Profession/Crafting skills: Why?

[Delta]

Look there is a fundamental disconnect here. You and KB simply cannot understand, for some unknown reason, that the rules you want are useless. They don't need to be defined because they don't come up, they're too specialized to be valuable and comparable to another skill, and when they do come up they are only to "justify" a useless option, something a DM can do just as well for a background description. Just like there is no skill "connections" whereby you have connections because you built them up earlier, but if they are in your background the DM can decide to reward you by incorporating it.[or people take them in order to break the game]

The real kicker is that they are easily done using the current mechanics. You want to make something? Great, its a skill challenge, you gain commensurate XP and reward for an encounter of your level. You lose time in the process. Its likely to use athletics, perception, insight, and endurance.[for a craft]

The challenge becomes a series of rolls that are defined by how your character completes the task rather than a single roll to determine whether or not you succeed.

So this is pretty much it. These skills, profession, perform, and craft, serve no function in the typical game, can easily be replaced when necessary, and are only valuable to the game when the DM pulls them out of your back story to be used just like he or she would pull anything else out of your back story to use. They provide no benefit to a DM in helping him describe a world, since all interactions of entities that are not in direct conflict with the PC's occur at a value as determined by the DM anyway. Therefore, the only value that these skills have is to make your character worse at doing other stuff. It penalizes you for having a background that is defined in that certain way[in the case of perform it was a penalty to everyone but bards, which it was a similar penalty, except one required to use their class features, which is even more dumb] while offering no penalties for other backgrounds or backgrounds defined within the context of the useful skills as listed.

This is the most perfectly disagreeable post I've ever seen at ENWorld. I am truly, mightily impressed that you've managed to craft a post wherein I disagree 100% with every single word. (Assuming it's not a spoof. I really thought it was to start with.)

 

[vagabundo]

I'd prefer if crafting and profession - so vague and broken to me - had never been in 3e. My group never ever used them so they were a waste of space, cluttering up my PHB.

I am glad they were removed from 4e ans that the PHBI focus on what I consider core DND stuff. I might like to see them return in some usable form in the PHBII. I dont have anything against crafting or professions in DND, just the poor 3e implementation.

For the moment, if one of my players decides to craft something, it will be a long term skill challenge. So much more appropriate.

And if someone wants to be a sailor then they are a sailor and they can have all the normal associated with being a sailor, but built using their class/level/feats. If they want to do something sailory then the standard skill checks and challenges will work fine.

 

[Goumindong]

This is the most perfectly disagreeable post I've ever seen at ENWorld. I am truly, mightily impressed that you've managed to craft a post wherein I disagree 100% with every single word. (Assuming it's not a spoof. I really thought it was to start with.)

Not a spoof, but I am glad you have no argument with which to refute mine.

If there's a fundamental disconnect here, it is this:
The rules that you are telling me never come up, come up, with regularity in my games. Not amount of telling me it's not so will make it not so.

No, they really do never come up. They only come up when the DM specifically inputs said [usually ridiculous] situation into the game where it is unnecessary.

DnD is a game of solving problems. These problems involve figuring things out, going place, killing monsters, and taking their stuff. Anything that is not involved in that is extraneous and pointless.

I am perfectly comfortable saying that if you are in a situation where your "craft armor" check or "perform check" is necessary to advance the plot in a way that simply saying you can craft armor or that you can perform the DM is going out of his way to include a ridiculous situation or has done something wrong. Yes, bad wrong fun, that is you. Now, before you whine about that statement[and you will] consider this. You are taking DnD into an area it does not go. Its a game that figures heroic fantasy. Complaining that crafting and perform are not skills has the same validity as complaining that "craft(lie)", "Craft(plot device)", "Craft(tesla coil)" or that the game isn't taking place on an airplane where everyone got sick by eating the fish. As fun as roleplaying out National Lampoon's "Airplane" would be, its not DnD. And neither is crafting, profession, or perform.

I consider that a totally inadequate solution that fails to model differences in character crafting capability in anything resembling a sufficient manner. The same character who is good at crafting pottery under this system is also good at crafting swords.

