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<blockquote data-quote="Chris Lawrence" data-source="post: 2857204" data-attributes="member: 38308">I agree. My thinking is that, in practice, the DM would simply estimate how many skill points any given NPC would have, but that the mechanical system to back it up would give the DM a basis for his or her guess. For example, the DM might have the PCs buying gear from Joe the Merchant. Joe is 50 years old, so he's probably been at his trade about 35 years, 12 months a year, so he's probably had about 35 opportunities to improve his skills. Say he failed his check about two-thirds of the time (each failure resulting in a one point improvement)--that means Joe should have about 24 extra skill points. The DM decides to give him 8 extra skill points in appraise, 4 extra in each of diplomacy and bluff, and the other 8 go to profession (merchant). Assuming full ranks taken in each of those skills at chargen, +1 bonus from ability scores, and skill-focus (profession), that gives Joe appraise 13,&nbsp; bluff 9, diplomacy 9 and profession (merchant) 16. I imagine that, with practice, such calculations could be done in a few seconds on the fly.The mechanical system could also be useful for PCs and key NPCs in campaigns where there is a lot of down-time between adventures.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Chris Lawrence, post: 2857204, member: 38308"] I agree. My thinking is that, in practice, the DM would simply estimate how many skill points any given NPC would have, but that the mechanical system to back it up would give the DM a basis for his or her guess. For example, the DM might have the PCs buying gear from Joe the Merchant. Joe is 50 years old, so he's probably been at his trade about 35 years, 12 months a year, so he's probably had about 35 opportunities to improve his skills. Say he failed his check about two-thirds of the time (each failure resulting in a one point improvement)--that means Joe should have about 24 extra skill points. The DM decides to give him 8 extra skill points in appraise, 4 extra in each of diplomacy and bluff, and the other 8 go to profession (merchant). Assuming full ranks taken in each of those skills at chargen, +1 bonus from ability scores, and skill-focus (profession), that gives Joe appraise 13, bluff 9, diplomacy 9 and profession (merchant) 16. I imagine that, with practice, such calculations could be done in a few seconds on the fly. The mechanical system could also be useful for PCs and key NPCs in campaigns where there is a lot of down-time between adventures. [/QUOTE]

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