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Michael Scott Brown wrote:
> And that postulate is wrong. Stat bonuses allow each commoner to
work
> to his strengths. You don't have to be so good that you can take 10
on
> everything and automatically succeed; that's the measure of mastery
of a
> topic, IMO. The 8 skill points they start with are more than enough
to take
> 4 ranks in their main capability and a rank each in the relevant
> trained-onlies .
>
> With stat bonuses, they can get by. They just have to work harder
at
> some things
True enough. With stat bonuses all things become possible (a personal
gripe, but it's the system, so I'll let it go for simplicity). And a
lot of the relevant skills for living life on a farm (survival, several
crafts, several professions, heal, handle animal, really as many as you
want to throw in there) can be used untrained. So you don't really
have to be trained in roof patching to patch your roof in hte rain.
But then again, how many times do you do it before it constitutes a
rank?
obviously that's an abstract answer. It seems to me that a first level
commoner can get by but will likely neither be successful nor
particularly comfortable. And I think that's just perfect for the
class. I think most commoners are barely scraping by and that's as it
should be. My point was that there are a ton of skills that can be
applied to being a commoner (esspecially a farmer) and I don't think a
level one commoner has enough skill pooints to be a *good* farmer. but
then again, that's why he's level one.
Really, i think a lot of this level fear comes from second edition days
when commoners were some fictional zero level and were really not much
more than walking 2 hp bags of flesh with some NWP. I think that
mentality has really crept back in this regard. That's the feel I get
anyway.
Realistically, i don't think the commoner class was ever intended to go
to 20 levels in a reasonable setting. I think the idea was that a
commoner with a few levels on him was the head of large household or a
really skilled craftsman or something. The reason the class goes to
level 20 is that that's how classes work. D&D seems to have
established "class" as a series of 20 predefines levels. I don't think
it's more mysterious than that.