Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lizard" data-source="post: 4055464" data-attributes="member: 1054">Several reasons:a)Craft/Profession type skills can be taken by players, and it's often important to know how well they did. Handwaving it is irksome and sends the message "This aspect of your character doesn't mean anything." If you can just write "I am a blacksmith" on your character sheet and always succeed in smithing (no matter the task), then why not write "I am a dragonslayer" on your sheet and always succeed in killing dragons?b)I like knowing rough demographics for the world. If I know it's a DC of Y to make a masterwork whatsis, and that you need to be a 4th level Expert to reliably hit that, and a small hamlet has no one over 2nd level, then the PCs will be very unlikely to find someone who can make said whatsis. And because I like fully-statted NPCs. And because sometimes it's fun to let the dice shape the story. "Well, you brought your armor to the smith to be fixed, but he sort of rolled a one, and now you're stuck in town for a while." Further, many other NPC skills will matter -- do the PCs need a gem carved for a ritual? Can the town jeweler really do it, or will they need to head for a larger city or hunt down a rare master craftsman? How about identifying an ancient scroll -- how good IS that sage, anyway? Is the town farrier capable of shoeing a hippogryff? Etc, etc, etc. I admit to being pretty simulationist, and even if I don't write up each and every minor NPC in every village (I don't), I like having good guidelines for quickly determining how good someone is at their profession and how talented the most talented person in a town of size X is likely to be. If I wanted to make every decision based purely on plot, I'd run Amber or Theatrix. (Assuming a base +2 attribute bonus, Trained, and Skill Focus in 4e gives me a +12 'Profession' skill for Joe Average. The only way I can see to get beyond that, though, is by class levels, and that means some kind of NPC classes. (This also seriously limits the mechanical variability of all non-adventurers, as they blow their 1st level feat on their profession skill all the time.) I'd be happy with 5-level classes for 'Commoner', 'Professionals', and 'Soldiers'; I don't need 20th level farmers.)Addendum: Also on demographics, if there's only 1 'master class' crafter in a town of size X, that means he can't be a smith, a sage, a baker, a butcher, and a candlestick maker. So knowing how many people of 'expert' or 'master' skill there might be in a town lets you know the liklihood of there being one who is skilled in the field you need -- and if the best crafter in the town isn't a smith, then knowing how good the town smith is (assuming he's one of the lower level crafters) is also useful.</blockquote>

Verification