Comments on: Skill Matrix by Class and Race

By: Ameron

Ameron — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 00:24:54 +0000

@Louis
Way to think outside of the box. I don’t know if I’d have come up with that, but after reading your idea I think it was absolutely the correct call.

I wonder what other kinds of situations may call for skill checks using a different attribute than the one most commonly associated with it.

By: Louis

Louis — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 22:25:19 +0000

In regards to Bluff, I had a player use it uniquely last night in my game. The party had just kicked in the door of a guard house, and were snooping around through some documents. Unfortunately, they managed to knock the door completely off its hinges, and they were afraid someone notice to missing door. So the Barbarian asked if she could hold the door up to make it look like it was in place (lets face it, she wasn’t helping with the document research all that much).

So, I called for her to make a Bluff Check to hold to door in place, but asked for her to use her Str mod instead of her Cha mod when she did the roll. The players seemed to like the call.

By: Skill Matrix Update — Dungeon's Master

Skill Matrix Update — Dungeon's Master — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 13:05:48 +0000

[...] updated the skill matrixes by class and race. The existing skill aides for players and DMs now include materials presented in the Eberron [...]

By: Ameron

Ameron — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:42:49 +0000

@Questing GM
I’m glad you found these aides useful. I think you’ve already realized that a good skill challenge will provide opportunities for all players to participate using the skills they’re good at. Identifying the skills that are most widely available (like Athletics — run, jump, swim) and including them regularly certainly accomplishes this.

As for the Bard’s skill selection, I stand by my original comment that they should have access to everything. Then it’s up to the individual players to choose the skills they want to take training it, including Thievery.

By: Questing GM

Questing GM — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 10:15:28 +0000

Nice aides. Most certainly useful and handy to have. I find the observations very interesting. One of the main problems that I had with 3.x is that many classes weren’t self sufficient. Swim and climb were one of the few skills that non-physical based classes would not want to invest (at their own peril) which made me very mindful when designing skill-based encounters. Glad to see that’s not the case for 4E.

However, while I think thievery should remain as an exclusive skill for rogue type characters but not having the bard included in the list is kinda odd, flavor wise. I think they did this to balance the bard mechanics (free multiclassing)

By: Month in Review: March 2009 — Dungeon's Master

Month in Review: March 2009 — Dungeon's Master — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 10:11:06 +0000

[...] Skill Matrix by Class and Race offers the DMs a Skill Matrix by Class and the players a Skill Matrix by Race. These aides are [...]

By: Ameron

Ameron — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 02:09:37 +0000

@TheMainEvent
Thanks for visiting Dungeon’s Master. Two things really surprised me about the Bard’s skill list. The first was that Thievery was not on it, as you mentioned. The second was that the Bard wasn’t able to choose from EVERY skill. Come on, the Bard is a jack of ALL trades, not the jack of most trades. I’m going to allow a house rule in my game that Bards can choose from every skill.

@Thasmodious
I find that there are many skills that cover similar ground, but Bluff and Diplomacy seem to walk hand-in-hand most often and most readily. But keep in mind that Bluff, like all the skills in 4e, is only limited by your imagination and the DM’s discretion. So a skill challenge may call for a successful Bluff check that has nothing to do with a social encounter (like causing a distraction while your companion sneaks past the guard). It all depends on context.

By: Thasmodious

Thasmodious — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:36:31 +0000

Nice, this will be helpful. As far as bluff being rare, since its basically just the liars version of diplomacy, you can sort of combine the two when considering their use in skill challenges. There are exceptions, of course, but in general there is a lot of overlap in their social uses.

By: TheMainEvent

TheMainEvent — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 12:06:20 +0000

I had noticed how rare Thievery was earlier. Its a very useful skill, I guess I can see why from a certain perspective you’d want to keep it rare to emphasize its use to characters that have it, but I was very surprised that NOTHING in the PHB2 got it (not even the bard)