Out of combat balance - skills trained and known

[Garthanos]

Yeah, I don't see that as a problem per-se. It is still possibly useful to a fighter. OTOH if you are light armor and don't specifically care about INT, then you already CAN do DEX anyway, so its more of a way to make a guy who DOES want INT high have an extra benefit. Of course some might ask then why even bother with the feat?

Yes the value and desire for using Int needs to be sufficient ... when its cost free to have many effects via Dex... so a Feat needs some bolstering just like

Wary Fighter does... it boost 2 related skills



I am not necessarily thinking a feat boosting history and arcana are the best extra component for this. Though I guess history would give the fighter his history is about war aspect

 

[Garthanos]

Instead of calling Fast Thinking Warrior it could be


Battlefield Acuity
You use your Intelligence modifier instead of your Dexterity modifier when rolling initiative.
You also gains a +2 feat bonus to History and can pick one of Diplomacy or Insight which
also gains +2 feat bonus.

Flavor text
Your ability to quickly analyse the field of battle is astounding underpinned with historical insight
this learning has also established significant appreciation for understanding Diplomacy/Insight.

 

[Garthanos]

And So I have this.

 

[Garthanos]

The above ends up being a Warlord Feat of course with potential enabling for a Fighter

I may be dense but I just noticed how large number of wisdom based skills are in comparison to many others.

5 Wisdom skills
4 Charisma skills
3 Intelligence, Dexterity
1 Constitution, Strength

Assuming [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] makes his Engineering (Wright) skill an Intelligence based one ... that gives us 4 charisma, 4 intelligence and 4 wisdom. (of course he ruins it by adding leadership)

 

[Garthanos]

Assuming [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] makes his Engineering (Wright) skill an Intelligence based one ... that gives us 4 charisma, 4 intelligence and 4 wisdom. (of course he ruins it by adding leadership)

And having the skill which governs the Siege Engine and Trojan Horse be intelligence based is also useful encouragement for the Intelligent Martial Type.

 

[Garthanos]

If engineering had been a skill I wonder what would the Eberon expansion have looked like? How might have the Artificer been designed.

I know I am branching the conversation quite a bit and I haven't found an answer to the original question except perhaps merging athletics and acrobatics and allowing the use of Dex when needed OR making that Parkour practices a class default like the ranger gets some practices as class defaults. Then giving everyone 5 skills of any type.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

The above ends up being a Warlord Feat of course with potential enabling for a Fighter

I may be dense but I just noticed how large number of wisdom based skills are in comparison to many others.

5 Wisdom skills
4 Charisma skills
3 Intelligence, Dexterity
1 Constitution, Strength

Assuming [MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION] makes his Engineering (Wright) skill an Intelligence based one ... that gives us 4 charisma, 4 intelligence and 4 wisdom. (of course he ruins it by adding leadership)

Well, yeah, and I haven't found a good argument for another STR or CON based skill, though I would be happy to entertain suggestions. Intimidation could be done BY a show of STR, but it clearly is a social skill of some sort, so that was the closest but still not close enough IMHO. DEX and INT can both add to AC and REF, and each have a major part as attack attributes, plus DEX gets INIT. STR at least is a MAJOR combat attribute, the most useful one overall, and Athletics is sort of the most powerful of all skills (covering a huge ground). CHA and WIS have their nice points. CON is really the low man on the totem pole, except its role in hit points is so huge that kind of negates THAT.

Honest, despite the skill disparity it seems like 4e's ability scores OVERALL are pretty equally useful.

There's been a thread on rpg.net about reworking the 6 scores themselves to be a more even-handed allocation of characteristics to PCs and what they do, but I didn't find any of the options REALLY compelling. You CAN parse things differently, but it seemed more just different vs better. Short of that I think the skill allocation is fairly set.

 

[Garthanos]

Well, yeah, and I haven't found a good argument for another STR or CON based skill,

Martial practices allowing specialization within those is so far all I am getting. Like the long distance runner being Endurance expansion. ie it is explicit endurance in a focused arena.

Now I also think Con could be the arena of well "instinctive" activities heck I think it might relate to all of the practices as they relate to doing things for a longer duration.

In HERO they have Cramming they consider it an Int skill but thinking about real life cramming it reminds me of Rehearsing martial practices to allow them to be done as quicker actions later and it almost feels like it is about using Con for something normally Int based,

 

[Garthanos]

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]

How do you describe "Engineering" and what activities or skill powers are you thinking based on it?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

[MENTION=82106]AbdulAlhazred[/MENTION]

How do you describe "Engineering" and what activities or skill powers are you thinking based on it?

Well, like most 'skills' in 4e it is not very narrowly defined. I take it to be a general aptitude and interest in/experience at building or creating functional things. That would include constructing buildings and other large engineering works (IE civil engineering) as well as mechanical engineering.

I would consider it to be applicable to any task where a PC is trying to build something, answer some question about a built thing or the construction of a thing, or construct or repair some sort of mechanical contrivance (in a fairly loose way, so I would consider fixing a door would be a reasonable application of Engineering, though a PC with a background in carpentry might be better suited to the work).

I consider it to replace dungeoneering in all of its role of understanding mines and other 'underground structures'. Since many of us also applied it to similar above-ground scenarios as well (for lack of a better alternative) I think that it is almost just a relabeling of that aspect of Dungeoneering. Obviously the "underground nature expert" aspect can be subsumed under Nature itself, which to me is not really a problem (again, Nature indicating a knack for 'natural things' then it seems like a perfectly good thing to apply underground in that role).