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New Skill Uses

Here are some new ways to use skills in D&D.

Appraise

Appraising anything shouldn’t, in my opinion, be all part of one skill. Why should a skilled inspector of horses be equally good at judging the value of a gemstone or the quality of a musical composition? A person should have some familiarity with the thing they’re appraising. So how about teaming Appraise with Knowledge to make it a broader, more realistic skill? Here are some options:

Let’s go with that last one.

Like Craft, Knowledge, Perform and Profession, Appraise is actually a number of skills. The following are some examples of Appraise skills; you may wish to include others.

Relevant Knowledge and Craft skills grant synergy bonuses.

Balance

The ability to run at a wall, then run up or along it and jump off, is a fairly impressive (but not altogether difficult) acrobatic feat. Yet, D&D seems to treat wall-running as a purely psionic skill. I don’t like that, so let’s bring it under the regular, mundane skill set. We want to move across a surface that should ideally be smooth, but not slippery; we use our Dexterity, and it’s harder in heavier armour; and if we fail, we fall. Balance seems perfect for the task. (Tumble may be more often associated with acrobatics, but then, it does provide a synergy bonus to Balance.)

To run vertically up a wall, you must take a run up of at least 20 feet, then make a Balance check (DC 15 plus surface modifiers) to move up the wall at half your speed as a move action. You may not accept the usual −5 penalty to move at your full speed.

To run horizontally along a wall, you must take a run up of 5 feet towards the wall and up to 15 feet parallel to it, then make a Balance check (DC 15 plus surface modifiers) to move along the wall for the same distance as you moved parallel to it. Each additional 20-foot run up taken (5 feet towards the wall and 15 feet parallel) allows you to move a further 5 feet along the wall by making another Balance check at a cumulative −2 penalty, up to a maximum distance moved along the wall of your speed. This movement can be taken as part of any action that would let you move the same distance along the ground, including a run or charge.

If you fail a Balance check for either use by 4 or less, you land on your feet at the foot of the wall (assuming there is a floor there) at the point where you were before making the check. If you fail by 5 or more, you fall.

Craft

The standard uses of the Craft skill seem geared to creating prosaic items and the occasional work of visual artistry—paintings, sculptures, that sort of thing. But what about letting you take ranks in Craft skills for the composition of performance art, and authoring written works?

Performance Art

Let there be a subset of the Craft skill to correspond to each subset of the Perform skill, such as Craft (choreography) for Perform (dance). (Some Perform categories may, at the DM’s option, be subdivided into multiple Craft skills, such as Craft (speechwriting) and Craft (poetry) for Perform (oratory). It may be helpful to similarly divide the relevant Perform skill.)

Creating ensemble works, such as music for several sorts of instruments, will require ranks in all relevant Craft skills. (Craft (songwriting) can be used to set fairly simple poetics to straightforward melodies, but songs can benefit from being written as ensemble works as well.) When creating an ensemble work, you would use either the modifier of the primary Craft skill (e.g. if setting a play to music, Craft (playwright) is the primary skill, supplemented by various Craft skills in music composition), or (if no skill is obviously the primary one) the highest skill modifier of the set. To this, add a +2 synergy bonus for each other Craft skill used in which you have 5 or more ranks.

For example, Wolfgang is writing an opera. He has 8 ranks in Craft (songwriting), 8 ranks in Craft (string music), 5 ranks in Craft (woodwind music), and less than 5 ranks in a few other relevant skills. He therefore makes a check against his Craft (songwriting) skill, with a +4 synergy bonus from his supporting skills.

The quality of the resulting work is determined by your Craft result. Use the Perform DCs for playing for money to determine, in general terms, the quality of the result; that is, a result of 10 is routine, 15 is enjoyable, and so on. This just describes the general quality of the work; how it interacts with actual performance is yet to be discussed.

You should be allowed to edit a work to improve its quality, to a degree. Let’s say you’re limited to 5 higher than the basic quality of the work (i.e. the first roll). To edit, reroll the Craft check; if the new roll is higher than the previous one, use the new roll (up to the stated limit). If the new roll is lower by 4 or less, you have not made a difference; if you reroll lower by 5 or more, your edits have made the quality noticeably worse—use the reroll as the new basic quality, unless you have another copy of the original you can return to.

Now, we need to work out how composition and performance interact. The Perform skill represents a performer’s ability to perform with grace, verve and emotion. Without a script or score to perform from, the check represents simple ad libbing (or, perhaps, performance of memorised works—but how good are those works?) When performing a specific composition, both the quality of the work and the quality of the perfomance are important. A good performance of a good work should be higher rated than a good performance of a bad work. Conversely, a bad performance of a good work might not be worse, per se, than a bad performance of a bad work, but it should be easier to do—performing a subtle, complex piece well is difficult!

Say we let the quality of the work (its Craft check) be the DC for the Perform check. Then, if the performer beats this DC, her Perform check receives a synergy bonus (divide the quality of the work by 5 to determine this bonus). If the performer doesn’t meet the DC, the Perform check stands alone without any benefit from the piece being performed. (This still needs to account for ensemble pieces.)

Written Works

The rating of crafted works used previously can stand alone for works that are not performed (including works that may be performed, but are merely being read to oneself, like a poem or speech). A monetary cost should be attached to works of each level. Synergies across different written forms may apply, as they did for ensemble performances (e.g. a novel might benefit from skill at poetry and speechwriting).

This then is the result.

The following Craft skills are added to those existing.

To create a work in a single category, make a Craft check. The check result is the quality of the work.

To create an ensemble work, make a check with the primary Craft skill involved. (If no one skill is the primary skill, use the Craft skill with the highest modifier.) Add a +2 synergy bonus for each additional relevant Craft skill in which you have 5 or more ranks. The check result is the quality of the ensemble work.

To perform a crafted work, the main performer makes a Perform check of the relevant type, against a DC of the work’s quality. (If no main performer or no main Perform skill can be identified, use the highest modifier available among all performers.) Additional perform checks, by the same or other performers, add a +2 synergy bonus to the main Perform check but only to determine if it beats the quality of the work. If this check beats the DC, add a synergy bonus to the original Perform check (without any synergies from additional Perform checks!).

If using the Appraise rule given above, add the following skills.

Besides the still‐unassigned costs, this omits one other important thing: crafting times! This will have to be done later.

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