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PHB2 has backgrounds, one option of which is 'profession'. The idea being that forcing players to decide between a highly useful adventuring skill and something that might come up once or twice in the whole campaign isn't really a good deal. Most players feel like their skill slots are valuable and they want to use them for important things. Thus if you made profession (and craft and perform) into skills that cost a slot or even part of a slot most players will simply not ever choose them. As a background element OTOH the player has no reason NOT to give his character a profession.

The other reason they aren't skills is simply that having a limitless open skill list makes skills into a measure of incompetence. If there is a 'pottery' skill then lack of that skill (which will be neigh universal) means the DM is going to have to say you're not competent in pottery (otherwise why have the skill at all). Thus the 3.x style open skill list basically dictated that each character knew only a narrow range of things and had little or no competency in other areas. By contrast the small fixed skill list used in 4e only implies that you're PARTICULARLY competent in some areas. There's no pottery skill that has to be justified by the incompetence of everyone that doesn't have it. Instead any character can plausibly have some knowlege of the subject and may have something written into their background that indicates particular competence. Since they didn't have to give up an adventuring skill to put that on their sheet it is OK if some of the other characters aren't completely useless at pottery either. It isn't like the character with that background feels ripped off as they would in 3.x.

Of course nothing stops players and DMs from using skill slots or feats however they want in their home games. It isn't going to have a really major impact on the game if you decide that a character can spend a skill slot to write "really good at throwing pots" on their character sheet. Likewise you could maybe convince the DM that you want to say be a desert nomad who's Athletics skill works well for climbing cliffs but who can't swim for anything. There's no RULE for that kind of thing, but again the game isn't going to break if the DM lets players tweak their characters a bit to fit with some specific concept.

This is one of those issues that comes up over and over again. The developers have actually been pretty clear about the issue, starting with (IIRC) the "Worlds and Monsters" preview book for 4e.

But fortunately we have a recent, official answer. Quoting from Rich Baker's "Rule of Three" column on 9/12/11:

    Why were craft skills removed from D&D in 4th edition?

This was a fiercely debated issue in the 4th Edition design and development team. One school of thought held that the Craft skill is a fun tool for customizing characters; even if no one ever really uses the skill, folks appreciate having the option to write it on their character sheet and might actually make the small sacrifice of taking a skill just for flavor. The other school of thought (which ultimately prevailed) argued that the shorter, tighter, and more focused the skill list was, the better it would be. A Craft skill with no real game impact would only confuse new players trying to navigate the skill rules. Designers who held this view pointed out that nothing prevented players from writing "blacksmith," "leatherworker," "glassblower," or anything else on their character sheets. In hindsight, perhaps we should have included a small sidebar to emphasize that point.

There is a simple patch for this, of course: just add the Craft skill to your game. The rules and DCs from the 3rd Edition Craft skill are close enough to what would be appropriate for 4th Edition games. And how often does it really matter whether your character hits a DC 20 Blacksmithing check, anyway? Most of what players want out of a Craft skill is just permission to write "blacksmith" on their character sheet and to say that their character knows something about being a blacksmith.

You may make hammers or cookies or bookcases as a profession. I kill stuff and take their money, because they have green skin and fangs and I don't.

Dec 2, 2011 -- 9:18AM, CrowScape wrote:

Looking at my 3.5 characters versus my 4e characters, my 4e characters have more extensive backstories than my 3.5. Hands down.

      My case would entirely be the reverse.  I wrote up full pages for my 3.5 PCs, but not even a line for most of my 4e.  Of course, I'd say most of the reason is personal whim, not anything to do with the game, but I am busier with 4e mechanics than I was with 3.5.