DQ Skills

General Skill Changes

Additions to Skills section:

It is intended that these two paragraphs be added to the opening section on skills, and to apply across all skills (except Adventuring skills).

Expert Knowledge

The possessor of a Skill, other than an Adventuring skill, also gains an in-depth knowledge of the field associated with their Skill. The knowledge held by the character may not be entirely factual, and may contain certain popular misconceptions or superstitions. Generally there is no success percentage, the GM simply giving far more information regarding a certain topic to a character who has expert knowledge in that area. If there is doubt as to whether or not a character should know something from their specific field, the chance should be 50% (+5/Rank), modified by the GM to reflect the rarity of the knowledge. This knowledge mostly gives the character a better understanding of the techniques and tools of their trade, some history of the trade, a much wider general knowledge about it, and perhaps some biographical knowledge of famous figures associated with it, both historical and contemporary. This knowledge is less thorough than a similar Sub-field from the Philosopher Skill, and should not be seen as a substitute for it.

Supervision of Subordinates

The possessor of a Skill, other than an Adventuring skill, is able to supervise the work of subordinates in that Skill. The supervisor may instruct and supervise a number of subordinates equal to Rank. Subordinates must be practising the same Skill as their supervisor and may themselves be supervising underlings, thus creating a "chain of command". A subordinate may be replaced by a work-gang, consisting of a group of up to 10 labourers, who must be working as a team, and may not be supervising others. A supervisor need not supervise their maximum number of subordinates or labourers, and may themselves work, proportional to their unused supervision capacity.

E.g. A character with Rank 6 in Artisan (Carpenter), may instruct up to 6 other Carpenters or 6 work-gangs (up to 60 labourers), or some combination thereof. If they were supervising 2 Carpenters and 1 work-gang, they would only be using half their supervision capacity, and could themselves work about half of the time.

Design Notes

Expert Knowledge seemed like a sensible addition to the DQ skills. We often had people asking for ways for their character to acquire specific and transferable "in-game" knowledge -- less of a requirement in a single GM campaign. Expert Knowledge was part of the solution along with the adventuring skill Knowledge and the Philosopher skill