Talk:Table: Class Skills
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Looking at this table, I now realize that anything with Ride as a class skill also has Handle Animal. My bad. -Slitherrr
- Yeah. I would be surprised if it were not so. Isn't Handle Animal stuff like knowing how to take care of your mount? Anyway, the situation with Gnob was more, Ride = The Horse You Are On. Handle Animal = A Horse Someone Else Is On. Even if Fighter's did not have Handle Animal, that'd be the skill to check to grab control of a horse they're not "ride"ing. -gm
- Well, except grabbing someone else's reins really is more of an Opposed Ride check, because it's more about getting into better position. In Gnob's case, though, the horse was still in control of itself, so Handle Animal still applies. My interpretation would be that, in general, Handle Animal for when the horse is in control of itself (aside from the process of mounting), and Ride for when the horse is under any rider's (not just your) control, since the rider generally has final say over where the horse goes.
- When I thought that Fighters and Paladins didn't have Handle Animal as a class skill, I was thinking that Ride just covered Handle Animal-type actions with mounts, because it would make up for the lack of general animal knowledge. After all, getting a horse to calm down and stuff is definitely within the Fighter and Paladin schticks (especially since Paladin gets a special mount as a class ability). Since Handle Animal is a class skill for both of those, I have revised my thinking. -Slitherrr
- As I understood it, Ride is a physical skill that covers your competence on and around a horse (hence being dex based). Things like getting on a horse quickly, staying on a horse in combat, getting off a running horse, etc. Handle animal is used for interacting with a horse--mostly getting it to do things it might not otherwise do (cha based). Getting a horse to charge into a pike line, run down a steep hill, or leading a horse to water and making him drink. I think the section on mounted combat has some examples of this sort of stuff. --Msallen
- Find me a specific ruling about taking control of a mount directly controlled by another is a ride check, and it'll be ride. The very word "ride" implies that you are sitting on top of a mount. Until then, fucking with someone else's mount will be Handle Animal, or, if we want to get excessively rules-lawyerly about it, it will simply explicitly disallowed as it is not specifically stated as being an option under any skill. I suppose we can really make this a hill worth dying on and go with the nonsensical ride check. In that case, I look forward to your next encounter. I promise you it will not be a ranger running around getting you guys tossed and trampled by simply coming up next to you and making a Ride Checks and then forcing all your mounts to run off with simple ride checks. That would be petty and vindictive, with the only upside being it proves my point about it making no sense.
- For the record, what I actually did was a contested roll: Your Handle Animal vs. Gnob's Ride, and I stand by that. Next time Gnob tries to ride off, it will once again be the check. ;) -gm
- I think I accidentally deleted a bunch of stuff? Another simuledit FTL! :) Sorry. -gm
- Yeah, we did sort of resolve a lot of stuff. I actually think the given rules are a little silly around this issue. It seems like the printed rules fold a lot of actions that I would consider handle animal into ride, like forcing a mount to ride into a dangerous situation. I assume this is to balance the skills around mounted fighters that might not want to sink all 2 of their skill points into animal related stuff every level. So the rules sort of read like Ride is used when you have your hands on the animal, which makes the situation that apparently occurred in that last game ambiguous, since both actors had their hands on the animal. IMO, I would think it should be an opposed handle animal roll if two people are trying to issue competing commands to an animal. But ride is clearly *not* limited to just the athletic parts of riding a mount as I had previously assumed. --Msallen
- Yeah, some sort of opposed roll is in order, clearly. In the case of Gnob, it hardly matters, since Kib is going to out roll him on all but the worst days, but I'd rather have the argument done and resolved over something trifling rather than something pivot. Now that Mattie has his warhorse, I'm doubly interested in parsing this stuff out: he's the only person on earth who can out rule-lawyer me on every day of the week. My personal rule of thumb has thus far been : if you're climbing on it or sitting on it - ride. Otherwise - handle animal. It's as good a rule of thumb as any, and frankly I'm a little surprised the rule book doesn't cover it at all. Ah, finally have a real-life Ask The Sage question and there is no more sage! -gm
- I'm actually not arguing against your ruling at all, I was just hashing out the rest of it for future results. Note that above I noted that ride probably didn't apply no matter what in Gnob's case, since he wasn't even in control of the horse yet. The whole point of all the above is just to get as much of what I've been thinking about the skills into a place where the thought can be examined as possible. No need to get all strong language-y, this definitely isn't about me going "fuck you it shoulda been ride!!1!". I just need to know how we do it because it's going to affect what skills I get with Kib, since horse is part of his thing. -Slitherrr
- Heh, sorry, did not mean to come off as being hostile. In sort of a FML mood this week and it's making me more vulgar generally than I might otherwise be. Like I said, this is a good conversation to have, because I know that Mattie is about to start trying all kinds of crazy rulebending shit now that he has an At Will Summonable Mount. -gm
