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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steverooo" data-source="post: 2375952" data-attributes="member: 9410">Well, my FIRST thought was that I'm disappointed with my poor PC's Shapechange gift...  I can become a single other creature twice/day?  That seems pretty chintzy, especially compared to the +6 Competence Bonuses given on many of the skills...  Seems like an unlimited number of uses/day would have been... more equitible.The next thing I noticed was that the product was written for 3.0, making use of the Intuit Direction & Wilderness Lore rules...  The determining directions schtick (15, 20, 25) DCs are too high, and generally useless, to boot!  (This is the reason that Intuit Direction was removed as a skill from 3.5...  A DC:15 skill check simply isn't worth the investment of skill points, as compared to other skills)!  There is a problem, here, as well... a couple, actually!Does the yellow sun rise in the east and set in the west, as on Earth?  If so, determining direction is automatic, as long as the PC has 5+ ranks of Survival (which replaced Wilderness Lore in 3.5e).  Even if the "portals/stars" aren't visible, this is easy to determine, with a stick method...  Likewise, all of the "Earthian" methods for determining direction should also work as well, if not even better.  (Moss grows on the north sides of lone trees in the northern hemisphere, south sides of ones in the southern; clouds move from west to east, shadow-stick methods, etc.)  Even with two suns, none of this is made any harder...  There is just no reason (that I can see) for making knowing which way is North DC:25.  It's just plain silly.  Assume any PC with Survival 5+ is perfectly capable of figuring it out, and get on with the adventure!I also found the "invention" of (so far) Knowledge (Astronomy/Astrology) and City Knowledge/Lore ridiculous.  Skill points are already too limited.  Creating new sinks for them is, IMHO, counter-productive, and just another way to "keep characters down" - especially with the "You can't even attempt to know that, because your PC has no Ranks in Knowledge (Whatever)" schtick.  Allow me to elucidate:City Lore should be subsumed in Knowledge (Local) and Survival (formerly Wilderness Lore).  Bastion had no reason to invent a whole new skill, just to cover tracking in the city.  Knowing your way around Penance, and which areas are safe, etc., was already covered by Know. (Local).  Inventing a new skill for city-based tracking was uneccesary.  To quote a real-world expert, here's a snippet from my article "Tracking: It's More Than Just "Duh!  Dey Went Dattaway!"""This article is a bit more firmly based on reality.  I am a firm believer in "Harder Fantasy".  Like "Hard Science Fiction", the world has laws, and while magic may overcome them, sans the interference of magic, the fantasy world operates much as this one does...  So, what is possible with tracking, in the real world?  To answer that question, let me give my favorite quote from Supervisory Border Patrol Agent (Retired) Jack Kearney's book, Tracking: A Blueprint For Learning How, page 31:"One of my most challenging tracking experiences began to unfold on the night of July 3rd, 1962, when a small Mexican national entered the United States surreptitiously near Tijuana, Mexico, and started a walk which he hoped would bring him to Los Angeles.  We cut his track at dawn the following morning and started following it.  With a team of trackers always on the trail and other officers cutting for sign ahead, we had, by late afternoon, taken the trail over 35 circuitous miles to the intersection of Main and Second Street in El Cajon.  At this point our quarry turned west on Main Street and began walking directly through the center of the city which, at that time, had a population of nearly 40,000 people.  However, the markings on the bottom (sic) of his shoes were so unique that we were able to find and identify his track in the few dirt areas available.  We continued following him directly through the busiest part of the city for nearly two miles to its western edge, southwest towards the freeway, then back north on the railroad tracks where, at nearly nine o'clock in the evening we caught up with him, and made the arrest."  Well, so much for not being able to track through urban terrain!"So, again, no need for a new, "Urban Tracking" skill points sink!  Just treat it as hard terrain, DC:15 as a base, and apply the usual modifiers.  It's hard enough.  (Also note that, if you're using my system for tracking, beating the DC to track by so much provides additional information, so "beating the DC" becomes very important!)  And as for Knowledge (Astrology)?  Seems to me that Knowledge (Nature) already covers the locations of the heavenly bodies, well enough.  No need for it.If you're new to an area (like Penance) just apply a -2 Circumstance Modifier to Knowledge (Local).  That seems sufficient to cover it, to me.  YMMV. <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/devious.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":]" title="Devious    :]" data-shortname=":]" /> Well, that's it, so far...  Oh, yeah!  Also, on a lot of the gifts granting +6 Competance Bonuses to skills...  I thought +5 from any bonus type was supposed to be the highest?   <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" /></blockquote>

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