Need Help Bad!!!!!

[Lela]

Don't you just love it when you find out that you and your GM are both wrong? Magus_Jerel

Better both than just me. Our argument on this will come from: It never says that a performer WRITES anything. There is a difference between a Poet and a Performance Poet.

Which will of course provoke the argument from you that any poet needs to connect to his/her audience. That would be a function of Cha--a personal connection with people, a way to convay emotion and information--and not Wis, which has to do with your suroundings and intuition (PHB 9).

Hmmm, how to make this argument stronger. . .

[Edited to add the following; Yes I like to edit]

How about, who is going to make a better poet (speaking in sterotypes)?

• 
  [a] A Loremaster, who studdies text-books all day. [Int]
  A Cleric of Malar, who enjoys ripping the hearts out of children. [Wis]
  [c] A Bard, who spends his days talking with those around him and learning about what moves them. [Cha]
  

I guess it's kinda weak. But it should help if your pushed into a corner.

 

[Magus_Jerel]

Who says you aren't "writing down" exactly what you would deliver - given an audience?

You know... actors have these things called scripts...
And Musicians have that thing they call "sheet music" ...

 

[Thanee]

Well, Profession is obviously not feasible.

Craft is the skill of producing something out of matter, while Perform is the skill of producing something out of creativity.

Definitely Perform!

Bye
Thanee

 

[FANGO]

Actually, I would have to disagree...at least partially...with what everyone else is saying here. Perform isn't really a matter of writing good (whatever), but it's a matter of taking that (whatever) and making it sound good when delivered to an audience. I would definitely say that craft is out...although I would agree that songwriting/whatever is a "craft", it's not one in the sense of adnd. However, perform doesn't seem right for writing a poem either, for the reason given above. Profession also doesn't quite fit, but honestly I think it fits better than either of the other two. The reason for this is because wisdom seems to fit better for writing than either int or cha, because cha is more for delivery and int is more methodical-type knowledge (someone could write a good story off of knowing the various conventions of writing, but they need to have a little wis in order to give the story some "soul")...so I suppose I would just substitute wis for cha and base it off of perform ranks, either that or i would ask the pc to take ranks in writing, using either int or wis (i would ask that they use wis, though), and just treat it as a miscellaneous skill or something...

sorry if this all rambled a bit, it's late and this is a strange topic, hehe

 

[Magus_Jerel]

Actually, I would have to disagree...at least partially...with what everyone else is saying here. Perform isn't really a matter of writing good (whatever), but it's a matter of taking that (whatever) and making it sound good when delivered to an audience.

Sound good... as in "convincing" is explicitly diplomacy.
Sound good... as in asthetically pleasing - is perform.

I don't think he is writing the poem to convince others to His point of view.

 

[bensei]

Our debate is over Writting a Ballad or a Poem.... I know this may sound silly.... what skill covers this?

Actually this may depend much on the situation. Some possible different situations and what I would use:

1. The PC wants to sell a beautiful scroll with some ballad on it (the ballad itself is not that important) --> some kind of craft

2. The PC wants to write a ballad with seems as if it was written by a famous bard --> forgery, perhaps some kind of knowledge

3. The PC quickly wants to write down some rhymes --> PC must have a special perform ability (e.g. ballad or limericks), which fits

4. The PC wants to compose his ballad --> something like Cha-check with bonus equal to bard-levels and some circumstance-boni

 

[Dr. Zoom]

What about all those people who write great music or poetry, but cannot perform them for their lives? Or the reverse? This was asked about the same question over on Monte Cook's boards and it seems to be a good question. The consensus there was that Craft: music would be the right skill here, since you are making something (sheet music, a songbook, a book of poetry, etc.). Even Monte agreed. What do you all think of this?

 

[DM with a vengence]

In CoC this is covered under the Craft skill, but personally I think that it would be better under Perform, maybe using Int as the key ability though.

 

[osmanb]

What about all those people who write great music or poetry, but cannot perform them for their lives? Or the reverse? This was asked about the same question over on Monte Cook's boards and it seems to be a good question. The consensus there was that Craft: music would be the right skill here, since you are making something (sheet music, a songbook, a book of poetry, etc.). Even Monte agreed. What do you all think of this?

No, I'd have to disagree. Remember, Perform is not a single skill, but a group of skills, just like Craft, Profession, and Knowledge. It's purchased differently (according to the core rules), but it is still essentially a collection of skills. And I can't imagine that you could put those abilities (creating and delivering poems/performance material) under any other skill. The argument could definitely be made that separate perform sub-skills are needed to write poetry vs. deliver it effectively (as with other things). This would enable you to make bards that are brilliant songwriters but can't really sing themselves, or those that are great at singing, but have to rely on what they've learned from others -- they still haven't got the knack to make their own material.

Short answer: use perform.

 

[FANGO]

And that is exactly what I mean....perform is for performing the poem/story/whatever, i.e. going up on stage and reading it to people, or maybe improvising something, or something of the sort, and making it sound good while doing so. Perform has very little to do with writing something, and charisma also has little to do with writing (and the "drawing on his personality" thing doesn't make charisma fit, either, because charisma is force of personality, or the strength with which a person conducts themself, rather than the extent of someone's personality (people can have interesting personalities and experiences without a high charisma stat, and can draw on those when writing even if they're not good performers)). Being charismatic does not help you in creating a work of art, it only helps you in performing it.

edit...
er, excuse me, this post was meant to respond to magus_jerel's post from the first page