- Also, pretty sure I fucked something up again. FML, indeed. -gm
- You're a mess ;) Also, I think the paladin's mount is special enough that it will invalidate a lot of this discussion... I think there might be some stipulations in there about automatic successes on HA rolls. You should be more worried about Germ and Quin ;) --Msallen
- I'm actually not arguing against your ruling at all, I was just hashing out the rest of it for future results. Note that above I noted that ride probably didn't apply no matter what in Gnob's case, since he wasn't even in control of the horse yet. The whole point of all the above is just to get as much of what I've been thinking about the skills into a place where the thought can be examined as possible. No need to get all strong language-y, this definitely isn't about me going "fuck you it shoulda been ride!!1!". I just need to know how we do it because it's going to affect what skills I get with Kib, since horse is part of his thing. -Slitherrr
- Yeah, some sort of opposed roll is in order, clearly. In the case of Gnob, it hardly matters, since Kib is going to out roll him on all but the worst days, but I'd rather have the argument done and resolved over something trifling rather than something pivot. Now that Mattie has his warhorse, I'm doubly interested in parsing this stuff out: he's the only person on earth who can out rule-lawyer me on every day of the week. My personal rule of thumb has thus far been : if you're climbing on it or sitting on it - ride. Otherwise - handle animal. It's as good a rule of thumb as any, and frankly I'm a little surprised the rule book doesn't cover it at all. Ah, finally have a real-life Ask The Sage question and there is no more sage! -gm
- Yeah, we did sort of resolve a lot of stuff. I actually think the given rules are a little silly around this issue. It seems like the printed rules fold a lot of actions that I would consider handle animal into ride, like forcing a mount to ride into a dangerous situation. I assume this is to balance the skills around mounted fighters that might not want to sink all 2 of their skill points into animal related stuff every level. So the rules sort of read like Ride is used when you have your hands on the animal, which makes the situation that apparently occurred in that last game ambiguous, since both actors had their hands on the animal. IMO, I would think it should be an opposed handle animal roll if two people are trying to issue competing commands to an animal. But ride is clearly *not* limited to just the athletic parts of riding a mount as I had previously assumed. --Msallen
- As I understood it, Ride is a physical skill that covers your competence on and around a horse (hence being dex based). Things like getting on a horse quickly, staying on a horse in combat, getting off a running horse, etc. Handle animal is used for interacting with a horse--mostly getting it to do things it might not otherwise do (cha based). Getting a horse to charge into a pike line, run down a steep hill, or leading a horse to water and making him drink. I think the section on mounted combat has some examples of this sort of stuff. --Msallen
- Sorry to hear about your bad week, Jonesy. I re-added the stuff that got simul'd out, and slightly edited it since it came from multiple parts of the document. Also, tell those kids they better shape up, or Wilson will get them. -Slitherrr
To sort out and clear all of my points above:
- My original argument against Ride being used in the game session was based on a mistaken belief that Fighter and Paladin didn't get Handle Animal as a class skill. That argument is, of course, not valid. My parts of the discussion have since progressed beyond the one in-game incident.
- There are arguments for having Ride apply where Handle Animal otherwise would make sense that are supported by examples in the rules, by taking the interpretation that Ride is sort of a specific Handle Animal case with mounts that applies because of the way mounts are specifically trained, but there is no explicit statement for the case of taking control of someone else's mount. Further, since any class with Ride as a class skill also gets Handle Animal, it's easy to go with Matt's interpretation, and I'm perfectly fine with that, and since that interpretation is now known, it should be easy to plan with it in mind. There is a case to be made for Ride taking the place in rolls of that sort where, for example, relative positioning would be a concern, but Handle Animal also makes sense for the ease of keeping track.
As an afterthought, to address the Crazy Ranger battle idea, there's definitely a difference between "stopping a mount from going somewhere" and "directing a mount other than your own by its reins to do anything you could get your own mount to do". Horses are generally inclined to not pull against reins, so stopping a horse by grabbing them is perfectly reasonable, but all the trampling and other stuff take other inputs to perform (knee pressure and other cues from the rider to egg the horse into going over the obstacle rather than just going around). As far as that goes, there'd be very little call for using Handle Animal to get a horse to do any of that, either, unless it's a horse the Ranger himself has trained, in which case, that is, if he trained the mount specifically to be verbally controlled while it is being ridden by someone else, then there'd definitely be a good cause for allowing him to do it (which opens up some interesting possibilities for trick headings under the Handle Animal skill heading).
