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Message: <blockquote data-quote="phloog" data-source="post: 4250992" data-attributes="member: 59219">The farming was a bit of a goof but someone had mentioned turnips....my point was simply that I think that there HAS to be some rules basis to adjudicate MOST actions, including those that are based on 'background skills' - - I don't necessarily need to have a number that says his background was a 33 on the tough-life-as-street-urchin scale, but for skills I need some way to deal with them, and often a stat leads to less issues than DMing with what might often seem to be arbitrary rulings.The issue with the second part of your reply is the 'Woodcarving not so much'...the character I created is not only good at forging someone's handwriting, but realized early on that a lot of documents contain seals and such, so he has become highly skilled at doing detailed carvings of things like the images on signet rings.  So Forgery CURRENTLY seems to be defined as primarily handwriting and 'official-sounding language' - my character is SO focused on deception that he has developed incredible skill at woodcarving...is it ridiculous?  Probably to most, but it's what we enjoy, and I prefer to have a mechanic/roll to determine the success or failure of his forgery than have the DM say "Yeah, you didn't do well enough carving that signet so they're attacking you to subdue and jail you"As always, this is not an indictment of those who would enjoy a game where all stats have a combat application...but without such mechanics there are often issues...as a DM (my role 99% of the time - - DM/Controller, I guess) I realize that while I am comfortable deciding from a story standpoint whether or not something succeeds, the players like to roll the dice in this game and have that degree of 'control' over their destiny.Also, I might be the weirdest DM ever, but if I had a big Orc Chieftain and his troops set up as the BBEG climax, and the players did something so unexpected that my whole delightful story was derailed....hurray for them...I'm a DM and as such I LIKE it when the story doesn't end as planned....it's not fun for me personally for the story to always roll out as I planned, with the only surprises being the particular stick that they chose to pummel the orc with.At one point, I had a group hit a lich - a lich, for goodness sake, with a powder that they had found that had as its only effect that it put you in a clown suit...I rolled a 1 for his save....Evil Clown.  The party ran away rather than fight, leaving the lich to stew until he could dispell the clown garb and plot his revenge.  No fight...just fun.</blockquote>

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