Arcane and Primal Skills

ARCANE AND PRIMAL SKILLS...

I am a serious fan of making the flavor your own taking skills and manipulating them to fit your character rather than the reverse. My Warlocks intimidate is most definitely a fear spell isnt yours? But in some ways this all inspired me to think of using a feat ie the same kind of character design cost you use for skills as the enabler for a properly themed set of magically flavored abilities ie the feat call it a Talent or Gift allows fast casting of ritual magics... the rituals are then sub-components of a skill. Rather like the specific skill uses. Well enough defined the Gift could then be employed like skills are in a skill challenge type environment.

Invocations of Mecha and Pyrexia

These are Arcane and Primal manipulations associated with Mechanical Devices... They are largely analogous to Thieving and can even be employed in some skill challenges

Knock or the Admittance Spell, Following Hidden Mecha Pathways (make an Arcana Check vs the lock with +5 on the DC but you also add your Wis Mod to offset that (ie the perception attribute) you are sending your minds eye down through the mechanics of the mechanism)I paint runes on the surface of the lock and send my minds eye down the path ways of its mechanics make an arcana check it is difficult unless you are very perceptive however.

Warding the Baneful Device - a glowing rune appears on a complex mechanism such as a trap so long as the glow is active the trap may seem to fire but it is harmless ghostly visuals and hollow sounds without bite and moments later it appears to once more be in an un-triggered state. A successful religion or arcana check befoul this ward and make the trap active once more.  

Conjuring of  Gremlins - minor demonoids suround the mechanical device gnawing on its pieces, if you dont carefully prevent them they will simply destroy it but you might be able to repair the damage with a purification or some elbow grease and ingenuity after wards as most of the damage is actually cosmetic they arent actually that smart, this might make the device stick open or closed and istn always predictable.

Primal

Bribing Appropriate Spirits - this is Charisma based, the household spirits are really the ones who allow or deny entrance in to a building locks are camouflage (a bowl of milk or similar inocuous thing when properly invoked with mystical forces is usually just the thing to allow entrance as nobody remembers to propiate them these days).

Binding Guardian Spirits - all things have spirits and humans invest mana in the devices they use to protect themselves, forcing one of these to manifest and binding it will disable the device associated with it at least for a time, its not actually that difficult to free such a bound spirit after all the original investor in it was able to manipulate or create this spirit unknowingly.

Conjuring a Spectral Seaman - this fellow is expert at fixing and repairing boats.

A also had a Divine Invocations variant of the thieving skill that flavored very well...

Back in 1e era none of my friends wanted to play the thief... hmmmmmm

When You Don't have a Rogue...

Invocations of Justice (generally based on Wiz or Char)

These are quick divine manipulations mini-rites in concept or spell-like abilities, they are largely analogous to the Thieving Skill and can even be employed in some skill challenges although the functionality is distinctly different in style. In some cases the invocations do the opposite of what you might expect of a thief action, sometimes loud and sometimes with minor advantages or disadvantages from the
theiving abilities.

Just Demand for Admittance/Passage:
The Knightly figure raised up his weapon and struck the door with its pommel, "miscreant you cannot escape retribution of the divine" and demanding admittance in the favored tongue of his faith the barrier might have shook
ever so slightly after a moment he repeated the door and its hinges visibly vibrated and an audible click and sounds of chains falling rang out from behind the wooden and steel bound portal. It's noisy I admit he
says to a companion and not as clever as your theiving tools but I have been known to pass portals not ameniable to subtlety, in this case they already knew we were coming.

Freeing the Unjustly Bound
My hands are not particularly strong nor my fingers particularly nimble beyond ropes this will work decent even on lock and chain.

Recovering the Stolen
I am not entirely sure the item I am retrieving is stolen but it generally works significantly better when it was and generally points out guiltless when it doesnt.

Angelic Protections (Glowing Damage Resistance from the effect of a device or trap)
Well its not that I can prevent a trap from springing but rather the divine will protect us from its effects

I think the cool thing about 4E is that you don't have to have a Thief/Rogue in the party like you did in previous editions. There are plenty of classes that have the requisite class skills to allow all of the thieving, stealthing, and all that without actually being that single class.

That being said, I definitely like the idea of having power source themed skills.

Oh definitely 4e dealt with plenty of issues... in some sense this is very much not about addressing issues but rather one about rich flavor and theme.

It tweaks my sense of humor mentioning the olden era but I do worry that subsequent generations of the game may engage in back slide in terms of function, when maybe what they want is flavor.

Yup, this is pretty much how our group uses skills to begin with. With our general anime/superhero aesthetic, there's no expectation that magical things are more powerful than dedicated training or in-born gifts anyway.

I'm also a big fan of just letting people spend their class skills on whatever they want, rather than a list. Class skill lists are good for starter parties who could use a guide to help cover their bases - not much use for anybody else.

Fox Lee wrote:

Yup, this is pretty much how our group uses skills to begin with. With our general anime/superhero aesthetic, there's no expectation that magical things are more powerful than dedicated training or in-born gifts anyway.

I'm also a big fan of just letting people spend their class skills on whatever they want, rather than a list. Class skill lists are good for starter parties who could use a guide to help cover their bases - not much use for anybody else.

hmmm removing the expectation that magic is better than dedicated training and inborn gifts is almost a core paradigm of 4E!!!!