Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 Brian_Bors Mar 26, 2009 6:11:38	Our party was having some trouble, we rarely fight (2 fights per session tops, but we sometimes go entire sessions without fighting. We reached level 2 on our 13th session) and we maintain, organize, promote our evil cult of Asmodeus the rest of the time. We where missing skills for: Flirting, drinking beer, designing flyers with cryptic messages in them, cooking, disguise, hiding items (smuggling), entertaining, performing, show-fighting etc. so I made this little system for them: Apart from all the other skills you can think of 3 more skills yourself (also think of what ability would logically go with it). You are trained in these 3 skills. You are not allowed use these skills to directly gain money, you are not allowed to use these skills to directly gain in-combat bonuses. This also means that you are not trained in any other skill. So if something comes up nobody thought of, than no character is trained in doing that (running a bar was one). We like the Player:"My character is good at cooking, it says so in its background." DM:"You cook a wonderful meal" solution, but this simply puts a cap on how many of these skills can be chosen. We normally only roll these extra skills if there is a contested action, we don't roll for every meal we cook, but we do roll if there is a cooking contest, if we cook for the local mayor, if we want to cheer someone up by cooking a nice meal for them or if we want to create addition rations from the dragon we just killed (don't try that with creatures that have the poison keyword. :P). People get creative with this soon to, since the system forces players to think of their characters background. It won't be long before somebody in your party takes massaging and gives everybody a massage after a hard day of adventuring. It gives you something to do during short rests to.
#2 matthewswift Mar 27, 2009 20:53:33	So long as it doesn't eat up the potential basic skills a class can have I don't see this as being a problem, but as a boon to your table depending on how well it's implemented. Three 'specializations" that function like bonus skills sounds like a pretty good house rule to use instead of the backgrounds rule set provided by WOTC. Although I can think of viable skills for each of those examples you set out (cooking being the one exception. I miss crafty stuff too...)