Using Heal to find out how someone died.

[danzig138]

But I have little doubt that the player I have in mind would simply grab the body and spend 5 hours of down time looking at it to allow himself to Take 20.

Eh. If the character has 5 hours to sit down and fiddle with the dead, more power to him I say.

Of course, he might want to be careful where he performs his examinations. Dragging the corpse to the nearest village, and up to a room might cause some. . . difficulties with the locals. Heck, the fiddling with the dead might cause some issues with a particularly superstitious party member.

As to whether or not it seems to modern. . . I don't see that as a good "No" reason in D&D. Other skills let you gain information about subjects that just doesn't jive with how many medieval folk thought about things. Some of the ideas on animals from then are. . . interesting. So this is one of those areas where I recommend letting it slide.

 

[Nail]

Skill inflation only screws players. Why introduce a whole new incredibly specialized skill for something that could be covered just fine by the Heal skill?

Agreed.

The additional (and far more complicated) skill rules that Menexenus posted are completely unnesessary and (somewhat) unfair. The last thing PCs are crying for are more skills to spend points on. Such an additional burdern will mean even fewer players will investigate causes of death.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Booo! Skill inflation only screws players. Why introduce a whole new incredibly specialized skill for something that could be covered just fine by the Heal skill?

Well, it would seem obvious that I don't think the uses to which I put Knowledge (Anatomy) can be covered just fine by the Heal skill. Healing does not include a body of knowledge regarding the workings of muscles and organs, at last afaic. It covers midwifery, preparing and applying poultices, leeching poisons, etc. Anatomical knowledge is not something it covers.

And for the record, my players didn't seem to feel screwed at all. Heal was still quite useful in the campaign, as was Knowledge (Anatomy).

Or in other words, please consider my disapproval of Knowledge (Anatomy) registered.

Fair enough. Register my indifference to your disapproval at the same time.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Such an additional burdern will mean even fewer players will investigate causes of death.

Interestingly, my campaign showed just the opposite trend. In the opening campaign notes, I listed several skills which I suggested may become particularly useful, based on the campaign's nature. Among them were Heal and a handful of knowledge checks, including Knowledge (Anatomy). At first, the PCs didn't place many (if any) skill points into this particular skill. By third level, having come across several situations in which they wanted to know things that required a Knowledge (Anatomy) check, one of them started investing in it. Once she had skill ranks, she began to start making use of it as much as possible, which led to even more checks of that particular skill, above and beyond the frequency that had spurred her to invest in it to begin with.

At the same time, other skills which may be particularly useful in a standard game were not so useful in mine. Knowledge (Religion), for instance. Survival (it was a City-based game). Perform. etc.

I guess my point here is that creating a new skill does not screw the players, as another poster mentioned. The players are only screwed if they are (or feel that they are) required to spend skill points on more skills total. Shifting the "useful skills" for a particular campaign is not detrimental at all. I'd go further, and say this keeps things interesting from campaign to campaign, giving each a unique flavor and tailoring the skills to the material being dealt with.

 

[Storyteller01]

Interestingly, my campaign showed just the opposite trend. In the opening campaign notes, I listed several skills which I suggested may become particularly useful, based on the campaign's nature. Among them were Heal and a handful of knowledge checks, including Knowledge (Anatomy). At first, the PCs didn't place many (if any) skill points into this particular skill. By third level, having come across several situations in which they wanted to know things that required a Knowledge (Anatomy) check, one of them started investing in it. Once she had skill ranks, she began to start making use of it as much as possible, which led to even more checks of that particular skill, above and beyond the frequency that had spurred her to invest in it to begin with.

At the same time, other skills which may be particularly useful in a standard game were not so useful in mine. Knowledge (Religion), for instance. Survival (it was a City-based game). Perform. etc.

I guess my point here is that creating a new skill does not screw the players, as another poster mentioned. The players are only screwed if they are (or feel that they are) required to spend skill points on more skills total. Shifting the "useful skills" for a particular campaign is not detrimental at all. I'd go further, and say this keeps things interesting from campaign to campaign, giving each a unique flavor and tailoring the skills to the material being dealt with.

Playing Devil's Advocate here...

Since you created these skills, you have provided opportunities to use them. I have dozens of new skills in various books I own, yet none of my players look into these unless I make an effort to adopt them into the game. I've even created a 'sniper' skill for ranged specialists, but only one player has ever used it.

You are right; creating new skills don't screw the players. However, there's no point to making new skills unless they become the campaigns focus. No one will take them unless they have to.

 

[RamYaz]

I read this post and I am truly sorry but I must rant about something here. It doesn’t really help the post in any way (almost a hijack) so you don’t have to read it. The following quote bothers me.

“Well, no, I guess not. It just doesn't seem very "realistic" to me. It seems to me that, by allowing this use of the Heal skill, we are imposing our 20th century scientific worldview on a medieval-based fictional fantasy society. Because of our modern viewpoint, *we* (as players) know that there is evidence there to be found for those who are willing to do a detailed autopsy. I'm not sure that such an idea should/would occur to someone (like our characters) who live before the advent of modern medical science.”

