Talk:Genre Savvy (3.5e Feat)

Ratings
"Replicating the most broken divination in the game at will is worth more than 2 skill points." If you mean commune, I wasn't happy with that either, so I already changed it.

"Rolling six times as many checks is stupid." I kinda have to agree with you - I put in the limit on the number of retries this skill check could allow a character to take precisely because I didn't want to cause an infinite check loop. At the same time, only allowing one retry allows too much potential for being screwed over by bad luck. I figured that a maximum of three retries was an acceptable compromise (I decided on three because the mind can only work so fast, and allowing you to make any more than six extra checks for something that's supposed to happen in less time than a free action stretched my suspension of disbelief to the limit).

"Destroying the only thing that makes those other skills work without rolling them secretly is an atrocity." I don't even know what that means, so I can't address it.

"Becoming immune to illusions is boring." It's not quite immunity to illusions, but I suppose it pushes you far enough off the RNG that you'd have to be out of your depth to fall for one. But since this Knowledge (theatrics) check substitutes for a Will save, it doesn't help you unless and until you're allowed to make that save. I'll agree that this is the weakest aspect of the skill trick, but a big part of being genre savvy is not falling for the ruse that every other genre-blind fool is falling for, so I'm not sure how to patch it up. --Luigifan18 (talk) 21:58, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * The thing you changed commune to is reasonable, I guess, but a bit much for a skill trick still.
 * You clearly don't agree with me enough.
 * When you make a Sense Motive check, the only thing that stops you, the player, from knowing you were lied to is that you don't know if you failed or succeeded.
 * Oh, so you play with a non-expansive definition of "interacted with".
 * The problem with skill tricks is that they cost almost nothing. Saying "oh, this is too powerful for a skill, so I'll make it a skill trick" doesn't actually make sense because a level 10 character has to pay six times as much for a skill as for a skill trick.
 * On genre-savviness itself: metagaming is more fun if the players (not the characters) are the ones who get to do it. Both involve throwing immersion out the window, but the satisfaction of thinking something clever only happens if you do the thinking. --Foxwarrior (talk) 22:20, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Genre Savviness provides an excuse for metagaming by making it in-character. And making this a skill trick means you have to pay two extra skill points. You still have to put skill points into the skill in order to use this skill trick - it just lets you do things that you wouldn't be allowed to do with your ranks in that skill otherwise. And that's what a skill trick is all about, isn't it? You spend extra skill points to expand a skill's functionality.


 * As for the illusions - many illusions provide specific rules for what constitutes interacting with the illusion - for instance, you aren't considered to interact with dead end (from the Spell Compendium) until you make a Search or Survival (tracking) check on it, or you have the scent special ability. And... I said this helps you resist any illusion, didn't I? It really should only help you disbelieve illusions - hold on, I'm going to go change that... --Luigifan18 (talk) 22:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * If you're going to play the game in a metagamey sort of way, then knowledge skills only matter in that they tell you what you don't already know. This skill trick lets you play someone who is far more genre savvy than yourself; if you wanted to play someone who was only as genre savvy as yourself, you'd just have to get the DM to declare that metagaming was acceptable and would not need this skill trick to do it.
 * Two skill points is not a lot. Paying 10% more to have something that's 10 times better is absurd. Since you made both of these things, it's absurd for not reason.
 * I'd already assumed you were only talking about disbelief, and few of the Core illusions give any of the hints you mention. --Foxwarrior (talk) 23:40, 16 November 2012 (UTC)


 * Well, there's also the general rule that you only get to disbelieve an illusion when you actually interact with it, which means that just seeing it may not be enough; the SRD itself says that "Creatures encountering an illusion usually do not receive saving throws to recognize it as illusory until they study it carefully or interact with it in some fashion." And it's perfectly possible that your character might be smarter than you - in fact, that's pretty darned likely if you're playing a wizard. What concerns me more is that I just read some of Complete Scoundrel, and - oops - a skill trick can only be used once per encounter! Um... I might have to change this to a feat, which means that I'll definitely need to incorporate a watered-down form of it into the Knowledge (theatrics) skill itself... *sigh* This isn't the first time I changed a skill trick to a feat... be right back. --Luigifan18 (talk) 23:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)

(reset indentation) Fluffykittens, the benefit of the rerolling part is that you're less likely to fail perception-related skill checks. It's like the reroll magic items from the Tome of Prowess. ("Wait - I've seen something like this before - there's got to be something hiding beneath that floorboard...") --Luigifan18 (talk) 00:25, 17 November 2012 (UTC)