Short Answer: Because they can't be used in combat.
Long Answer: Profession skills and the like were viewed as a trap or boring activity. A novice player might accidently take a profession opposed to training in something useful for both combats or skill challenges. Professions also didn't mesh well with the new math of the game, which would make the PCs the best blacksmith/ shopkeeper/ dancer in the world after spending a few months in a dungeon. Spending time on crafting skills and profession skills was also time the PC wouldn't spend adventuring or doing activities viewed as "fun" or core to the game.
As for the "you can just add it as fluff" answer.... yeah, that's pretty much crap. You can decided to substitute a Cha or Diplomacy check in place of a Perform check and flavour your bard as a master flautist, but mechanically the Cha-warlock or pally who's never shown any interest in music can pick-up a flute and perform just as well. And there's no reason not to have your character be a blacksmith tanner stonemason who can play a dozen instruments, dance and sing in a tear-inspiring baritone. I mean, it works perfectly fine as flavour as long as it has no rules interactions as all. But you will try and find a use for anything and everything written on your character sheet. If the DM lets you write down "once per year you can make fish dance" you will eventually find a constructive way of using it.
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Short Answer: Because they can't be used in combat.
Long Answer: Profession skills and the like were viewed as a trap or boring activity. A novice player might accidently take a profession opposed to training in something useful for both combats or skill challenges. Professions also didn't mesh well with the new math of the game, which would make the PCs the best blacksmith/ shopkeeper/ dancer in the world after spending a few months in a dungeon. Spending time on crafting skills and profession skills was also time the PC wouldn't spend adventuring or doing activities viewed as "fun" or core to the game.
As for the "you can just add it as fluff" answer.... yeah, that's pretty much crap. You can decided to substitute a Cha or Diplomacy check in place of a Perform check and flavour your bard as a master flautist, but mechanically the Cha-warlock or pally who's never shown any interest in music can pick-up a flute and perform just as well. And there's no reason not to have your character be a blacksmith tanner stonemason who can play a dozen instruments, dance and sing in a tear-inspiring baritone. I mean, it works perfectly fine as flavour as long as it has no rules interactions as all. But you will try and find a use for anything and everything written on your character sheet. If the DM lets you write down "once per year you can make fish dance" you will eventually find a constructive way of using it.
Yeah, nonsense.
Any significant activity is at least an encounter, which means a whole series of actions and checks. Nor is it mandatory that all activities can be accomplished by anyone with simply an attribute check or a skill check. You'll have to find the rule that says so if you want to argue otherwise, but don't bother, it doesn't exist...
There is also a perfectly useful mechanism for stating that a character has to have some specific capability to do something, Trained Only. You want to play a flute, Trained Only, too bad.
How do you get training? You have 5 background elements, one of which is 'profession'. That's the only mechanically supported way to know random specific knowledge. Good luck having more than one of those because the background rules forbid that. At best one or two other background elements could imply knowledge of other things, and some classes like bard will clearly acquire some class related knowledge, but even then the player will have to define it. The only aspect that really isn't covered in 4e is how you might learn something new, and even that can be handled with Martial Practices in most interesting cases (and you could simply extend that to all other cases if you really wanted).
So your 'issues' appear to not exist mechanically and are well covered.
Short Answer: Because they can't be used in combat.
Long Answer: Profession skills and the like were viewed as a trap or boring activity. A novice player might accidently take a profession opposed to training in something useful for both combats or skill challenges. Professions also didn't mesh well with the new math of the game, which would make the PCs the best blacksmith/ shopkeeper/ dancer in the world after spending a few months in a dungeon. Spending time on crafting skills and profession skills was also time the PC wouldn't spend adventuring or doing activities viewed as "fun" or core to the game.
As for the "you can just add it as fluff" answer.... yeah, that's pretty much crap. You can decided to substitute a Cha or Diplomacy check in place of a Perform check and flavour your bard as a master flautist, but mechanically the Cha-warlock or pally who's never shown any interest in music can pick-up a flute and perform just as well. And there's no reason not to have your character be a blacksmith tanner stonemason who can play a dozen instruments, dance and sing in a tear-inspiring baritone. I mean, it works perfectly fine as flavour as long as it has no rules interactions as all. But you will try and find a use for anything and everything written on your character sheet. If the DM lets you write down "once per year you can make fish dance" you will eventually find a constructive way of using it.
Yeah, nonsense.
Any significant activity is at least an encounter, which means a whole series of actions and checks. Nor is it mandatory that all activities can be accomplished by anyone with simply an attribute check or a skill check. You'll have to find the rule that says so if you want to argue otherwise, but don't bother, it doesn't exist...