Sadly this is a mistake that most people make and I have seen many movies and D&D games ruined by uninformed directors and GMs respectively.

There is a common belief among our “modern” society that Ancient and Medieval people were primitive screw heads who spent all their time searching for sea serpents and talking about how the world was flat. Almost no one realizes how smart and resourceful these people were. Our technology far outdoes theirs, but they were just as intelligent as we are, maybe even more so since they were able to figure out things (such as the circumference of the earth) without all our high technology.

Speaking of technology. I don’t like all these movies/books were people go back in time and use technology to impress everyone and make them think they are powerful wizards. If you flew a plane over a medieval city, or even some of the enlightened ancient people like the Greeks, nobody would be dumb enough to say “Look, a giant silver bird.” They would look up and say “Wow, its some sort of flying machine. There must be a man in there piloting the thing.” Then they would probably take extensive notes and do research on the thing that may lead to the plane being invented decades if not centuries ahead of time. After all, they did have a working blueprint for the steam engine 500 years before it was even invited.

If you were not burned at the stake by the Inquisition, of course.

 

[Nail]

I guess my point here is that creating a new skill does not screw the players, as another poster mentioned. The players are only screwed if they are (or feel that they are) required to spend skill points on more skills total.

True enough.

Which switches the question to: "Does adding a new skill mean removing (or minimizing the utility) of another skill?"

In your case, it would seem the answer is yes.

As for the argument: "Heal does not give the user any knowledge of anatomy."......That seems like a very difficult position to argue from. A PC knows how to set a broken bone, but doesn't know how the bone is positioned in the body?

Etc.

 

[irdeggman]

For comparison. Knowledge (religion) is the skill that covers undead. That on the surface seems like the skill is very borad in nature and that knowledge of undaed should really be something more specific. Any change would in effect reduce the usefulness of Knowledge (religion) as the RAW has it currently.

Hence a penalty to any players.

Personnally I don't like that knowledge of undead was lumped under relgion, but hey that's
the rules.

 

[Someone]

I wouldn´t use just Heal for that. I´d use Track or Search to find clues around the body; Search to find barely noticeable wounds; Heal to know what wound killed him, or what wound were inflicted before and after death; Spellcraft to know what spell/s could have done it, and so on...

 

[Lord Pendragon]

Playing Devil's Advocate here...

Actually, your comments seem quite relevant.

Since you created these skills, you have provided opportunities to use them. I have dozens of new skills in various books I own, yet none of my players look into these unless I make an effort to adopt them into the game.

This is certainly true, and I am by no means suggesting that simply adding a dozen skills to the list of skills on a PC's character sheet would be beneficial to a game. That gives a player far more places to spend skill points while having the same finite amount of skill points to spend overall. Hence, screwage.

I don't add skills to my campaign simply because they've been listed in a splatbook somewhere. I add skills because they will be relevant in my campaign, and I do not feel that the core list of skills adequately represents the skill involved. As I aluded to above, I also give my players a list of "useful skills" prior to character creation, so they can take into account the particular skills that I'll be emphasizing in the game.

Basically, I don't feel that adding skills is in and of itself a negative proposition, which is the feeling I surmise some posters in the thread have. I feel that it's impossible to accurately represent all the various possible skill sets within the list of core skills. Because of this, if a non-core skill set is an integral part of your game--Knowedge (Anatomy) in my case--then the game benefits from adding in that skill, rather than attempting to shoehorn it into something else that may not fit.

Naturally, the DM needs to take measures to prevent the players from feeling they need to max out all the core skills, plus any new skills you've created, and thus get caught in a skill point crunch. Some DMs solve this problem by simply awarding more skill points all around. Myself, I do so by providing the players with a list of "emphasis skills" so they know what kinds of checks to expect, and are thus able to spend their skill points more wisely.

It might be arguably sensible to actually remove the rarely-used skills from the game in the same manner I add them, thus preventing players from spending skill points on skills I won't be using much at all. However, since those skills are listed in the PB, I figure removing them would be more hassle than it's worth. Somewhere, a player would forget I'd removed it and wind up with 13 ranks in it at 10th-level, then learn his error and have to re-calculate all his skill points... Nah, more trouble than it's worth.

there's no point to making new skills unless they become the campaigns focus. No one will take them unless they have to.

Well, not necessarily "campaign focus" but certainly "campaign relevant." I don't spend time analyzing the core skill list and figuring out things I don't think fit in, then adding those to my game. I design a campaign and it occurs to me that a certain skill that would be particularly useful is missing from the core set, and therefore add it. There are no doubt many skills not (IMO) adequately represented in the core set, but if they aren't going to come up in my game, then I certainly wouldn't add them to my game. Indeed, I don't add them to my game unless I know (or discover) that they are going to have a signficant presence. For skills that show up maybe once or twice in the entire campaign, I just pick the closest skill and call for that, hand-waving it away. But for a more substantial presence, I prefer to add the skill, rather than continually handwave a skill that I don't feel fits the task.