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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fuindordm" data-source="post: 3687909" data-attributes="member: 5435">Well, I guess it's really two related problems. The first is that many classes impose a fairly rigid package of highly specific abilities that may not match the personality of the character I'm imagining. A classic example of this is the idea that all thieves are dirty fighters (sneak attack), which as I mention is addressed by the class variants in UA and the DM allowing classes to be modified fairly freely. So this is handled reasonably well in the 3e framework.The second problem is a little more complicated. 1. Skill points and feats are an extremely scant resource for most classes.2. Players expect their initial skills and feats to reflect their character's background.3. Many typical and not unreasonable character backgrounds seems to demand many more skill points and/or feats than are available.4. This results in odd characters where some of their background traits are associated with a mechanical bonus, while others are just "color". Frustration sets in.Let's take a specific example: I have in mind a lower-class, shipwreaked whaler with harpoon proficiency who goes adventuring.  A sailor background ought to have ranks in Balance, Climb, Swim, and Use Rope at a minimum, with Gather Information, Intimidate, Jump and Survival optional. I might eventually settle on the following allotment:(cc) Balance (2)Climb (2)Profession (Sailor) (2)Swim (4)(cc) Use Rope (1)(cc) Gather Information (1)Intimidate (2)(cc) Survival (1)for a total cost of 20 skill points. I think you can agree that these skill levels are pretty minimal, but a reasonable reflection of what he learned to survive in his environment. There's really no other reason to give this sailor the necessary intelligence of 14, however, given his lower-class background. Furthermore, there's no pressing reason for him to have 5 skill points per level once he starts adventuring.There are many ways to enable this kind of character in 3e: I've heard of DMs allowing players to swap class skills, eliminating cross-class skills, granting bonus ranks in Craft/Profession/knowledge skills, and just handing out more skill points to everyone at first level. I myself have considered allowing profession skills to substitute for any other skill at half the number of ranks, in a limited context. All of these house rules are reasonable.To conclude, I'm not saying that the 3rd edition system doesn't work. It works quite well, provided you introduce minor house rules and allow the players a reasonable amount of leeway to tweak the classes. In the above example, I would ask the DM if I could get 2 more skill points per level and a few more class skills in exchange for most of the fighter's armor and shield proficiencies and the first level bonus feat.What I am saying is that it feels much more natural to write a paragraph for the DM describing the PC's pre-adventuring lifestyle, then allowing the character a good chance of succeeding at "sailorish" tasks in the game.  He's good at digging for rumors, but only in a typical dockside neighborhood. He's good at tying and climbing ropes. He knows the basicsof  navigation by stars, etc. This method removes a big stack of fiddly bits from character creation, eliminates the need to spend valuable resources on skills which are mainly there for color, and "locks" the background skills at their pre-adventuring level. Presumably when this fellow goes dungeon crawling, he is not gaining skill ranks in profession (sailor)!  Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it is inclusive rather than exclusive. It is simply assumed that the PC can do "sailor things".  Remeber the 1st edition barbarian in the original unearthed arcana? EGG carefully defined some iconic skills of the primitive background, and less carefully defined some "secondary skills" such as climbing natural surfaces and hiding in their home environment. Finally, he realized that trying to define a rule for everything in the barbarian's background was a bad idea and give us a third category of "tertiary skills". This was just a list of environments and a few of the survival skills associated with them, and he left it up to the DM to determine whether the player could do something or not.  It really isn't possible to put a mechanical value on everything that comes from a character's background, so why not just write the background and base the PC's non-adventuring competence on that?</blockquote>

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