There is also a perfectly useful mechanism for stating that a character has to have some specific capability to do something, Trained Only. You want to play a flute, Trained Only, too bad.
How do you get training? You have 5 background elements, one of which is 'profession'. That's the only mechanically supported way to know random specific knowledge. Good luck having more than one of those because the background rules forbid that. At best one or two other background elements could imply knowledge of other things, and some classes like bard will clearly acquire some class related knowledge, but even then the player will have to define it. The only aspect that really isn't covered in 4e is how you might learn something new, and even that can be handled with Martial Practices in most interesting cases (and you could simply extend that to all other cases if you really wanted).
So your 'issues' appear to not exist mechanically and are well covered.
But adding "training" for crafting or music is adding a mechanic, which means it's more than fluff. There are LOTS of ways to add crafting and professions and secondary skills to 4e. But just fluff is unsatisfying. That's like saying "you can have this ability, but if you ever try to use it, it won't do anything or will stop working."
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May just be me, but "just fluff" doesn't mean "no game impact whatsoever" - it just means I'm not going to have you roll for it (usually), and that there isn't any game mechanic tied to it.
I mean, familial relationships with NPCs are "just fluff", but that doesn't mean they "don't do anything, or stop working if you ever try to use it."
...There are LOTS of ways to add crafting and professions and secondary skills to 4e. But just fluff is unsatisfying. That's like saying "you can have this ability, but if you ever try to use it, it won't do anything or will stop working."
I'm not sure what you want to accomplish with Crafts, Perform, or Professions, other than the obvious (very specific knowledge, "You spend time making / fixing something you could have bought," "You spend time playing and earning some cash," or "You work to make a little money in your downtime").
4e D&D is not a "Tabletop MMO." It is not Massively Multiplayer, and is usually not played Online. Come up with better descriptions of your complaints, cuz this one means jack ****.
...There are LOTS of ways to add crafting and professions and secondary skills to 4e. But just fluff is unsatisfying. That's like saying "you can have this ability, but if you ever try to use it, it won't do anything or will stop working."
I'm not sure what you want to accomplish with Crafts, Perform, or Professions, other than the obvious (very specific knowledge, "You spend time making / fixing something you could have bought," "You spend time playing and earning some cash," or "You work to make a little money in your downtime").
Playing a character that didn't spend their whole life learning exclusively how to kill people and whose only marketable job skill isn't "can kill monsters for money?"
4e PCs are a little like Harry Potter. They spend the last few years of their childhoods in a school for wizards learning how to use magic yet never learning anything beyond elementary school math, language arts, or social. Yes they can make feathers fly and brew potions, but good luck balancing your chequebook.
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most professions like farmer woodworker and such could be just written as fluf
some could be expanded on to have in game effects.
Smith is one of those, i would love to see a theme where your raised in a famaly that has a long history of crafting arms and armor. Becouse well face it noble also only just means you where raised in a certain way, and so would one coming from a grat liniage of forge masters.
possible power when using an expendable item that gives a bonus to a weapon or armor ( for example a whetstone) roll a D20 on a roll of 15 or higer the item is not expanded,
...There are LOTS of ways to add crafting and professions and secondary skills to 4e. But just fluff is unsatisfying. That's like saying "you can have this ability, but if you ever try to use it, it won't do anything or will stop working."
I'm not sure what you want to accomplish with Crafts, Perform, or Professions, other than the obvious (very specific knowledge, "You spend time making / fixing something you could have bought," "You spend time playing and earning some cash," or "You work to make a little money in your downtime").
Playing a character that didn't spend their whole life learning exclusively how to kill people and whose only marketable job skill isn't "can kill monsters for money?"
4e PCs are a little like Harry Potter. They spend the last few years of their childhoods in a school for wizards learning how to use magic yet never learning anything beyond elementary school math, language arts, or social. Yes they can make feathers fly and brew potions, but good luck balancing your chequebook.
So, what you're saying is that all the mechanics in PHB2 (and extended in many other places) simply doesn't exist? OK. Whatever. I'm going to GUESS that pretty much anyone vaguely familiar with 4e is going to have to disagree with that since it is wholly inaccurate. lol.
As far as 'making a living' with your professional knowledge, there's no one specific rule that states hard and fast a check to make to do that. However there is a standard DC chart that covers ANYTHING not specifically covered by another rule. So again it is not really accurate to say that it is not covered. In fact it is covered every bit as well as it was covered in the previous edition of the game, where (wait for it...) you rolled a DC to see if you could make some money! lol.
