If you DMed like OotS?

[Peelee]

I mean, my personal view is that the entire Snarl story is at least partially cobblers

Spoiler: Oh, you wiley Brits.

Show

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Oh, you wiley Brits.

What? it's perfectly clear. Cobbler's awls -> balls.

Its like you don't even try to rhyme the word that isn't there.
kidding!
Grey Wolf

[littlebum2002]

Eh... I'm not sure I'd respond to "I have been granted divine powers directly by a deity for some grand purpose" with "I have as much curiosity about the source of these mysterious powers as the average Barbarian."

Exactly! You have the curiosity, but you don't have the inherent intelligence to learn the stuff naturally. So it's still a cross-class skill but your character pumps skill points into it because they want to.

Like for instance I REALLY want to learn Spanish. Unfortunately, learning second languages is not an inherent skill I have, and wanting to learn them doesn't change that. So I still try to learn the language, I just have to try twice as hard as everyone else.

This discussion came up recently, so I have to point out that the vast majority of the rules in D&D kind of are about making your character as strong as possible. This doesn't make RP impossible, but the core system itself doesn't support it tremendously well, and I would even argue that some of the traditional assumptions about how you assemble a party at random and send the PCs off to all presumably cooperate on the same missions effectively tamps down on the expression of diverse goals and personalities. It's... interesting to ponder the extent to which OOTS does and doesn't follow that template.

I guess you guys play differently than I do. Fighting, for us, is rarely something you can't avoid. And, if there is a fight you can't avoid, the likelihood of you dying is pretty low unless you do something really stupid or are REALLY unlucky. Our games revolve around interpersonal conflicts, etc., and solving your problems by thinking or roleplaying your way out of them.

That being said, I will agree that most of the rules in d&d revolve around fighting rather than roleplaying, but if you just want to fight, why not just play Baldur's gate?

[georgie_leech]

Exactly! You have the curiosity, but you don't have the inherent intelligence to learn the stuff naturally. So it's still a cross-class skill but your character pumps skill points into it because they want to.

Like for instance I REALLY want to learn Spanish. Unfortunately, learning second languages is not an inherent skill I have, and wanting to learn them doesn't change that. So I still try to learn the language, I just have to try twice as hard as everyone else.

I must have missed the part where Favored Souls are inherently unskilled at learning about religion? Like, if I were to take you as an example of the class GITP Forumer, is that lack of language skill a thing about you, or about the class itself?

[Peelee]

I must have missed the part where Favored Souls are inherently unskilled at learning about religion? Like, if I were to take you as an example of the class GITP Forumer, is that lack of language skill a thing about you, or about the class itself?

The skill. Religion is cross-class for Favored Souls. So, for instance, while normal 3.5 rules require 1 skill point to learn 1 language, Littlebum would have Speak Language as cross-class, and would require 2 skill points to learn Spanish. Ignoring that that's not exactly how the Speak Language skill works in 3.5.

[woweedd]

Exactly! You have the curiosity, but you don't have the inherent intelligence to learn the stuff naturally. So it's still a cross-class skill but your character pumps skill points into it because they want to.

Like for instance I REALLY want to learn Spanish. Unfortunately, learning second languages is not an inherent skill I have, and wanting to learn them doesn't change that. So I still try to learn the language, I just have to try twice as hard as everyone else.




I guess you guys play differently than I do. Fighting, for us, is rarely something you can't avoid. And, if there is a fight you can't avoid, the likelihood of you dying is pretty low unless you do something really stupid or are REALLY unlucky. Our games revolve around interpersonal conflicts, etc., and solving your problems by thinking or roleplaying your way out of them.

That being said, I will agree that most of the rules in d&d revolve around fighting rather than roleplaying, but if you just want to fight, why not just play Baldur's gate?

Counter-argument:If you just want to roleplay, why not just do a freeform RP?

