Secondary Skills

In the olden days of FRPGs, that big book for game masters had a chart in it to assign secondary skills to the adventurers.  This made good sense, because the idea that someone popped out of the womb as a fighter is pretty silly.  What did this character do before beginning their training as a warrior?  Of course it was pretty limited, maybe a dozen possibilities, but still, a good concept.

But as these things go, it was random and was pretty much always forgotten if ever assigned in the first place.  But that concept did get built into Legend Quest.  As a points based character system instead of a class based system, we wanted people to be able to have game influencing aspects to a character history.  If you were raised on a farm, then you should have some skill with farming.  If you were educated in a massive capital city, then you probably have some urban based social skills.  Knowing that points based characters take a bit of time to create, we published the Speed Character Creation book.  This allows you to pick where you’re from and how you were educated in order to get through character creation faster and assign some of these secondary skills.

But what about the more important secondary skills?  For example, can a warrior who is trained in sword fighting make it with only sword fighting?  This hypothetical character has no armor skills, no shield skills, and no missile skills; and no other weapon skills.  Can it work?  Yes.  Is it likely to work?  Probably not.  Would it be better to be a bit more rounded?  In all likelihood.

What we’re really talking about though is something along the lines of:  Would an alchemist have chemistry skills too?  In nearly all circumstances, we think the answer is yes.  It would be possible for a master alchemist to train an apprentice only in alchemy, training him as an assistant and not fully as an apprentice.  However, it is far more likely that an apprentice alchemist would first be trained in chemistry, both to ease them in as well as determine whether or not the student had an aptitude for this type of work.  An apprentice who did not grasp chemistry quickly would likely be dismissed before the harder work of alchemy was attempted.  Plus, we assume that knowing chemistry would give the alchemist a good base understanding of how that part of nature works.  After all, many of the ingredients used in chemistry are likely to also be found in alchemy.

Before we get into more examples, how does this affect those of your playing the more common class based games?  After all, each class is assumed to have been trained in a broad understanding of their field.  The fighter class is trained in armor and shields and pretty much every weapon in existence.  That has its own issues.  While there certainly would be warriors trained to use just about any weapon or anything that could become a weapon, there would seem to be far more examples where a person was trained for the local military, which probably only used two maybe three weapons.  Would a soldier trained to fight in a (spear and) shield wall naturally be able to pick up nun chucks?  Would a pikeman naturally know how to use a crossbow, or a shield, or wear plate armor?  Rather than debate too strongly, let’s just say there are plusses and minuses to the way each system works.

But the class based games have been trying to add skills.  It’s certainly better than nothing, and the game impacts are handled better than in the original editions.  So if you are using a class based game, then we would argue that the broad training implied by those classes would include most of these skills.  What does that mean?  It means you might be in a position to argue with your game master that because you have been trained in Skill A, then you should also be able to use that knowledge when it comes to the closely related Skill B.  See - We’re looking out for you players, and for the GMs who would love to see their players attempt something a bit more dramatic than “attack with weapon”.

What are some of these secondary skills that seem to be necessary in order to explain some character histories?

Primary Skill                                     Secondary Skill

Alchemy                                                      Chemistry

Any magic                                             Read & Write

Armory                                                Metal Working

Primary Skill                                     Secondary Skill

Earth Elementalism                                       Geology

Healing Magic                                               First Aid

Herbalism                                                      Foraging

Horsemanship                                 Animal Handling

Hunting                                                 Move Quietly

Selling                                                          Carousing

Spell Singing                                                   Singing

                                              (Yes, Al we mean you!)

Weaponcraft                                       Metal Working

 

There are some others that aren’t as obvious.  We believe every archer or whatever style should have a minimum in Weaponcraft, because of the huge amount of arrows they need to use.  Similarly, true warriors should also have Weaponcraft so as to properly care for their weapons.  While Weaponcraft is not necessary to sharpen a blade, it sure helps, and blades get dull, even in a single battle.  Asking a knight to also have Armory skill to care for his armor does seem a bit much, though it would help him to understand how it is made if he ever wants to get fancy with it.

Just remember, for most of us it is about a little more than simply how much damage you do.

 

This post was written as part of The Lost City of Ballogfar Part III aka All About Characters, the latest in our Small Bites editions.  Each Small Bites book looks deeply at one subject, a character archetype, a race/monster, a style of questing, or some other role-playing/world building subject.  This one is showcasing characters, specifically adventurers, the types who would come running when they heard about this fabulous fantasy ruin.

We hope we’re getting you interested.  If you want to see the World Walker edition for FREE!! click the link here.  If we’ve hooked you and you want to get the full 68 pages of content in the Game Masters’ edition, click here.