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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Crazy Jerome" data-source="post: 5577909" data-attributes="member: 54877">An objective measurement would depend on the design intents of the system and implementation success of the design--and necessarily some subjectivity will creep in to analysis due to preferences and how people bend that system to their preferences. So I think that the stated suggestion for 4E perform being relegated to bards is superior--within the confines of the 4E design, and compared to having a "perform" skill. That doesn't mean it is the best possible solution. So let's look at the 3E crafts, professions, and perform skills in the skill system from the angle of what it is designed to do, and how well it does it. Only then can we even allow for any subjective analysis by table.  Design: The authors didn't talk much about the design of this part, at least not anywhere I could find, circa August 2000 to 2003. If you know of anything, I'd like to see it. We know that Monte Cook dropped Professions from his Arcana Unearthed (later Arcana Evolved) ruleset, very deliberately. So there was design decision there, much speculated upon on his boards at the time, but I don't think he ever commented publically on why. We know that the 3.5 group didn't really change these skills much, if at all.  So design criticism has to somewhat divine the intent. That divination is necessarily somewhat subjective due to potential bias, but the thing itself is not. (I can't state categorically that the designers were thinking X. I can state categorically that the designers were thinking something.) Well, what do we know of their intent from other parts of the ruleset? We know that they wanted to split the middle on making the rules map to the simulated D&D reality, while also preserving some of the play and traditions of D&D. We know that they struggled with this, because it wasn't easy. We know that they made trade offs that they weren't always happy with later, because they've told us so. So first, it seems pretty apparent, that whatever the design intent was here, it was somewhat of a compromise between those conflicting goals. Second, we can reasonably guess that they did not spend a lot of time on design, with these skills. How can we tell? The design doesn't actually integrate into the rest of the system very much--for just one example, you don't really need "Crafting" to get good equipment. Again, perform is a bit of an exception here, and it is not surprising, considering someone spent at least enough time on it to pull it out of the rest. (On the surface, just why exactly would you have a perform skill partially working as a profession, instead of making it a profession? There was a reason, whatever it was.) Third, there is the negative evidence of what skills did get elevated to their own set of rules. "Use Rope"--are you kidding me? In the design, "use rope" was deemed important enough to make full skill, with a set of DCs, etc. So the designers thought this more important than crafts and professions, at least individually. My subjective opinion of the design, given the above, is that there wasn't much of a design. It was glossed over with a few labels, or someone fought for it on simulation grounds and got it, much like 2E NWP. There just doesn't seem to be any evidence that the designers much cared about it one way or the other. Which leads us to implentation. Implementation is a different set of criteria. I actually think the implementation was pretty well done, given the design they had to work with. If you are going to try to thread that needle between simulation and game play, with something as niche as craft and professions, then you might as well go for a little crunch that on the surface fits the crafts. And you might not know exactly how masterwork equipment was going to play out, and have to retroactively fit that in. And certainly, you won't have complete access to the equipment list beforehand, and thus can't be responsible if some of the things on it are priced crazily within the sytem. And of course, it really helps a lot that all of this is optional, and thus not inflicted on people who don't like it. For that reason, better to make it underpowered rather than overpowered, and the development team delivers here. But what you end up with is something where the developers had to more or less guess what was wanted and/or bend it to fit the rest of the game design. Given some of the statements issued since, by people there at the time that wanted something closer to Hero or GURPs, and others that wanted to resist that direction in favor of traditional D&D play (whatever that was in their eyes), it is not clear which battles were fought, let alone who won them.  So I have no trouble whatsoever stating that anything systematic done with minimal to non-existent design influence could be bettered with a more careful design.  I also have no issue with someone valuing the result of the 3E effort more than the decision of the 4E design. The 4E design team looked at the results of the 3E effort and decided it wasn't worth pursing in the new edition. That doesn't change the fact that the 3E developers did fairly well within their constraints. I've also seen pieces of software put together with very little design and heroic development effort. Sometimes, they are even worth using. So, in summary: 1. My preference, which is subjective (but based on objective experiences), is that if you aren't going to bother doing good design, then don't bother at all. Obviously, that doesn't answer anyone who wanted something done. 2. My claim, which is objective (as any such claim can be), is that the 3E craft, profession, and perform parts of the skill system could have been significantly better than they were, with better design. As much as people may value the efforts of the development team on same, those people would be better served by the same effort built on better design. This is hardly a 3E versus 4E point. The same exact objections that I have made to the 3E craft, profession, and perform skills could be equally made of the 4E skill challenge rules.</blockquote>

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