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Message: <blockquote data-quote="eyebeams" data-source="post: 5316485" data-attributes="member: 9225">Because I want to be able to create a blacksmith of superlative skill who does not also have the ability to waste orcs. Forcing me to create one sucks. PCs are the most talented at all skills in 3e because 3e's skill system is damaged to appease the egos of players who want to show up supporting characters. It's idiotic that the greatest swordsmith *must* be a PC. The popular sentiment that PCs must dominate every niche is wrong, dumb and ignores the precedents set by fiction and blink-test plausibility.You're making my point for me. I have to make a blacksmith who is a superior combatant to make him a good blacksmith . . . but such a character can't actually arise organically in the system because non-adventuring XP awards are piddly. So the advice is kind of "Screw it, just cheat." I respect that. It's just in no way a defense of 3e's skill system. On the other hand, it handily explains why 4e dropped the whole idea of everybody using the same framework.The essence of it is that you are telling me that something I don't want is awesome for reasons you like and I don't. 3e could have accommodated us both, but didn't. Elements of 4e do accommodate us both, but screws up any idea of skill as a rich background signifier.2e only has weak links between classes and skills/NWPs, so we can both get what we want. You want every NPC smith to kick ass, make them all fighters. I don't and I still get the smith I want. Nope. Secondary Skills have no system, so they are on par with anything you might claim as background in play. The DM has complete discretion.If you put down your sword and get to the anvil, why should you still be good at using your sword? Class levels are not supposed to represent magical gene therapy. You can always say that yeah, your guy is also practicing his fighting skills, magic, whatever -- but that just puts the ball begs the question of why he gets to be as good as the guy who isn't splitting his attention. But this is in-world rationalization -- secondary to game play. The real problem is that locating ultimate competence in all things in PCs turns D&D's background into cardboard. Adventurers lose the need to barter with NPCs for many essentials and lose deep embedding in the world. As designers pander to players who whine whenever they must rely on something in spite of themselves for fear of getting upstaged by a bad DM's pet character (which bad DMs can create regardless of what you design) they shove the vast majority of NPCs into a kind of bland sub-world where they cannot even provide supporting services beyond facile ego-stroking, and it suborns all activity in the world to violent power (you must be able to kill someone to make anything) instead of making that power something specially possessed by PCs. So the irony is that allowing PCs to have inflated skills actually makes them *less* special, because anybody with similar skills has to be like them.In short: It stinks. 4e got rid of some of these issues but then ripped out skills that vividly situate people in the world. 1e didn't even have a system. Nobody's done a very good job of it, really.</blockquote>

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