[DF] Physiology and Psychology skills

[Joseph R]

I'm interested to hear from Dungeon Fantasy players/GMs of PCs with Physiology and Psychology skills. How have they come up in play and what specialties were chosen?

I've never run DF, but I'm looking to rectify that for my next game, and initially planning to run it as vanilla as possible. My concern is that the Holy Warrior has these two Secondary skills (non-optional if the GM is enforcing templates) which seem vague in their scope and usefulness, when compared to Hidden Lore (and more expensive, to boot).

[mlangsdorf]

I don't use them, and would happily replace them with higher levels of weapon skill, Higher Purpose, or Hidden Lore.

Theoretically, Physiology can be used to find vitals (DF2 p10) and Psychology can be used to distract (DF2 p12), but I would just lump those uses into Hidden Lore. Holy Warriors are the only base template that have these skills; I wouldn't be sad to see them dropped.

(I already recommend that Connoisseur (Weapons) be dropped from the Knight template, because I like reducing the overcomplicated GURPS skill list).

[Peter V. Dell'Orto]

I feel the same was as Mark - I think lumping them into Hidden Lore is good enough for DF.

[ajardoor]

The Humanoid specialty for both those skills would typically be more useful for town adventures.

I am somewhat amazed that Psychology (Humanoid) isn't on the Bard template, same for Physiology (Humanoid) on the Cleric template.

[Joseph R]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

I don't use them, and would happily replace them with higher levels of weapon skill, Higher Purpose, or Hidden Lore.

Originally Posted by Peter V. Dell'Orto

I feel the same was as Mark - I think lumping them into Hidden Lore is good enough for DF.

Thank you both. Coming from you two, this confirms that my concerns weren't entirely unfounded. :-)

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Theoretically, Physiology can be used to find vitals (DF2 p10) and Psychology can be used to distract (DF2 p12), but I would just lump those uses into Hidden Lore. Holy Warriors are the only base template that have these skills; I wouldn't be sad to see them dropped.

Yeah, I had seen that (search/find in PDF viewers beats relying on hardcopy index!). Still, I couldn't think of a way to make those really count, without hobbling every other template that lacked those skills (by effectively making them mandatory "everyman" skills that most PCs wouldn't have).

Originally Posted by ajardoor

The Humanoid specialty for both those skills would typically be more useful for town adventures.

I am somewhat amazed that Psychology (Humanoid) isn't on the Bard template, same for Physiology (Humanoid) on the Cleric template.

Humanoid might actually be too-broad a "type" of monster (kind of becoming a no-brainer rather than choose any other option), and almost suggests doing away with specialties of those skills altogether for DF. I suspect the original intention was for narrower "types", though. The adventure Mirror of the Fire Demon lists Orc - extremely specific and doesn't scale (although orcs do feature fairly strongly in that adventure) as well as Demon - suitably broad and does scale (a whole Class of monster) but it overlaps with Hidden Lore.

[ajardoor]

Originally Posted by Unwitting Pawn

Humanoid might actually be too-broad a "type" of monster (kind of becoming a no-brainer rather than choose any other option), and almost suggests doing away with specialties of those skills altogether for DF. I suspect the original intention was for narrower "types", though. The adventure Mirror of the Fire Demon lists Orc - extremely specific and doesn't scale (although orcs do feature fairly strongly in that adventure) as well as Demon - suitably broad and does scale (a whole Class of monster) but it overlaps with Hidden Lore.

"Humanoid" is supposed to cover the human and non-human races (as per DF 3), I think.

[Joseph R]

Originally Posted by ajardoor

"Humanoid" is supposed to cover the human and non-human races (as per DF 3), I think.

Thanks. I'll take a look at DF3 :-)

[Bruno]

I'd link to my wiki but the server's down.

I split up the "humanoids" from DF3 into four categories - these determine who might appreciate your full appearance bonus (unless kinky), what skill specialties apply (including for physician and first aid), and are ready in case I need anything else.

Basically, for mechanical purposes I collapsed all the races into 4 "species":
anthropoi ("human like" - roughly, the traditional 'demi-humans')
pneumatoi ("spirit creatures" - fey as nature spirits, and the half spirits)
gigantoi (titanspawned races - the 'also ran' humanoids like goblins, trolls, and ogres)
and I forget the greek name I gave the last group but they're the "far out there" or hodgepodge races that might have been Monstrous Humanoids in D&D 3e: bird folk, cat folk, coleopterans (wug folk), minotaurs, reptilians, centaurs.

I make medical skills default between the groups pretty generously, I think -2ish IIRC. Generally, poisons and diseases are also most significant for one of these groups and have a reduced but still significant effect for the other 3. Or just have similar severity but two different kinds of Symptoms.

Psychology I might keep for the four different types above, otherwise collapsing it into Hidden Lore for any group that already has hidden lore. Since the humanoids don't have a Hidden Lore to tell you what they're like and what they're likely to do, it would be nice to have something for that purpose. Heraldry to ID different social groups for humanoids doesn't seem like it'd cover the same ground (the Knight has it though) - possibly what I really want is to collapse those two skills into each other and just say "Humanoid Lore (specialty)", which isn't very hidden..

I'd add it on to Bard, Justicar, and possibly Cleric and/or Wizard if I did that, and perhaps Swashbuckler. Then I'd need to come up with WHY you have it in a DF game, ie at least two or three uses for it.

Physiology I'd really be inclined to say "Spend those points on medical, hidden lore, or combat skills instead" for DF. It's either that, or junk racial specialties entirely and replace with Physiology and that's too fussy.

[Gnome]

There are plenty of useless skills on the templates that are really there to add flavor to the characters or help define who they are. Teaching and Writing for the Wizard aren't too useful in my experience. Strategy for the Knight is usually a waste of points. DF2 gives about the same number of examples of usage for Psychology and Physiology as for any other of the background skills that are really just that: they provide a little background for your character and make him or her a little easier to imagine.
To me, this is a feature, not a bug. Templates make some of the decisions for you about how many points to spend on character background. If you want to make the decision yourself, don't use templates.

[mlangsdorf]

I think there's huge difference between spending 8 points on some skills at barely useful levels that do barely useful things and spending 2 on some skills at useful levels that do minorly useful things.

If nothing else, Writing is good for $100/adventure for Selling the Tale (DF2, p15) but it can also be used to get sponsorship (DF2 p4).

Teaching is just background and should probably be removed.