[georgie_leech]

The skill. Religion is cross-class for Favored Souls. So, for instance, while normal 3.5 rules require 1 skill point to learn 1 language, Littlebum would have Speak Language as cross-class, and would require 2 skill points to learn Spanish. Ignoring that that's not exactly how the Speak Language skill works in 3.5.

Well, yes, I'm not arguing that they actually do have Religion as a class skill, as then I would be wrong I'm pointing out that them lacking it doesn't seem to have much fluff justification. That is, there's nothing that suggests they have some inability to learn about religious things, and active incentives to do so, so it seems... weird, that the class design assumes these divinely inspired/gifted casters have as much religious potential as Belkar.

[Kish]

I think the case that favored souls don't have Knowledge: Religion as a way of reflecting that they don't hold with that there fancy book-larnin fails out of the gate, since they have Knowledge: Arcana. They study, they just...study arcane magic which they don't use instead of divine magic which they do. For some reason.

[Jasdoif]

Well, yes, I'm not arguing that they actually do have Religion as a class skill, as then I would be wrong I'm pointing out that them lacking it doesn't seem to have much fluff justification. That is, there's nothing that suggests they have some inability to learn about religious things, and active incentives to do so, so it seems... weird, that the class design assumes these divinely inspired/gifted casters have as much religious potential as Belkar.

My theory is that the Favored Soul class entry started as a copy/paste of the Warmage class entry, both of which originally appeared in the wargaming-oriented Miniatures Handbook, and renaming from "Knowledge (arcana)" to "Knowledge (religion)" got overlooked; and as that same book directly states that most skills in the roleplaying rules have no effect when translated to the miniatures rules, this oversight was less likely to be detected in playtests than it otherwise would have been. (I have no evidence to elevate this above "a theory which happens to fit the facts" level.)

[woweedd]

I think the case that favored souls don't have Knowledge: Religion as a way of reflecting that they don't hold with that there fancy book-larnin fails out of the gate, since they have Knowledge: Arcana. They study, they just...study arcane magic which they don't use instead of divine magic which they do. For some reason.

Yeha, I prefer the before-mentioned fix that lets you pick whether you have Knowledge:Arcana or Knowledge:Religion as a class skill. That way, you can optimize while still going with the confused outsider who doesn't know how this divine magic stuff works, should you so choose.

[factotum]

it seems... weird, that the class design assumes these divinely inspired/gifted casters have as much religious potential as Belkar.

The problem is, there's no halfway house that could be used here. A skill is either a class skill or not a class skill, so it's just as possible to argue that it would be weird that a favoured soul would have the same level of interest in religion as a cleric or paladin.

[littlebum2002]

it seems... weird, that the class design assumes these divinely inspired/gifted casters have as much religious potential as Belkar.

It is weird. D&D is a fun game, and for all its faults I love playing it, but there are weird quirks like this. There is very little individuality in classes. If you want to play a fighter who also happens to be a world-class guitar player and has played from birth, Perform is still a cross-class skill.

Most DM's will acknowledge this and let you make a skill a Class skill if you take Skill Focus for it.

[Lacuna Caster]

That being said, I will agree that most of the rules in d&d revolve around fighting rather than roleplaying, but if you just want to fight, why not just play Baldur's gate?

Mainly because the GM can make for a pretty mean enemy AI, and I personally really like glossy miniatures. It's cool and all if your play style is RP-centric, but that probably owes more to the group you play with than the rules themselves.

It is weird. D&D is a fun game, and for all its faults I love playing it, but there are weird quirks like this. There is very little individuality in classes. If you want to play a fighter who also happens to be a world-class guitar player and has played from birth, Perform is still a cross-class skill.

There's a reasonable theoretical argument that the virtue of class systems is easier balancing across different party roles, so restricting options is kinda the point that way. (That said, one of my pet projects would be to turn all the skills and class features for 3.5+ D&D into nothing but feat chains. e.g, divine casting I -> divine casting II -> divine casting III, etc- most of the spells could be boiled down to a few basic categories as well. Actually, there's probably a couple of RPGs that do this already.)