Seriously, you are going to want to give up on this one man. It just isn't going to fly. There are mechanics as solid as those in most other RPGs for this stuff. You can ignore it if you want, but saying it doesn't exist isn't giving you any real credibility.
@edwin_su Again, there are good solid mechanics, they are just not generally intended to have major effects during combat (there are certainly corner cases possible). For more impact you'd probably want to look at practices and various types of utility power swaps. Nothing does exactly what you're suggesting, but there are in game effects. Personally I'd rather not see the sort of effects you're talking about because they quickly become subject to min/maxing, and then the whole background system changes from being "here's a good way to describe your character in more depth" to "how can game this to get the best results" and you end up with silliness like every single character having "Windrise Ports" and/or "Born Under a Bad Sign" in their background. IMHO I'd rather leave these fairly peripheral sorts of character elements to "RP considerations" that can impact the story in interesting ways, but aren't optimizable.
Looking at my 3.5 characters versus my 4e characters, my 4e characters have more extensive backstories than my 3.5. Hands down.
DAS NOT POSSIBLE! Everybody KNOWS dat 4e doesnt all0w roleplay, only 3e does!
/troll.
Breaking my rule against replying to obvious trolls...
The first D&D character I tried to write a backstory for was in 3.5, and I quickly discovered that I cannot write a one-page backstory for a character.
That remains true in 4E.
At three pages I'm just getting started...
(I have done a short backstory once. ONCE. And it was a take-off on a movie character, basically giving clues to the source and showing the detour out of the movie script. If you don't recognize the source, you may have a hard time understanding the concept.)
Zelle was quite happy that the rogue - oh dear, what was his name - had helped her escape the tower and inadvertently brought her the crown she was entitled to as well as the knowledge of who her parents were.
However, he really wasn't that great a guy. Or maybe a guy wasn't really what she wanted. She was in love with what they were doing.
And she could see the pieces lining up. Beautiful gnome girl. Nice-looking gnome rogue with his swash firmly buckled. Crown. Magic. Singing. Evil witch foster-mother. King's daughter missing. Various minor villains. She was on track to become a Disney Princess, and have one grand adventure while exchanging confinement in one tower for confinement in another. Granted, the new one would be more spacious and particularly more populated, but still, a tower.
And just one grand adventure - that simply would not do. It was time to take Fate firmly in her hands, bend it over her knee, and give it a sound thrashing.
It took a bit of finagling to get the old witch and the two thugs to discuss their deal and their history just around a corner from a group of guardsmen... but she did it, and those three would be spending the rest of their lives in the King's dungeons.
The rogue, she helped elude pursuit by hiding him aboard a ship. She'd spent some time near the docks earlier and knew just which ship would be leaving that morning on a long voyage.
As she headed off into the woods, crown securely stowed and frying pan in easy reach, she passed under an apple tree. One ripe apple hung near the end of a long branch, far above the ground. A very deliberate flip of her head, and her long hair swung up and wrapped around the apple. A precise jerk and the apple flew into her hand.
Life was so sweet she began to sing, and the wild birds flew to accompany her.
By the by, the King in this backstory later got demoted to Duke in order to fit better with the DM's story and the setting.
)
"The world does not work the way you have been taught it does. We are not real as such; we exist within The Story. Unfortunately for you, you have inherited a condition from your mother known as Primary Protagonist Syndrome, which means The Story is interested in you. It will find you, and if you are not ready for the narrative strands it will throw at you..." - from Footloose
I haven't had any problems with professions in either the game I play in or the game I run.
In the game I play in, my deva invoker is literally 7 years old when he started adventuring (since they're "born" fully-grown and mature), so aside from his natural gifts and character sheet, he didn't have any real skills. However, he eventually obtains a goal to transfer the souls in a story item into new bodies. So, he starts studying golem-crafting for several levels. When he hits paragon, the party splits up for a few years to do their own things (one, already the party foodie, starts a school, two others become politicians, etc). My character perfected his golem-crafting skills enough to build new bodies and frees the souls. In the mean time, he also took up music as a hobby, and now when the adventurers meet again, he now carries a few instruments on him at all times, to make party downtime more pleasant.
In the game I run, the party hails from several worlds, but are all dragged aboard a pirate ship and forced to become crew. Now at level 5, the party is quite skilled at a wide variety of pirating tasks, from how to tie the ropes to how to stack the latest haul of booty.
In neither case did anyone need to write anything on a character sheet.