But fail to consider that that is pointless. You never have a "play off" with your musical instruments to determine the fate of the world. You never have a "craft off" to determine the fate of the world. This is not "Crossroads", and when it is your DM has made something ridiculous in order to make your otherwise useless skill choice have some meaning. When these things do matter, they can always be adjudicated in the same manner as any other background can be. If you have family in a town, that changes the plot. But you don't pay in skills for the fact that you have family in a town, you just do. By that same token, you do not need to have to pay in skills or even define how good a blacksmith you are, you are a blacksmith and that is good enough. If you need to make something that is important, the DM can easily use all the other skills at his disposal to have you create something. Insight to figure out what thing that needs to be made to convince someone. Perception to see the prongs on a lock so you can make the key. Endurance as you wrestle with the molten hot armor and bash it into the form you need. And of course, an appropriate gold allocation.

The key here is that cost in terms of skills to overcome the challenge has not been modified. Whereas with craft skills it has, oftentimes negatively, with regards to characters with backgrounds relating to defined skills.

These skills are never conflict resolution mechanics. The do not function in a useful manner where there is a sliding scale of challenge that must be overcome.

Profession: Musician Type X or Craft: Musician Type X would be the skills involved in getting a gig, keeping your instrument in good shape or knowing the people who can, knowing the market for your skills, knowing whom you have to pay, who has to pay you what, or letting you judge the competence of another player.

Perform: Musician Type X is the skill you have to deliver a quality musical performance- Talent + Practice + Willingness to get up on stage and play.

Actually no. That would be "Profession: Marketer" But of course both of those skills are pointless[as described above]. You are a hero saving the world, you will not ever need to test your ability to book a show, and if by some crazy stretch of the imagination that you do, you have plenty of other skills to make it an interesting skill challenge that your DM can actually describe in an engaging way

Besides, I know someone mentioned him before, but MacGyver is a quintessential crafting main protagonist

MacGyver is also a Deus Ex Machina in the same way that wizards in most fantasy literature are not DnD PC's. They represent the guy who simply wins because of how awesome he is. The difference is that MacGyver is the Deus Ex Machina in a different genera.

There are countless sequences in detective stories in which the protagonist seeks out a particularly skilled supporting character- typically a psychologist, coroner or computer specialist in modern dramas. Why shouldn't the PCs themselves be able to feel the rush of advancing the plot?

Because the PC's aren't plot devices. And, as already explained, when they are, its just the DM saying "i want you to be involved in the plot at this point", its not a challenge to overcome[if you fail, you just have seek out the plot device] its no different from the DM inserting someone you wrote into your background into the adventure. If its no different from that, then why does it need to be codified?

 

[Zustiur]

To those that wish to remove craft and profession:
These two skill (sets) take up 2 columns in the players handbook. That's one page out of the entire book.

What do you feel should have been included INSTEAD? What is missing, that is of so much value that these two skills need to be axed?

Remember that 3E assumes monsters and NPCs will be following the same rules as PCs. So just think of craft and profession as NPC skills in the same way that expert is an NPC class. I don't see you raging against having NPC classes in the game, so I don't understand why you'd rage against having these two skills in the game.

If anything, having these two skills is more useful to the players than the aristocrat class or adept class is!

 

[Fenes]

To those that wish to remove craft and profession:
These two skill (sets) take up 2 columns in the players handbook. That's one page out of the entire book.

Well said! I do not get this obessesion with page count and the cutting of "useless" stuff. If anyone who likes craft/profession skills isn't even worth 2 pages in the PHB then that says a lot about the thoughts behind the system. I dislike druids for example and don't use them, but I'd not begrudge anyone having their druid in the 3E PHB.

 

[The_Gneech]

And, apparently, you can't understand that the game you play isn't the game everyone plays.

No, it's the game some people play, isn't that enough? People who've since been effectively told to take a hike.

-The Gneech

 

[Goumindong]

To those that wish to remove craft and profession:
These two skill (sets) take up 2 columns in the players handbook. That's one page out of the entire book.

What do you feel should have been included INSTEAD? What is missing, that is of so much value that these two skills need to be axed?

Remember that 3E assumes monsters and NPCs will be following the same rules as PCs. So just think of craft and profession as NPC skills in the same way that expert is an NPC class. I don't see you raging against having NPC classes in the game, so I don't understand why you'd rage against having these two skills in the game.

