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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5577751" data-attributes="member: 54877">Something mechanically relevant.  I already conceded that the money earned from a performance met that criteria--though so niche, that I don't think it worth the rest of the hassle that comes with it. How is the above mechanically relevant in any way that couldn't be better handled some other way?  Game play?  The gold amounts are trivial, and the decision points non-existent.  Simulation?  It is a very poor simulation of medieval crafting, both in the time and materials.  Even allowing for magic entering into the crafting (which is not at all supported by the text), it doesn't match any literature I ever read.  Narrativism?  It is so far off that, I can't even determine an example to show how it fails.  But let's not limit ourselves to GNS.  How about "flagging player interest"?  We already discussed that one.  If you want flags, why a silly formula for amount earned?  Drama?  All the drama from it comes from straight roleplaying.  Background?  OK, useful, but again not mechanically relevant.  (You may get some story relevance out of it, but again, like "flags" , you could have gotten that much easier in several other ways.) About the best you can do with it, is that if the DM works at it, he can contrive a situation where the rules will be mechanically relevant--e.g. set up a big scene where the performance must be tried and something dramatic happens either way.  But nothing in the mechanics helps the DM achieve that.  If the DM is inexperienced, quite the contrary--the banality of the mechanics can drag down whatever the DM was trying to achieve. Remember how this tangent started.  I'm all for solid mechanics that make crafting or performance mechanically meaningful (in the right system).  But barring that threshold, I'd rather not have them at all.  They just get in the way.  If you want to answer Danny's objection--that certain characters be mechanically supported as superior in some way, then a better way to handle it in 3E would have been to use feats.  Take a feat, you can play the flute or work as a blacksmith or whatever.  Kind of like "Craft Wand".  If, OTOH, you want fine-grain differences, so that Harry the Halfling, gifted amateur flute player can compete against Bob the Bard, trained traveling lute fiend--then a single skill roll on Perform may almost work--but of course, like any opposed checks with d20 skill, you'll have to do that a lot or not pay much attention to the fine print.  Hide vs Perception works because--it is done a lot, and that +2 advantage that Snook the Rogue has, matters over time. In 4E, BTW, a better way to handle this would have been to simply say, given the vibrant, 4-color means of 4E, that bards play music, and that's that.  If you want to play and not be mainly a bard, multiclass into bard and pick up that ability.  Of course, that still doesn't handle crafting, but you can't have everything.</blockquote>

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