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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 4256936" data-attributes="member: 58197">It is emphatically not the job of the system to accommodate people who want to play "a rogue class who knows zero about finding traps."  It might be the job of the system to accommodate people who want to play "a sneaky guy who knows zero about finding traps."The system should be able to represent most reasonable character concepts, but "rogue class" is not a character concept, it's a game mechanic.  If part of the definition of the rogue class mechanic is that it includes finding traps, then it's silly to expect to be able to make a rogue who can't find traps.  It's equivalent to saying, "I want a guy with the Trapfinding skill who doesn't know how to find traps."Now, since being a sneaky guy in 4E amounts to taking one skill (Stealth), having a decent Dexterity, and not wearing heavy armor, making a sneaky guy who doesn't know how to deal with traps is really not too hard.  Play a ranger, for instance.Of course, there are character concepts that you can't make in 4E.  The same is true in any RPG.  The question is whether enough people want those concepts to justify making rules for them.  If 4E can't model a sword-and-board melee warrior out of the box, that's a problem.  If 4E, out of the box, can't model a spellcasting troglodyte who uses an animated whip with a snake's head to poison his enemies?  Not as much of a problem.While I don't believe "just make it up" is acceptable as a universal answer to all complaints, there does come a point when you have to say... "just make it up."  And from what I've seen, 4E does look to be very friendly to anyone who's making stuff up.  To me, that's vastly preferable to 3E's attempt to include rules for everything imaginable.Now here I do agree with you to some extent.  If the system requires all adventurers to be good at adventuring, that's fine by me.  I don't think there has to be an option to trade out combat effectiveness for stuff like Profession.  In fact, I'm just as happy that there isn't--saves me the effort of trying to second-guess the DM on whether I'm ever going to get a chance to use my Profession, or whether I should just handwave it and pick up Spellcraft.  I do, however, believe there should be some mechanic for handling the things that in 2E were covered by nonweapon proficiencies or secondary skills, and that in 3E were covered by Profession and the like.Since I am an inveterate maker-upper of rules, I intend to make something up.  But not everyone likes or is able to make stuff up for this sort of thing.  A 2E-style "secondary skill" system might be a good solution; you pick a background profession for your character, and then any time you try to do something related to your profession, you get a +5 to your roll, as if using a trained skill.  (Obviously, you cannot use your profession for anything that's covered by an actual skill.)Couple this with a list of professions, and examples of activities where each one would apply, and maybe some guidelines for making up new professions.  I think that would cover it pretty well.Unfortunately, this does require writing rules that explicitly call for DM judgement, and 4E seems to be allergic to that.  From what I can see, the 4E approach is, "If we can't figure out a way to make a rule that's absolutely crystal clear, we don't make one at all."  Which is not a bad way to go--certainly it has led them to clarify a lot of things that were impossibly vague in previous editions, like what you can and can't get someone to do under the influence of charm person.  (God, the arguments I've had over that...)  But it does limit them in some respects, and this is one of them.</blockquote>

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