Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 rapunzel72 Feb 22, 2009 6:29:34	I love the simplicity that comes with 4e compared to 3.5! So I do not want to add more rules and more skills. But in our group we miss deeply the abilities to make music, paint a nice picture (yes, we have two correlon believers in our group!) or forge sword. Because we do not want to penalize players for good roleplaying with adding more skills (because that would mean that you have to take more training feats) we tried some things. Nothing worked out. We tried to use attributs only. Since attributs are never so high like a trained skill it penalizes good role players. We tried mixing two skill and then halve the result. The present DM did think about mixing acrobatic with diplomacy to beautify a shrine with some symbols. Acrobatic represents the ability to draw steady, diplomacy is what you want to achieve. Did not work out since a highly skilled artist has not to be acrobatic at all. So what ideas do you have? At the moment I think about taking the defenses into some kind of formula since the defenses take the higher of two values in account which seems to be fair. Most important for us is to encourage role playing and so giving players a simple method to do whatever they think of. We do not want to penalize a good player with investing in more skills or simliar things. Any ideas?
#2 vaalingrade_ashland_02 Feb 22, 2009 9:11:46	http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=1066684 I did that before the Characters of War article in one of the free Dragon issues came out. I now reccomend the method used by the article, which is simply a background that says 'yes, you can make this at cost', with the cost representing paying for tools and the use of facilities. In any case, I don't see how this: Since attributs are never so high like a trained skill it penalizes good role players. is actually an issue, as no one else in the world has a +5 skill training in perform either. Why not, if you need to roll something like that, give characters that sing a lot a defacto +5 if you feel the need to inflate the numbers for whatever reason?
#3 daidojitaidoru Feb 22, 2009 19:58:05	I did that before the Characters of War article in one of the free Dragon issues came out. I now reccomend the method used by the article, which is simply a background that says 'yes, you can make this at cost', with the cost representing paying for tools and the use of facilities. They also give other benifits like giving bonuses to checks and making skills class skills (say Diplomacy and Nature(?) for the artist with a +1 bonus to each) or unique features like the Warsmith being able to craft magic arms and armor without Ritual Casting. All in all a useful system.
#4 perseus_stoned Feb 22, 2009 20:50:52	I love the simplicity that comes with 4e compared to 3.5! So I do not want to add more rules and more skills. But in our group we miss deeply the abilities to make music, paint a nice picture (yes, we have two correlon believers in our group!) or forge sword. Then just let them. If they want to play a song, why can't they? Just make it an auto-pass. If you do need a system set up, then read the linked thread, it looks like a great compromise. I don't really see why that would be necessary from the descriptions you provided though; what would be wrong with providing auto-successes in your game? If they want to make art and sell it, just make sure you penalize them a certain amount of time. If they want to do it until they gather a large amount of gold, involve some sort of interruptions. If they want to forge a sword, make sure they spend enough gold to forge it (buying materials) that the sword would require. It seems easy enough because it should be.