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<blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6025389" data-attributes="member: 42582">Why can't CHA help climb? Can't a fey-touched sorcerer or warlock - or, perhaps, a shaman - persuade the spirits and faeries of the cliff face to help him/her with the ascent?My own view is that the solution to this lies with trade offs. Make the player describe what it is in his/her PC's background, or in the situation, that permits the attempt to be made. Which then gives the GM material out of which to build further challenges and complications. Ie &quot;Yes, but . . . &quot; adjudication.Back to classic D&amp;D? Sounds sensible to me, provided the rulebooks give the GM sensible advice on adjudication techniques.I like the idea of backgrounds being important to skill checks. I think that, for the reasons slobo777 gave, it is going to be hard to keep background bonuses to special cases, however: good players will naturally try to steer the game in a direction in which their backgrounds come into play. And that's what we want, isn't it? Creative players who use their PC builds to bring vibrancy, direction and motivation to the ingame situation?Hence my view that &quot;balance&quot;, to the extent that it matters here, is to be achieved via the GM using the right approach in adjudication.Good judgement, supplemented by adequate advice on adjudication to make such a system work. It's not as if that sort of open-ended system doesn't already exist in other RPGs, together with the GMing advice to go along with it.What's the point of having skill rules if the GM has to ad lib in this fashion? If having a Soldier background should help the fighter PC recognise heraldry despite having poor INT and no Heraldic Lore training, then change the rules to make it so.Or conversely, if having the ability to recognise those things is just what having those skills means, then do what Rolemaster (for example) tends to do, and give the fighter training in those skills.Something like that would be the obvious way to go: PCs can add to or expand their &quot;backgrounds&quot; as they level up.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pemerton, post: 6025389, member: 42582"] Why can't CHA help climb? Can't a fey-touched sorcerer or warlock - or, perhaps, a shaman - persuade the spirits and faeries of the cliff face to help him/her with the ascent? My own view is that the solution to this lies with trade offs. Make the player describe what it is in his/her PC's background, or in the situation, that permits the attempt to be made. Which then gives the GM material out of which to build further challenges and complications. Ie "Yes, but . . . " adjudication. Back to classic D&D? Sounds sensible to me, provided the rulebooks give the GM sensible advice on adjudication techniques. I like the idea of backgrounds being important to skill checks. I think that, for the reasons slobo777 gave, it is going to be hard to keep background bonuses to special cases, however: good players will naturally try to steer the game in a direction in which their backgrounds come into play. And that's what we want, isn't it? Creative players who use their PC builds to bring vibrancy, direction and motivation to the ingame situation? Hence my view that "balance", to the extent that it matters here, is to be achieved via the GM using the right approach in adjudication. Good judgement, supplemented by adequate advice on adjudication to make such a system work. It's not as if that sort of open-ended system doesn't already exist in other RPGs, together with the GMing advice to go along with it. What's the point of having skill rules if the GM has to ad lib in this fashion? If having a Soldier background should help the fighter PC recognise heraldry despite having poor INT and no Heraldic Lore training, then [I]change the rules to make it so[/I]. Or conversely, if having the ability to recognise those things is just what having those skills means, then do what Rolemaster (for example) tends to do, and give the fighter training in those skills. Something like that would be the obvious way to go: PCs can add to or expand their "backgrounds" as they level up. [/QUOTE]

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