So I wanna tie someone up ...

[TheAuldGrump]

No.. your thinking of Ride.

With tools.

The Auld Grump

 

[pawsplay]

Would you include the lassoing of the anchor point as Acrobatics as well? I personally do not see it that way, but I guess if you stretched it enough you could.

Well, what's the relationship between tieing a sailor's not and lassoing a rocky outcropping to swing across a chasm? The central task (swing across a chasm) is certainly Acrobatics, so skills related to it (securing a swing line) are presumably specialties practiced by persons with that skill.

Personally, I just never saw it as a bad skill. Maybe it is because I have a lot of creative players who like finding unusual ways of using skills. I don't know. Why did people think it was a bad skill, or one that needed elimination?

It's not a bad skill. I've seen it used in my games. It's just it's rarely used, and it doesn't fit the paradigm of other skills because it's so narrow. For instance, Profession (sailor) covers dozens of specialized talents, excluding, though, the tying of knots (in games with Use Rope). It makes sense as a Basic D&D skill (like fire building or orienteering) or as an AD&D NWP (like mycology or glassblowing) but not as a 3e skill (Search, Jump, survive in all environments everywhere, etc).

 

[sjmiller]

I guess that coming from a long history of skill-centric games, I find that just about any skill, no matter how specialized, can be useful in a game. I am not saying that what has been stated here is wrong, or should not be done, it's just different then my own views. That's cool, I get it.

 

[pawsplay]

When I want to get skill-crazy, I break out the GURPS.

 

[sjmiller]

When I want to get skill-crazy, I break out the GURPS.

Funny you should mention GURPS. That is what I spent many years playing, playtesting, and even writing some material for it. So, you can see where I get my tolerance for skills.