Profession skills and 4th ed

[Aria Silverhands]

This is why I hate the consolidation of skills and the removal of skill ranks. I'm working on a house rule to fix this glaring oversight from the designers.

 

[thalmin]

I think we will see the subject of additional skills such as Craft and Profession addressed in the DMG. I asked about this at GAMA (and specifically because Sailing is a big part of my campaign.)

 

[KidSnide]

This is why I hate the consolidation of skills and the removal of skill ranks.

This is why I love the consolidation of skills and the removal of skill ranks.

In 3.X, the skill list was filled with useless abilities that cried out as "necessary" for many character concepts. IMC, each character has a moderately useful profession that isn't covered by the primary rules (doctor, engineer, military officer, bureaucrat, scion, etc...), so it's pretty easy to say that everyone has a silent "background profession" skill. But I couldn't stand the 3.X system where some characters needed two or three useless skills while other characters could get away with concentrating entirely game-appropriate abilities.

The other aspect of this is that, by including dungeoneering, nature and streetwise, the designers are effectively saying that there should be approximately three skills that handle environmental-knowledge. For some campaigns, sailcraft might be an appropriate alternative to dungeoneering. For completely political campaigns, you might want politics, streetwise and nature (covering everything outside the city). In a totally wilderness barbarian campaign, mountains, tundra and forest might be the right skills.

 

[2eBladeSinger]

The problem with this is that seperating characters who can from characters who can't means that as soon as you start one of the above scenarios, you've cut half your players out of the game.

Yes, cutting players out of the game is not desirable, that's not what I am suggesting. If sailing plays a major part in the campaign, as the OP suggested, then all of the characters should be able to participate one would think. However, if sailing is only a minor part of the game, one or two characters having an ability to sail, is no different than one or two characters having the dungeoneering skill.

Further - what's the penalty for failing to do these things? If the rigging is destroyed, does that actually help the campaign? If the players don't navigate to the lost isle - is there anything added to the game through that? If the players DO keep the ship on course during the storm, how does that actually help your story (or if they don't, depending on scenario)?

Even if these things are going to make a difference, is it a big enough difference to justify adding new mechanics?

I don't know what the difference might be, that depends on the DM - the question is how best to approach it when it is important that they DO make a difference.

I think we will see the subject of additional skills such as Craft and Profession addressed in the DMG. I asked about this at GAMA (and specifically because Sailing is a big part of my campaign.)

I suspected as much, but I am still happy to hear it.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

One problem however with a campaign where a skill is important everyone has it, is well everyone uses it in the same fashion.

Everyone can tie that knot equally as well, everyone can navigate equally, etc.

If these things are broken up into the other skills however, certain characters can shine in certain aspects they are better at. So a person with Acrobatics has better sea legs, a person with better Athletics can row/pull lines better, etc.

 

[D.Shaffer]

Honestly, I think Sailoring isnt exactly going to be a common skill. How many people's campaigns actually took place on the ocean long enough that people would want the skill? Yes, I know some of you do have ocean themed campagins, but you're not the majority I suspect. Dungeoneering? Sure. Heck, we have Dungeons as part of the game's NAME for crying out loud. I think it's a given that most people arent going to be going into 'Dungeons' a lot of times.

For my games, I'm thinking of letting characters 'silo' skills a little bit. Let them chose a profession or trade that they had some skill in (Apprentice, Raised by them, etc) and have it apply as a trained skill bonus when appropriate, so long as it doent obviously conflict with an already existant skill. Possibly a synergy bonus if those still exist.

 

[Celebrim]

Further - what's the penalty for failing to do these things? If the rigging is destroyed, does that actually help the campaign? If the players don't navigate to the lost isle - is there anything added to the game through that? If the players DO keep the ship on course during the storm, how does that actually help your story (or if they don't, depending on scenario)?

Further, what's the penalty for failing to do those things? If the characters lose the fight, does that actually help the campaign? If the players can't find the trap, or the treasure, or the clue - is there anything added to the game through that? And if the players do find the trap, or the treasure, or the clue, how does that actually help your story?

Even if these things are going to make a difference, is it a big enough difference to justify adding new mechanics?

Even if these things are going to make a difference, is it a big enough difference to justify having mechanics for it?

Agreed - this is something that could heavily affect the game and the enjoyment of it's participants, so I think that the goal of the house rules should be carefully scrutinized before even trying.

Which is why I suggest not even having combat rules. Afterall, its not fun to lose, so why create the risk of it?

 

[Kaodi]

A couple of hypothetical skills that it seems strange to have never seen talked about are Knowledge (Philosophy) and Critical Thinking. The first overlaps slightly with Religion, but probably much less so that Dungeoneering and Nature. And in any case, if they were the same skill it would be Religion that was part of Philosophy, not the other way around. Critical Thinking, on the other hand, is kind of like a mental cross between Disable Device and Diplomacy (in a very loose sense). It performs a function like the former, but it has all the gaming issues of the latter. Perhaps it also shares one of the problems of Intimidate in that it has more than one relevant ability. Though like Charisma for Intimidate, Intelligence would probably be the default though Wisdom could be substituted in some conditions. And it is the sort of skill that is improved immensely by training.

 

[Goobermunch]

Yes, cutting players out of the game is not desirable, that's not what I am suggesting. If sailing plays a major part in the campaign, as the OP suggested, then all of the characters should be able to participate one would think. However, if sailing is only a minor part of the game, one or two characters having an ability to sail, is no different than one or two characters having the dungeoneering skill.

That may be a bad example. IME, you don't want every character to have every imaginable skill. For example, dungeoneering is a skill that only one or two characters in your party will need. It's not a skill that is mandatory for participating in exploring a dungeon. Instead, it's a skill that benefits party if one or two people have it. Same with healing.

The problem with sailing as a skill is that either everyone needs to have it, or its of very little use in the game at all. If everyone needs to have it, then why require the expenditure of character generation resources to acquire it? At the same time, if it's of minimal use, why does it need a system to allocate resources into? Sailing, legal work, baking, and basketry are skills that I think are best handled in the narrative part of the character sheet. If a player has written his or her character background around one of those skills (or if the campaign is built around one of those skills), the character should be assumed to have a certain minimal level of proficiency with it.

Celebrim's combat example, below, is not entirely apt either. All D&D characters come pre-equipped with certain basic combat related skills. While there were options for forsaking those skills in 3.xe, they were built in without any kind of character generation resource expenses associated.

--G

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

Sailing is easy.

You roll off of Nature.

Seriously.

The skill covers both knowledge of environments and the tools necessary to adapt to them. If Nature lets you set snares and put together an effective long term campsite in the woods, then for an individual who knows nature for the coast you also know boating and nature for the sea would include a ship.

If that's too simple or too 'stretchy' then you can introduce feats for 'advanced' environments like the open sea or the aetherspace.

Or you can say that all travel falls under four different skills depending on function:

Structural: Dungeoneering.

Conceptual: Nature

Physical: Athletics

Pursuit: Ride/Pilot

That's all.