Topical knowledge and skills
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Hey guys, I had a question I'd like to pose to the players here so I have an idea of what I should be doing.
My character, Jhlessia Brightmantle, is an alchemist and portrayed as knowing little about spells that cannot be used in potions. She almost never casts a spell, only using her slots for potion-making. Therefore, I didn't put points into spellcraft, as I figured that would be out-of-character.
If I want to portray her as knowledgable on the subject of herbs and alchemical reagents, is there a specific skill that I should be putting points in, a specific check that I can make when I think Jhlessia should know about some alchemical item that I don't know about OOC?
Should I put points in lore, despite her ignorance regarding most other subjects?
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Lore would be sensible as Lore can represent a huge variety of knowldge from Nature Lore to Lore of artifacts. Dragon Lore, to Creature Lore. Potion Brewing and Herbal Lore is just as legitimate.
You can also, in my personal opinion, allow Spellcraft to fulfil some of that function. This would represent the Arcane aspect of spell brewing if you wish.
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Some people have a narrower view of Lore, makig it JUST applicable to identification of magical items. Similary they limit Spellcrafts applicability to its coded mechanics.
Personally I like to treat the limited selection of skills we have in the broader way Abby indicates. Of course you would have focus areas, but even then, there's a chance some knowledge from a field your character is (portraited to be) interested in spills over to some other, perhaps not very related field, or that you run into something that your character would know, even if it's never come up in play before. Other things I think should factor in are specialization, skill focus, feats (e.g. a crafting feat for potions would translate in some knowledge on alchemical subjects), domains, Area of control of your patron diety etc.
Bottom line is though that I trust DMs to look at our characters as a whole, and factor these things in as appropriate, and don't really worry too much in day-to-day playing.
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Another way to portray your characters immersion into this none general lore would be to place the skill points into craft trap, weapon, armour as a representation of the knowledge achieved. And let the dm team know that that is why there are points spent there.
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I've always just put points into Lore when I've wanted to represent my character as having a broad, scholarly knowledge of a topic (or many topics).