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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steverooo" data-source="post: 1394151" data-attributes="member: 9410">Ahwww, PC!Appraise can be used every time you find treasure (especially Objects d'art), and anytime that you want to know where something came from (as an Information-Gathering, Clue-Finding task).  Innuendo was great!  IIRC, you couldn't use it, unskilled, and it allowed "secret messages" to be passed (ala 1e Drow's "body language").  I tried to use it a lot, in 3e.  Intuit Direction wasn't worthless, just too costly for the few uses it gave...  Every been in the Teleport-linked Dungeon?  Being able to find north is great, down there!  Read Lips useless?!?  NO WAY!!!  Every scout/spy needs it!  Once, upon entering a town, my PC was quizzed by the guards, then saw people whispering about him...  He took a seat at the fountain, and tried to overhear, but failed the check!  Fortunately, he was able to use Lip Reading enough to get the vast majority of the conversation, found one of the troublemakers early, as was able to prevent himself from being hassled as an Assassin because of it!Not bad, for two minutes' work!Use Rope and Decipher Script are awesome skills, but the D&D implementations are wrong, wrong, wrong!  They would be better served with a 4e rewrite (or, as I said, rolling Rope Use into both Climb and Survival).For Decipher Script, there really needs to be a lower-DC task to recognize the language, as well as one to recognize magic.  This would allow the skill to be used more..."Hey!  I found a scroll!"  (Unrolls it, looks.)  "It's in Draconic, and magical, but I can't make it out...  Wizard, try your Spellcraft on it, if you don't have Read Magic memorized!"... or "These are Dwarven Runes, in the Angerthas Moria, but I can't make out anything but 'Balin Fundinal', or 'Balin, son of Fundin'!"  Comprehend Languages isn't always available, especially if your Arcanist is a Sorcerer, y'know!Now Rope Use won't see as much use unless the GM is or was a Navy Seal, 82nd Airborne, Marine, or Boy Scout, but just pick up any good survival manual, and LOOK at all the knots that there are to tie!  Then look at the lashing chapters, and see what you can DO with some downed trees and rope!Some of the problems with this skill are the DC:15 task to tie a firm knot...  Ridiculous!  One easy solution would be to allow everyone to tie the Granny Knot, Square Knot, and one other, with their first rank of skill, then three knots of choice/rank, thereafter.  These three knots/level could then be used, without a roll.  By the time the PC had the 13-or-so ranks required to "tie a firm knot", now, they would know how to tie 39+ knots without needing to roll.Also, dieing because your rope came loose is no fun, and hurts the game, IMHO.  The DC:15 roll is too high.  Also, climbing on a rope without tying knots is impossible, as is building (most) shelters with Survival, without tying knots...  So I would move the throwing-the-grapnel part of Rope Use to Climb, and the Knots-Tying part to both Survival and Climb...  The downside is that you lose the +2 Synergy Bonus to climbing rope with 5+ ranks of Rope Use, but that could be changed to Survival, instead.Next, the Craft rules for making stuff with saplings or trees and rope will have to be redone, the costs removed, totally, and the times drastically cut...  As an example, if I were snowed in, and unable to walk out, but had some 550 Paracord and was camped under a tree, I could spend a day making a pair of snowshoes from woven branches and cord, tie them on, and snowshoe my way out!  This is the kind of stuff that Survival is supposed to allow, but with the current craft rules, it takes money (!), bought materials, and TOO MUCH TIME!  This is particularly ridiculous for Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers, who dwell in the wilds, and don't buy supplies for making gear!(What I do is say that such "Barbaric, primitive, or simply rustic" crafts are worth 1/10th the normal price, and therefore take 1/10th the time.  They are not as good as store-bought, and sometimes tend to come apart, but can be made more quickly.  I disallow Masterwork, without the appropriate skill(s), but I DO allow Survival to be substituted for Craft (Whatever).  This makes these three classes (as well as Clerics of the Travel Domain) much more potent, in such situations (as they should be, IMHO - when you're down and out in the wilderness, shouldn't the Barbarians, Druids, and Rangers be providing the solutions?)Anyhow, Rope Use isn't useless, to me.  Knowing how to tie those Timber Hitches on those saplings can turn them and a piece of rope into a sled, or those branches and that cord into snowshoes, or even that pot on the fire and some rope into a sled (melt the ice in the pot, form the shape with the rope, pour the melted snow over the rope form to make an ice sled)!All IMHO, of course.  YMMV.</blockquote>

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