If anything, having these two skills is more useful to the players than the aristocrat class or adept class is!

By the same token, since we are assuming that there is a length that the book "must be". What would you remove to add craft/profession?

People want to cut useless stuff because it clutters the system, it creates externalities with regards to choice and dilutes the value of roleplaying by giving mechanics that ought be the provision of player only a hard meaning.

 

[vagabundo]

Well said! I do not get this obessesion with page count and the cutting of "useless" stuff. If anyone who likes craft/profession skills isn't even worth 2 pages in the PHB then that says a lot about the thoughts behind the system. I dislike druids for example and don't use them, but I'd not begrudge anyone having their druid in the 3E PHB.

I begrudge having stuff cluttering up the books, making it harder for me to access the information I do need from them. Craft/profession was a skill point hole in most games I'll wager. It was a poorly thought out system, the fact that some people could use them in their games does not alter my opinion. They probably should have been included in the DMG as a optional system.

I'd rather they had not been included, but my main beef with 3e was how poor the page layout was, small font size and the inconsistencies with the quality of the rules - profession, grappling, disarm and sunder making my most hated list. The first page of every chapter would make my eyes cross. /RANT

 

[Psion]

No, they really do never come up.

Ah, I've been dreaming all these games. Thanks for that, I'll pinch myself next time a craft or profession skill comes up in a game.

Crap, I've got a pbp going on right now. OW!

They only come up when the DM specifically inputs said [usually ridiculous] situation into the game where it is unnecessary.

1) The DM need not drive it. The profession and craft skills players pick often relate directly to their self realized actions during the game. A character who fancies himself a fletcher will make replacement arrows during the game; a character who has craft(poison) obviously intends to make use of the skill.
2) It need not be ridiculous at all. PCs don't exist in a vacuum. The reason for the PCs involvement in the game may be directly informed by the skill, or vice versa. Is it really ridiculous for a character to make use of profession(sailor) during a seafaring game? Or mining skill in a game in which the character is a miner whose co-workers unearth something better left burried. I find your supposition of how these skills are invoked to be at odds with the real games I have played that rather naturally involve these skills.
3) If you are trying to shame me for designing a game to address what players are actually interested in (as evidenced by choices made in character design), you'll have to try harder, because it's a valid and compelling technique.

DnD is a game of solving problems.

Absolutely. But AFAIAC, DMing that only accepts one solution to a problem is poor DMing. And players who can come up with interesting ways to make use of their resources are great players.

These problems involve figuring things out, going place, killing monsters, and taking their stuff. Anything that is not involved in that is extraneous and pointless.

For you.

I think we have little further basis for discussion here. The game you want to play is not a game I would want to play; I find a game limited to killing things and taking its stuff unsatisfying.

But fail to consider that that is pointless. You never have a "play off" with your musical instruments to determine the fate of the world.

Do you need to save the world? I'm not talking about a musician class here (though there is de facto one in the core in 1e/2e/3e, BID), or a crafter class or what have you? This is a skill, a minor resource of a character, something that is generally safe to allocate a few points to even accepting that you aren't going to have a critical use for it every game.

That said, are there not other challenges on the road? Can the characters not, for example, find it important to impress the emperor of a foreign nation in order to win his support? That's the stuff good stories and good gaming is made of AFAIAC.

 

[Fenes]

Do you need to save the world? I'm not talking about a musician class here (though there is de facto one in the core in 1e/2e/3e, BID), or a crafter class or what have you? This is a skill, a minor resource of a character, something that is generally safe to allocate a few points to even accepting that you aren't going to have a critical use for it every game.

That said, are there not other challenges on the road? Can the characters not, for example, find it important to impress the emperor of a foreign nation in order to win his support? That's the stuff good stories and good gaming is made of AFAIAC.

I had an adventure where the question of who would succeed to the throne of a faerie realm was settled by each contender choosing a champion for a dance competition, and the one whose champion won was crowned. It could have been poetry, music, or crafting too, depending on the background of the realm in question.
In one of the countries in my campaign, poets, actors and bards and other artists are very honored, and when the party visited they were taking part in the annual festival, acting on stage, and dealing with bards and other artists.