Also, it's worth wondering what to use in the case where a rider attempts to mount an animal that is not trained to be a mount (such as a feral horse, or, to get silly but more to the point, a rhinoceros). There's really no such thing as a "wild" horse in real life, only formerly domesticated horses that run in feral herds, so it's pretty easy to assume that Ride would apply to any horse, even a feral one (with significant penalties), since the species has, at least at some point in its ancestry, been bred to take a rider. However, if it were a wild animal (say, a zebra, or a giant lizard, or something), the call is harder, and likely Handle Animal would make more sense (which is why you never hear of zebras being used as mounts, except for exotic zoo-type things, where it's the exception and not the rule).
- Heh, excellent points. I actually remember reading an article specifically about why Zebras are not really "breakable." I wish I could find it again. I would think, maybe, that in the case of something really weird (say, a bear) one would use Handle Animal to teach him how to be rideable? This is starting to give me a headache. Between this and the Professional revisions, I might just hang myself before my birthday! :) -gm
- Teaching any wild animal to be rideable would definitely be a fantastical feat, and possibly only something that could be done by, say, someone with Wild Empathy or a similar supernatural ability. In real life, it takes a few dozen (or hundred) generations of breeding to domesticate an animal. -Slitherrr
- Hell, 20,000 years and we're only half way there with cats. -gm
- In santa barbara I was out backpacking and saw some jackass using a zebra as a pack animal. It kept breaking free from the "herd" (which included a camel), running up hills and getting all twisted up in its saddlebags. Damn thing was squirrely as hell. I'm pretty sure that joker worked at Neverland ranch--its the only "sensible" reason for what I saw. Fuck California. --Msallen
- Teaching any wild animal to be rideable would definitely be a fantastical feat, and possibly only something that could be done by, say, someone with Wild Empathy or a similar supernatural ability. In real life, it takes a few dozen (or hundred) generations of breeding to domesticate an animal. -Slitherrr
- Heh, excellent points. I actually remember reading an article specifically about why Zebras are not really "breakable." I wish I could find it again. I would think, maybe, that in the case of something really weird (say, a bear) one would use Handle Animal to teach him how to be rideable? This is starting to give me a headache. Between this and the Professional revisions, I might just hang myself before my birthday! :) -gm
You had something in a previous edit about rule-bending and creativity. I'm not a "rule-bender" so much as a "rule-flesher-outter". I try to hash out the bits that aren't described in the given ruleset with more complete interpretations. I try really hard to make sure not all of them are in my favor, but sometimes my subconscious gets the better of me. -Slitherrr
- The point of me saying this is that I never want the rules to allow somebody to do something silly--that's never my objective. It's always to get the game to conform to a consistent worldview that mirrors our own (inasmuch as a world with magic can mirror real life)-Slitherrr
- You're worrying too much. Our Lord GM, much like the terrible figures that came before him, is arbitrary, argumentative, and cruel. He thinks highly of you, which means he'll belittle you constantly and kill you first to spare the suffering that will be heaped on your allies. --Msallen
- http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2009/3/4/
- I was just defending myself against his statement that we suck at bending the rules. Let's play Nomic if he wants to see whether or not we're any good at rules-lawyering. -Slitherrr
- Well, he's comparing us to Mattie, who is a goddamn terror with rules. Funny you should mention Nomic, since one of the first games I remember playing with Mattie was a hellish and arbitrary variant of a game called [Mao]. The version we played included constant rule changes, with the stipulation that no one was allowed to explain the rules (new or otherwise). I'm sure he'd reduce all of us to tears at Nomic. --Msallen
- "You cannot hold a candle to mattie in terms of rules bending" : "You suck at rules lawyering" :: "You can't beat Usain Bolt" : "You're slow."
- They don't really teach those anymore, and the MAT is basically dead, but I think I still did it right. -gm
- Also: I fucking found out about Mao a full year or more before it became "Mattie's Thing." (I learned it at Bridge Builders, he at Governer's School) I hated it before he learned it, and ten times as much afterwards. AlsoAlso: Jason (Qa) is really the Nomic guy from way back. Anyway, I'm pretty sure Mattie taught John Carter the rules of Magic, and that dude is in charge of the whole shebang now. -gm
- Well, he's comparing us to Mattie, who is a goddamn terror with rules. Funny you should mention Nomic, since one of the first games I remember playing with Mattie was a hellish and arbitrary variant of a game called [Mao]. The version we played included constant rule changes, with the stipulation that no one was allowed to explain the rules (new or otherwise). I'm sure he'd reduce all of us to tears at Nomic. --Msallen
- I was just defending myself against his statement that we suck at bending the rules. Let's play Nomic if he wants to see whether or not we're any good at rules-lawyering. -Slitherrr
Looks like knowledge(geography) is missing from your chart. - Feantari
- Good catch. Good thing it only affects the Ranger. -Slitherrr
