Profession/Crafting skills: Why?

[Mark Hope]

Not every setting has the characters swimming in gold by 3rd level, and nor is their ability to craft their own gear irrelevant. In my Dark Sun games, for example, the ability to make your own weapons and armour is highly useful. Vital even. When the angry braxat sunders your prized obsidian longsword, and you're a week from the nearest settlement, you better be able to make a new one (unless you're planning to handle your next battle relying only on harsh language and a smack on the bum). For bards, the ability to craft poison (see Complete Adventurer) or make alchemical items is also a core need of the class. And, given the harsh nature of the setting, I don't want these efforts to be hand-waved away. I want the possibility of failure to be real and present. It's part of the setting flavour, after all. And I'm sure Dark Sun is not the only gameworld where such things are a part of regular adventuring life.

 

[Altamont Ravenard]

Maybe we have difficulty seeing the point of Craft/Profession skills because it's never been well implemented in the past. If someone had made up a good way of making those skills useful, maybe we wouldn't feel like dumping them was a good idea.

Personally, I don't mind that they were dropped, because they didn't bring much to the game (except maybe in very specific circumstances that other posters have identified).

In my house rules, I'm trying to make Craft useful again. I don't plan on using it as a skill to make mundane items, or rather, that the capacity to make mundane items comes automatically when you attain a certain level of expertise (for example, as soon as you have a +8 bonus or more in Craft, you can make a sword if you have the materials and a place to work). What I'd like for Craft to do, is become a useful skill for certain classes, and by making it "useful", maybe by making it relevant in combat somehow (indirectly). Perhaps for a Mage class specialized in making Constructs, the constructs' stats being based on the Crafter's roll.

Truth is, I'm trying to make skills more "relevant" in combat for a few skills (kind of like Intimidate is made relevant in combat by making it possible to use it against a target's Will). I'm implementing Perform as a skill again that will be usable by a Bard in some of his attacks.

AR

 

[Cadfan]

I'm with you, Rechan.

You don't need a 3e style skill system unless success and failure are both options, those two outcomes are reasonably definable, and unless you need a fine gradient of 5% increments to differentiate between various levels of skill.

I wouldn't mind some semblance of a skill or profession system, even if all it read was, "Non Adventuring Skills and Professions- Discuss these with your DM. With your DMs permission, you can know how to craft certain types of items, or how to perform certain professions. It is recommended that no character have more than one of these abilities."

 

[Delta]

What happened to 1) Speed of plot, or 2) What sounds reasonable.

Those are new-school concerns and I don't recognize them. I told you what I use the skills for in 3E, and I see what you really want is an argument. Enjoy your 4E, I can tell that you prefer it.

Ex: Profession (sailor) -Um, read the skill description closely. What a Profession DC check tells you is how much money a person can make in a week. NOT how well they can do the job.

3E PHB says there are two kinds of Profession checks: (a) earn income (cannot be retried), and (b) accomplish specific tasks (which can be retried). Quote: "For example, a sailor knows how to tie several basic knots, how to tend and repair sails, and how to stand a deck watch at sea. The DM sets DCs for specialized tasks." Read closely to remember about the second part.

 

[Set]

There are still requests for Crafting and profession-related skills, now that 4e has taken them out, and as I try to think about them... I can't come up with why they should be there.

Then they probably weren't put there for you.

I see no need for psionics, but I don't begrudge their fans the existence of psionics rules, because I noticed at some point that I'm not the only person who plays D&D.

Other people like stuff I don't. Good for them. I'm not going to petition for every rule that I don't use to get axed from the game, nor post long-winded explanations for why something that *other people like* is better off removed from the game, because *I'm* not using it.

Game and let game. It's like 'live and let live,' only with dice.

 

[Greg K]

I wasn't opposed to WotC removing Craft/Profession from the game. They were cutting back skills that were underused and overemphasized. While Craft/Profession weren't really taking up a lot of space, they didn't demand a presence in the game. They weren't really necessary and a simple subsystem like an Intelligence or Wisdom check suffices just fine if you want to implement it back in.

It might be fine for you. I think that is an unsatisfactory way to handle it.

 

[AllisterH]

3E PHB: "For example, a sailor knows how to tie several basic knots, how to tend and repair sails, and how to stand a deck watch at sea. The DM sets DCs for specialized tasks."

I'm not touching Craft as depending on the campaign world, it could be useful.

Profession though? That needed the boot.

No, your example even highlights the problems and that's where I mean it makes no sense and how Profession is too broad a skill in the relatively specific skill system of 3E.

If Profession (sailor) means I can tie basic knots, does that mean without it, I can't? If so, what the hell does the Use Rope skill mean? Same thing with standing watch at sea (so wait, what's the difference between standing watch at sea and at camp? Balance? But you don't have the Balance skill in Profession)

No, the way to fix the Profession skill is what an earlier poster mentioned and also mentioned in the PHB.

The proper way to build a Sailor would be to assign skill points in the specific sub skills like Balance, Climb, Use Rope, Knowledge etc and maybe, MAYBE, have it so that taking Profession grants you a +2 bonus to those specific skills when used in context of the profession.

Basically, how any other decent skill based system outside of 3E does it. The method in 3E means that I could simply say Profession (Cat Burglar/Circus Performer) and argue that all those subskills were in the Profession and thus "cheat" the system.

I repeat agian, Profession was just plain WEIRD. It should've never been added in the format it was in 3.x

 

[Delta]

No, your example even highlights the problems and that's where I mean it makes no sense and how Profession is too broad a skill in the relatively specific skill system of 3E.

Are you posting under multiple accounts?

Will you admit that you were mistaken earlier when you told me snidely to (under the other name), "Um, read the skill description closely. What a Profession DC check tells you is how much money a person can make in a week. NOT how well they can do the job."?

 

[AllisterH]

Are you posting under multiple accounts?

Will you admit that you were mistaken earlier when you told me snidely to (under the other name), "Um, read the skill description closely. What a Profession DC check tells you is how much money a person can make in a week. NOT how well they can do the job."?

Actually, I read the 3.5E skill description of Profession from the SRD.

I wasn't being "snide" but stating my opinion that Profession makes no sense with the skill system as it stands in 3E.

As I hopefully pointed out, using Profession to set the DC of a task makes no sense since the skill primarily is tied to how much money you can make in a week and NOT how well you do your job.

p.s. I didn't even realize I had two accounts. Yeah, Allister and AllisterH are the same person. Weird, when the hell did I log in twice?

 

[Stalker0]

I believe for the most part that profession/craft skills are superfulous.

They are mostly flavor, though a player is always welcome to put the appropriate skills on his sheet to match his profession.

If your a sailor, you likely have athletics and acrobatics. A guardsman might have perception, etc.

If my character is a smith, then he can make stuff. Okay, you still pay X amount of gold, but its the character making it, your not buying it at store.


I'll give an example from my character. My character doesn't go to "magic item shops", but they do exist in the game I'm playing in. He does have a thing for wenching however. In the last game session my character acquired some new armor...a gift from a person he had helped. However, near the same time my character also was robbed by a girl he had "visited" previously.

Mechanically: I asked the DM if I could buy some armor, and pay the appropriate cost. The DM would only allow me to have the item if he felt the shop would have it.
Flavorwise: My character never sat eyes on a magic item store and felt rewarded for his virtues and harmed by his vices, which felt very in character.

Craft and Profession I think are the same way. I don't need mechanics to tell me I can weave baskets if my character is a basketweaver. But if I could, then any baskets I would "buy" I would instead "make", still paying the mechanical gold cost but maintaining the flavor of my character.