Healing Arts/First Aid.

[Bond]

First Aid:
So the rulebook states you can use Craftsmen: Veterinary as a substitute for First Aid on monsters with an animal metabolism. This sets a precedent for other Craftsmen skills to be used in similar ways to different creature types. Craftsmen: Ichthyologist for insectoid creatures such as the Ankheg, Craftsmen: Botanist for plant-like creatures such as the Spracta.

And Healing Arts:
Things with no metabolism aren't Healing Arts-able, which I perfectly understand and support. It does say (Under healing arts) that creatures of different types with Alien metabolisms(Naga, Giant Spiders used as examples) could healing arts each other if they had the skill. This says to me that things with Alien Metabolism are certainly HA'able with the right skills.
So, these skills exist, a Naga can use healing Arts on another Naga to assess their health, etc. He can do this because the skills he needed to learn to do so, while different than the ones a human or elf would learn as the Healing Arts skill, exist and are teachable. So, what is to stop PCs from researching the physiology of a Naga? They know the Naga can use healing arts, or could at least infer that the Naga was using HA on that other Naga over there. What if a PC charmed that Naga and asked them to teach them Healing Arts? Would you learn Naga HA or some kind of craftsmen?

 

[Sarah]

I'd love to know what page it says you can use OCS: Vetrinarian to determine the HA status of an animal.

From Craftsman, page 58:

This skill is used to add flavor to your character. It cannot be used to give a character any extra power in-game nor does it guarantee any information from the Plot Committee, although the Plot Committee may take it into consideration when distributing information or plotlines.

So, I could see the plot team allowing OCS: Vet to allow someone to HA assess a cow, but OCS: Vet doesn't inherently guarantee you that ability.

 

[Bond]

First Aid:
So the rulebook states you can use Craftsmen: Veterinary as a substitute for First Aid on monsters with an animal metabolism.

First Aid, not healing arts. And it's page 59.

First Aid allows the user to stabilize a dying creature (at -1 Body Points), bringing the recipient to zero Body Points. The person will then regain consciousness in ten minutes with one Body Point (the one on the Life Tag). This skill only works with humanlike physiologies (which includes all PC races and most other bipedal creatures such as goblins, gnolls, orcs, ogres, trolls, etc.). It will not work on animals (although a “Craftsman: veterinarian” skill will)

 

[Sarah]

While neat, and I don't think plot should necessarily reverse that... that's pretty much directly contradictory to the rules for Craftsman. Just sayin'.

 

[Saephis]

While neat, and I don't think plot should necessarily reverse that... that's pretty much directly contradictory to the rules for Craftsman. Just sayin'.

Skeletal Hand Humans.

 

[cymryc]

While neat, and I don't think plot should necessarily reverse that... that's pretty much directly contradictory to the rules for Craftsman. Just sayin'.

Skeletal Hand Humans.

Pfft it has been done already, try and come up with something original next time

 

[jpariury]

While neat, and I don't think plot should necessarily reverse that... that's pretty much directly contradictory to the rules for Craftsman. Just sayin'.

A contradiction in the rulebook? I never knew that could happen.

The issue I have with Craftsman skills doing more than giving some coin is that it generally smacks of plot favoritism. Once players find out that a plot team rewards them for having specific Craftsman skills while ignoring others, they start to gravitate towards those skills. At the same time, if plot starts granting special powers to some Craftsman skills, it seems to shaft the people that try and do something unique or different to get their own "powers of cool".

 

[Bond]

Well, I'd like for everyone to have a good time, and that certainly means different things to different people, but I think working with people and using Craftsmen can be one of the ways to accomplish that. There are holes in the skill system, some of them are more obvious than others, and one of the possible plugs for those holes and to be able to define peoples skills that are not quantifiable by the game system are the OCS. I don't want anyone to be left out but depending on what OCS get taken by the player it's certainly going to be more difficult to make them as cool and applicable to different situations and plot lines. If you take OCS: BeeKeeper I can only run so many Bee related plots >.> <,<
Something like OCS:Ichthyologist wouldn't be useful all the time but it would give someone their time in the spotlight when you started fighting the lion-ants.

 

[jpariury]

I think if we want feel there are skills lacking from the system, they should be proposed through the normal chain for adding new skills.

I generally prefer for OCs to be used at plot's behest, rather than the player's. For a couple build (1 for MWEs) with no prereqs, I feel it should have about that much value within the game.

 

[Sarah]

I generally prefer for OCs to be used at plot's behest, rather than the player's. For a couple build (1 for MWEs) with no prereqs, I feel it should have about that much value within the game.

That's pretty much the intent behind the "plot may let you do something cool" statement. OCS build wise is nothing but 1 silver per logistics. RP wise, you should expect nothing and just be pleasantly surprised when the plot team decides to incorporate the knowledge your character has from that OCS.

I never expect Scenting to allow me more than a 3 second "yup, it's poisoned." I am always pleasantly surprised when I am allowed to do more with it. And I never demand. It's not "I have Scenting so you have to let me track this thing!" It's "I Scent the water. Does it smell of poison?" and let plot direct things from there.

And that's the bottom line. Plot can decide to give you more information based on whatever factors they want. You should never expect the skills you buy/have to allow you to do more than what they say you can in the book. Just be happy when they do.

 

[Bond]

I generally prefer for OCs to be used at plot's behest, rather than the player's. For a couple build (1 for MWEs) with no prereqs, I feel it should have about that much value within the game.

I can see the wisdom of this, and I imagine anytime the character would be in a situation where an OCS would benefit them Plot would be able to control the situation instead of giving the person carte blanche and effectively rewarding them additional skills.

 

[jpariury]

I can see the wisdom of this, and I imagine anytime the character would be in a situation where an OCS would benefit them Plot would be able to control the situation instead of giving the person carte blanche and effectively rewarding them additional skills.

That's kinda where I feel the new rulebook statement that OCS:Veterinarian lets you FA an animal falls under - OCS doing something at the player's behest rather than Plot's. I mean, it makes total sense to me, and could be cool for a number of characters, but I see it as likely tying up an NPC that is otherwise intended, without necessarily giving plot a heads-up. I suspect that the phrasing should have been worded "a “Craftsman: veterinarian” skill might".

Added:
ARC'icizing it just to be all official. All this said, I got no issues with Plot occasionally asking players if you can look at their cards to see if anyone has some neat OCS that might give you a good excuse to give more information, or even letting players know at the beginning of a mod they can do something cool within the confines of the mod. It's when it becomes a rule rather than a bonus that I get itchy.