Profession skills and 4th ed

[Celebrim]

Sailing is easy.

You roll off of Nature.

Nature is a big part of being a good sailor. You might make Nature checks to know when a storm was brewing, when the tide is coming in, what time of year is best to attempt a crossing of the open ocean, and perhaps even where helpful or hindering sea currents can be found. But it tells you nothing about how to reef a sail, when to let out the flying sail, which direction relative to the wind makes for the best speed, how to tack the ship without going in irons, how to fashion a storm anchor, how to use a sail to effect an emergency patch, how to calculate your nautical speed, or anything else of the sort.

It's possible to say, "Anyone that knows how to trap game, find water, and read the weather is also a skilled sailor." just as it is possible to say, "Anyone that knows how to trap game, find water, and read the weather also knows how to train animals, ride horses, build furniture, thatch cottages, run without tiring, climb cliffs, and maintain thier balance on difficult terrain", but I'm inclined to think that at some point there is some value in treating these as different skills rather than bundling them all together.

For one thing, they would seem to depend on different base attributes. For another, they allow the separation of characters into different backgrounds and specialties. Every desert dwelling hermit with a love of wildlife doesn't suddenly become a skilled sailor the moment he steps on a boat. Sure, you can avoid that with modifiers and some sort of ad hoc system of 'familiarity' or 'speciailization', but by that point you are making house rules as difficult as what you are trying to avoid.

If you disagree, the good news is that 4e largely does bundle all skills together anyway, since everyone gets better at everything as they level up, most skills are in fact practically interchangable.

 

[Atlatl Jones]

For a spelljammer game, where everyone is a sailor, why not just make it an aspect of Athletics?

 

[Lizard]

I came up with the same solution a lot of other people here did, and posted it a few months back. Just have a feat called "Professional Training", which lets you define a profession, pick an appropriate attribute (fixing the 3e problem of all professions being Wis or Int based; "Joe the Smith has Str 3, but he's a better smith than Big Tom, Str 16, because he's so wise!"), and you get +5 on attempts to perform anything related to that profession, including Knowledge checks logically covered by it. (So someone with Profession:Smith would be able to identify types of metal ores, know if an axe was orc-make, and so on. This provides the much needed "adventuring justification" for out-of-combat skills.)

 

[LostSoul]

If all the PCs need sailing, give it to all of them.

If someone wants to spend resources to be better at it, let them spend a feat to get a bonus. I have no idea how much that bonus should be because I haven't seen the other feats.

 

[Goobermunch]

If all the PCs need sailing, give it to all of them.

If someone wants to spend resources to be better at it, let them spend a feat to get a bonus. I have no idea how much that bonus should be because I haven't seen the other feats.

A safe bet would be +3. I believe that's what skill focus provides.

--G

 

[2eBladeSinger]

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?

Allocating precious system resources to an HR skill is exactly what I am NOT suggesting.

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.

Exactly.

 

[The Little Raven]

I came up with the same solution a lot of other people here did, and posted it a few months back. Just have a feat called "Professional Training", which lets you define a profession, pick an appropriate attribute (fixing the 3e problem of all professions being Wis or Int based; "Joe the Smith has Str 3, but he's a better smith than Big Tom, Str 16, because he's so wise!"), and you get +5 on attempts to perform anything related to that profession, including Knowledge checks logically covered by it. (So someone with Profession:Smith would be able to identify types of metal ores, know if an axe was orc-make, and so on. This provides the much needed "adventuring justification" for out-of-combat skills.)

This is identical to creating new skills to be trained in, with the exception that they are not on class lists, because the cost to get this and to get Skill Training is exactly the same, with the same basic effect. If you want to just add Craft/Profession skills to the game, just do it, because this rose-by-another-name smells just as sweet.

 

[Lizard]

This is identical to creating new skills to be trained in, with the exception that they are not on class lists, because the cost to get this and to get Skill Training is exactly the same, with the same basic effect. If you want to just add Craft/Profession skills to the game, just do it, because this rose-by-another-name smells just as sweet.

Ah, but there is a difference.

If it's a skill, PCs (and everyone else) get a default in it equal to 1/2 level + Attribute.

My way, I can say, "You have no blacksmith training? I don't CARE if you're a 20th level wizard, you can't make a horseshoe. Bugger off."

So, I guess you could argue it's a skill with Trained Only, but I don't know if they exist in 4e yet.

 

[Saeviomagy]

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?

A fight is usually more than a single skill roll, and can usually be avoided or stopped before it gets to the point of a TPK, which is basically the only scenario that can be really classed as a loss. I think that most people would agree that throwing players into a fight where the only possiblities are win or TPK is not something you do all the time, and wholly basing said fight off a roll in a specific skill that not everyone in the campaign has is something that you never do.

If the players do not EVER find the trap (ie - it is never triggered), then no. There is nothing added to the game. Even if they spring it, it doesn't derail things - it just changes how difficult the rest of the days challenges may be.

If the rigging on the ship is destroyed, one of two things may happen
1) It's fixable in a manageable way (ie - it takes a short period of time, doesn't stress the ships supplies or leave the ship in a fragile condition). The adventure carries on with zero changes UNLESS it's centred around some time-based challenge, in which case this probably makes you fail it.

2) It's not fixable in a manageable way. Either the ship drifts aimlessly and DM intervention is required to stop an incredibly boring TPK OR the ship can carry on but has to make some major detour, requiring the DM to have something prepared.

If the party can't find the treasure - they end up with no treasure. Slightly disappointing, but hardly a TPK.

If the party can't find the lost isle of X, then that's either a big pile of DM notes out the window OR they're not really missing out.

If the party can't find the clue... well. Hopefully the DM is smart enough to have enough clues to counter that. If there is just ONE clue and that clue is necessary to continue the adventure, and finding that clue relies on ONE roll - well, you're aiming for a premature end to the adventure, and either a jarring interruption to immersion (as the DM declares "That's it, adventures over! You missed THE CLUE!") OR a lot of very tedious play sessions as the players stumble around trying to solve an unsolvable mystery.

If the boat gets lost during a storm? It's rewrite the module time, or a quick "and then you get your bearings and get where you were going anyway".

For most of these situations, having a sailing skill roll decide them is either like having the king send the entire party to the dungeons, ending the campaign because one player made a bad diplomacy roll, OR having the king ignore rolls because of where you want the adventure to go. There are one or two where you're talking about wholly scrapping the entire planned adventure because the PCs get sent somewhere you don't want them to go, too.

So I ask again - what sort of situations do we need a sailing skill for?

 

[2eBladeSinger]

So I ask again - what sort of situations do we need a sailing skill for?

Whatever the situation in which the DM would like the PCs to be involved and for which he thinks sailing is a relevant skill. Ship to ship combat comes to mind but there could be others especially in a sailing-themed campaign. Suppose the PCs want to bring a ship in close to the shore yet the coast is rocky and barely navigable. Or, a storm is coming in and the PCs need to secure the ship against swells - the scenario and the consequences are up to the DM and I have not heard, yet, a suggestion that an entire campaign be decided on one single die roll. Yet you seem convinced that is what is being discussed here.