to add a +4 to his roll. He has no training in swimming. About all he can do is dog-paddle in place or short distances. Mr. Trained Swimmer has a +0 from Str. (More likely a +1 or +2, but work with me here.) He also is a Journeyman swimmer. He has to swim across a (relatively placid but deep) stream. If this is a Novice check, he can do it automatically without rolling. If it is a Journeyman check, he gets to try but with no modifier.  Mr. Athletically Inclined can't even attempt the Journeyman check, or in some ways this ruleset has been presented, even the Novice check. Meanwhile, if Mr. Trained Swimmer decides (for some bizarre circumstance) to dog-paddle in place, he still gets his +0 to his roll. So say both are dumped into an underground stream with a rope tied around their feat, and just able to keep their heads above water. The strong but untrained guy has a better shot in this narrow circumstance. You can easily think of others, but they are mostly niche. Now, what confuses all this, is the supposition that the trained guy also gets a modifier to his roll. If he gets a +10 to "untrained" checks for having two levels of swimming (Novice and Journeyman), then a lot of that distinction goes away, and you are correct. There isn't much point to the system at that point, beyond saying what people can do at each level of training. That is, all that is left is that instead of untrained can do A, trained can do everything else, you get untrained can do A, Novices can do A+B, Journeyman can do A+B+C, and so on.  I think even that last little bit is valuable, but to me the real value of this approach is not to get crazy with the modifiers from training. Then natural aptitude and training govern very different aspects, and there really are differences in how they play. Usually, you'd prefer to be highly trained, but there are definitely niche points where training gets effectively nullified and having some raw talent is more helpful.</blockquote>

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