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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6575520" data-attributes="member: 82106">The simplest answer is because its a game and why split hairs? The people who get Performance and/or Musical Instrument are mostly Bards anyway! Why isn't there an acting skill and a juggling skill and a...? Its just not really coherent. I've played, a bunch, and its confusing. The skill system can't make up its mind if its a detailed list of everything you could ever do or if its a system of traits and talents ala 4e. This beast is neither fowl nor fish, its confused.OK, but does that not fall into the nature of RP? Even if you 'test the character' it still falls under basic intelligence. There's not a learned skill or training that will teach you to put these things together, that's what INT IS, definitionally. Investigation makes no sense as a skill. I have experienced this, I gave my character a high score in it. There simply isn't a situation where it makes sense, in every single case the action is covered by something else without fail. I mean we USED it, but it was clearly confusing and I could as well have put the points into Perception or some knowledge skills. In fact said character is lousy at Perception and yet somehow he's a great investigator, its just not making any sense at all!Well, what does 'properly' mean? The mechanics are absolutely clear on how THEY work. You get a +2 to checks which logically rely on tools (picking locks, removing traps, that sort of thing). So, now we know what properly means, it means 'get the best possible bonus'. Now, there could also be narrative impact. A rogue without tools might be told by the DM to improvise, or the attempt might take longer, or have some other undesired side-effect. These kinds of things are, in 4e, entirely within the scope of the DM according to the DMG. He might simply impose some awkward tool-related failure when the check doesn't pass.It covers determining the nature of a magical effect, detecting magic, and 'sense the presence of magic'. All Arcane casters generally have Arcana as a skill, often an automatic one not even a choice. Casting relies on INT, which is also the governing skill for Arcana. Presumably someone not trained in Arcana who casts spells does so via some other mechanism than expertise, which is covered in those classes. Exactly what constitutes 'Magic' in 4e IS open to interpretation, but yes, Arcana may tell you something about magic from any source. As for what skills align with those sources of magic Divine magic is covered by Religion, and Primal magic is covered by Nature. Psionics are covered by Dungeoneering, which covers everything related to the Far Realm/Aberrations. This is all spelled out clearly in the rules, which explain which type of lore is associated with each skill, and which monster type/origin keywords are related. 4e is QUITE CLEAR about all of this. It is actually QUITE rare for a 4e GM to be faced with any question as to which skill should govern a situation.No, I can quote the rulebooks for you and demonstrate that these things are codified directly into the game in a precise fashion. You can of course come up with situations where someone could do THIS or THAT and the effect is largely the same, but using a different skill, but those are very much edge cases. Probably the 'wooliest' skill in 4e is Perception, which is quite useful to rogues but based on a dump stat. The only convention we ever used in 4e was to allow examination of objects specifically for things like traps and locks to be based on Thievery instead, it was just more fun that way. That's a pretty small nit to be the most serious flaw in the  whole system, and 5e didn't even fix that one!</blockquote>

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