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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Athildur" data-source="post: 4397973" data-attributes="member: 74429">Jumping into a slightly discontinued discussion (I'm sorry, but you have to start somewhere, right?):I think people are sorely mistaken if they think the game is about killing the monsters and taking their treasure. Nor is the game about crafting or cheesemaking or whatnot.D&D is an RPG. You play a role. You play in a story. D&D is about living through a hopefully interesting story. Things like killing monsters, taking treasure or making cheese are merely means to an end. In the end, you want to "win" (and by that I mean that you want to play out the story without...well, dying...or having the world destroyed or whatever the objective of the campaign is).Those who say combat is always required for this should probably not GM too much, unless it's a hack and slash party.D&D is, imho, a balance between many things. Combat and skill usage is just part of that.I honestly think that WotC dropped the ball on leaving out Craft and Profession. Skill diversity, especially those that accentuate the RPG side of play (Craft and Profession), is very important in a game that can have a lot of diversity, such as D&D.In computer games, it is understandable that not everything can be diverse. The game is limited by many things normal tabletops are not limited by. Unfortunately, I see a lot of that in 4e. The game is limited. Its balanced, extremely so. But somehow something got lost in the process of balancing the game out, generalizing rules and rolls, and making everything easier to learn.Craft and Profession are two skills that fill crucial roles when it comes to actually backing up your background, for building a character.I can understand that many a character needs different skills and doesn't have enough skill points left to invest in Craft or Profession.Its too bad that craft and profession don't get a more prominent role in the game, and that goes for 3.x as well. Skills shouldn't be made just to be useful, but thought should go into making it more useful, and craft and profession miss that slightly.I play NarutoD20, a fan-made system combining D20 Modern with the anime universe of Naruto, with additions from many other anime. The system contains some craft skills, craft skills which are useful.A puppeteer class, who builds or buys puppets and controls them in battle. the Craft(Engineering) skill from Modern is crucial in both building such things and in maintaining/repairing them. The skill has use.Craft(Chemical) is useful for both poisons (though I can see not many using that for DnD), but it's also used to craft items that have medicinal purposes, something that adds to the survivability of a group if the healer (although most parties dont have a healer, since healing is very limited) should go down or is incapacitated.Craft (Calligraphy), a skill seemingly useless aside from backstory purposes. However, it's used to craft seals and some other items, of which some are basic items of use (exploding tags) and others are useful because they are used in the performing of techniques both less and more powerful.Now, understandably the system is different, but the reason craft skills were never really used a lot was because they weren't really useful. Items could better be bought. It's affordable and saves a lot of effort.And now the skills are gone. I find it sad.WotC should place some effort in including skills that diversify character backgrounds. Make them at least somewhat useful aside from having the very respectable role of granting characters flavor.Having no skill but saying that the character is "a competent blacksmith" is both unclear and sort of a cheat. Because he could basically create most mundane battle items without ever having spent any effort into being able to, except writing a line in the character bio/background.Being a merchant with diplomacy etc is logical, yes. But profession(merchant) would provide insight into market workings, it could give you great advantages when dealing with other merchants or other people. Heroes don't make it a habit to delve into the workings of the world of commerce, so merchants could sell them some items for a very high price if the heroes can be convinced this item is very wanted and stocks are low, resulting in a high price. "Sense Motive" could reveal lies, and that would perhaps stop you from paying ludicrous prices. But as a GM I would not allow the use of Diplomacy to get discounts at stores, except in some special cases. If you really want a good price, you'd have to use knowledge of market working and professional terms and skills, which would fall under teh profession skill.Of course, you can make your own houserules and add it in. But since when has that ever been a proper argument for omitting anything from rules? Craft and Profession were powerful tools for players who like the RP aspects a bit more than the "Diablo element". A player doesn't have to be singularly focused on the RP aspects to want to use skills or character traits to make an interesting character.Imho, if the most proper description of a character is "A dwarven fighter who specialises in the use of hammers", you might as well go out and play WoW or something. Tabletops should offer you more than an MMO, it should offer possibilities, ways of making characters interesting and different, both by having players make a background, but also by offering character options that might not always be a storehouse of power or wealth, but do offer some basic functionality and ways of making a character different.Unfortunately, I don't see cheesemaking every becoming truly useful, but certainly there should be plenty Profession and Craft skills that do provide some use and are fun to have.(I don't entirely disagree with the opinion that it might not be a bad idea to offer a small amount of skill points to drop into "RP" skills such as Craft and Profession. It removes the sting of losing useful skill points to less useful ends unless you like RP. A choice between either RP or a useful character is something that shouldn't happen.)</rant></blockquote>

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