Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 4217659" data-attributes="member: 4937">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.</blockquote>

Verification