To Craft and Profess...

[That One Guy]

I dunno, I think it's probably fine to have
Untrained (+0) - Apprentice (+2) - Journeyman (+5) - Master (+8)
to match the untrained, jack of trades or racial bonus, trained, trained and focused rules for other skills. You could have the 4th tier as you say, and make it +10 I suppose (racial or path +2 plus trained plus focus, to match the rest of the system)

The trick is determining how 'many' and to what extent you can have the background skills. To that, I think it varies wildly by game. I'd cheerfully allow folks to just pick a few and just write them down and never call for rolls, but that's not other's cup of tea.

So, the DM should pick a number of background points for people to have, from 0 to 10, and people should put 1-3 in each skill. So in a campaign where people are teenagers just going off on their naming quest, they can have 1. In a campaign about ex-war veterans turned upstanding citizens coming out of retirement to save the kingdom it can be 6, etc.

That's a pretty great solution. Think you might try it in a game?

Yes, pretty much.

Well then, I agree with you. But, I like to be aware of what people dislike, and some people aren't a fan of doing it that way... thus the thread. I totally think your way of doing things is pretty much how I'd do it. But, I want options on the table for if I ever run a game where that method isn't what I need/want.

 

[GnomeWorks]

It's adding unnecessary complexity to a system that is simple and abstract.

If that's your thing, cool, but then why are you playing 4e instead of 3.x?

...no, not fair enough.

Get off your high horse about simple systems always being better. You know what, opposed d20 rolls are more simple and abstract - why not do that for everything? Screw bonuses, screw anything else. Each participant rolls a d20, highest roll wins. So much simpler, so much more abstract!

Some things need to be discussed more, and made more mechanically sound. If you don't like it (and you clearly don't), then you could gleefully ignore threads that go in that direction, rather than crap on them.

 

[That One Guy]

...no, not fair enough.

Hehe, sorry. Fair enough is my expression for... I can understand what one is saying and I concede that it seems valid for their purposes... more or less.

Some things need to be discussed more, and made more mechanically sound.

Then let's discuss!
I'm totally inviting you to summarize or spell out your system of choice for how skills would work, especially in a fashion that could be added to 4e.

 

[mattdm]

I think in my upcoming 4E campaign, I'm going to say that players can pick any three Craft, Profession, and Perform skills to be trained in. For example, Profession(librarian) / Craft(sculpture) / Craft(origami). This should match the backstory they've created for their characters.

And if anything not covered by that comes up and the player can convincingly (but quickly!) demonstrate that the skill fits into their already-estabilished character background, I'll let 'em make a check at +2.

 

[That One Guy]

I think in my upcoming 4E campaign, I'm going to say that players can pick any three Craft, Profession, and Perform skills to be trained in. For example, Profession(librarian) / Craft(sculpture) / Craft(origami). This should match the backstory they've created for their characters.

And if anything not covered by that comes up and the player can convincingly (but quickly!) demonstrate that the skill fits into their already-estabilished character background, I'll let 'em make a check at +2.

cool cool. What about amount of focus? Could someone drop a background skill to make their character more tied to... crafting marble statues or something and thus get a higher bonus (maybe a +3 or 4?) for that skill?

 

[mattdm]

cool cool. What about amount of focus? Could someone drop a background skill to make their character more tied to... crafting marble statues or something and thus get a higher bonus (maybe a +3 or 4?) for that skill.

I think mostly relatively general, since it's not really intended to be a highly detailed part of the game. Since I expect actually-really-useful circumstances to come up fairly rarely (as they do in 3E, where I've done a similar thing — every player automatically gets max ranks in one such skill of their choice), being more general is usually to the player's advantage since more situations would be covered.

That said, if someone really wanted to be more specific, they could devote more than one of their options to that: perhaps Profession(stonecarver) to cover the wider case and Craft(marblework) to get more specific. And sure, I'd be generous if the situation turns out to exactly need a marble statue carved. (Or more likely, a found marble statue analyzed for clues of some sort.)

 

[That One Guy]

I think mostly relatively general, since it's not really intended to be a highly detailed part of the game. Since I expect actually-really-useful circumstances to come up fairly rarely (as they do in 3E, where I've done a similar thing — every player automatically gets max ranks in one such skill of their choice), being more general is usually to the player's advantage since more situations would be covered.

That said, if someone really wanted to be more specific, they could devote more than one of their options to that: perhaps Profession(stonecarver) to cover the wider case and Craft(marblework) to get more specific. And sure, I'd be generous if the situation turns out to exactly need a marble statue carved. (Or more likely, a found marble statue analyzed for clues of some sort.)

Nosco, and rad. I like the focused specialization being an extra use of the BG skills. So if they really wanted to be exclusive they could add craft(humanoid statues) or craft(architecture) on top. I like it.