How valuable is Burglary?

[Sanctaphrax]

So like a Doctor -> Scholarship and Demolitionist -> Craftmanship setup, but for... Thief -> Deceit? Or Thief -> Stealth?

Not sure what you mean.

I was saying that Burglary could be ditched. Hacking and lockpicking could be folded into Scholarship and Burglary, or made impossible without stunts.

Regardless, you could pick up any Burglary trapping with a stunt for Stealth or some other skill. Which would give you the same "I'm a thief, it says so on my character sheet" effect without the need for another skill.

[Mr. Death]

I'd think it'd be easier to make Burglary the apex skill to cover those things instead of having to make a couple different skills high and then spend refresh on stunts to add trappings if you wanted to play a thief-type character.

[Tedronai]

I greatly dislike the idea of basic iconic capabilities requiring stunts.

[InFerrumVeritas]

What I like about burglary:

When I started playing, I made all of my players tell me about their characters.  One of the things which said they needed was a profession.  That is, when they're not fighting monsters, what do they do?

One was borderline homeless, who was hired by various gangs/crime syndicates as security or muscle.
One was an heiress of her father's media empire who ran a blog about supernatural conspiracies.
One owned a jazz club.
One ran a diner (a Coney Island, our game's in Detroit).
One said he was a thief. 

That's how he paid his bills.  He was a thief.  He stole and fenced goods.  The burglary skill let him be pretty good at this without it being all he could do (he's also a practitioner).  So he can steal, he can pickpocket (we moved the trapping in game), he can case buildings, etc.  He's not good at investigating, not good at scholarship, fixing things, or even hiding.  But he is good at picking locks, finding weak points in security, lifting a wallet, and getting away. 

If he had to buy a ton of stunts to do this, it wouldn't be a viable character.  If everything were a declaration, it wouldn't be a viable character.  He couldn't use magic and steal. 

So this is one of those "groups of trappings" skills that allows characters to do a bunch of fairly specialized things.  It doesn't need to be as broad as Scholarship (which I think for many games is too broad) or as narrow as Fists. 

[Sanctaphrax]

You already need a couple of skills high to be a good thief. Anybody who wants to pick pockets needs Deceit, anybody who wants to sneak needs Stealth. Alertness, Investigation, and Athletics are also really handy.

I don't think removing Burglary would make the need for stunts/multiple skills any more noticeable. Craftsmanship, Scholarship, and Investigation can easily absorb lockpicking, hacking, and casing. And many characters will only need one of those trappings, since as Umbra said thieves tend to specialize.

Especially hackers. Kinda bugs me that breaking into houses is presumed to go along with computer shenanigans. How many fictional hackers are also skilled safe-crackers?

[Tedronai]

How many fictional hackers are also skilled safe-crackers?

How many fictional mathematicians are also skilled linguists?


Specialization is the role of stunts and aspects.  Basic competency is not.  And yet you would have basic competency at a substantial number of these tasks require stunts.  Why?

[UmbraLux]

Specialization is the role of stunts and aspects.  Basic competency is not. 

Agreed! 

[Mrmdubois]

You already need a couple of skills high to be a good thief. Anybody who wants to pick pockets needs Deceit, anybody who wants to sneak needs Stealth. Alertness, Investigation, and Athletics are also really handy.

Also he did say they moved the Pickpocket trapping to Burglary, so no need for Deceit.

[Sanctaphrax]

How many fictional mathematicians are also skilled linguists?

If you count programming languages, well...

But seriously, it is a bit silly. It's just that silliness doesn't justify more silliness.

Specialization is the role of stunts and aspects.  Basic competency is not.  And yet you would have basic competency at a substantial number of these tasks require stunts.  Why?

Which tasks are you under the impression that I would make require stunts?

PS: Adding pickpocketing, etc, to Burglary is certainly an alternative to dropping it. I just don't see the point; it seems to me that people's desire to keep it is founded more on the fact that it's there than on any real value.

[Mrmdubois]

It mimics real life?  Obviously not that accurately in terms of which trappings go with which skills (I haven't seen a game yet that gets that right) and the like but by limiting overall competence by having skills split up into enough categories to make it be impossible to even do everything, let alone be good at more than a little of it.  It's niche protection.

[Tedronai]

Which tasks are you under the impression that I would make require stunts?

This, among other posts by you in this thread and possibly others:

Hacking and lockpicking could be folded into Scholarship and Burglary, or made impossible without stunts.

Regardless, you could pick up any Burglary trapping with a stunt for Stealth or some other skill. Which would give you the same "I'm a thief, it says so on my character sheet" effect without the need for another skill.

(bolding added, obviously)
I could go back further into the thread to grab more examples of this suggestion by you, but I think my point is made.
One of your most prominent suggestions for how to do away with Burglary has been to require stunts to gain the lost trappings in other skills.

[Lavecki121]

That would be how you would do it RAW anyways. Also I don't see the need for getting rid of Burglary. It is a skill that builds off of itself.

CASING:
You can use Burglary as a very specialized
perception skill, specifically to assess the weaknesses
and strengths of a potential target. Here,
you try to determine the existence of unobvious
or hidden aspects using assessment.

INFILTRATION:
Given an opportunity to case an intended target
(above), you are much more prepared to infiltrate
that location. You can invoke known aspects on
the scene.

These two at least give me the impression that it is supposed to be specialized in that a police detective isn't looking for this when he is investigating or that joe schmoe isn't looking for this with his awareness. It's something thats done for a specific reason.

I don't see the point in getting rid of it.

[Sanctaphrax]

I always presented the use of stunts as an alternative for people who didn't want to fold the trappings into other skills. Or at least that's what I tried to do.

I don't see the point in getting rid of it.

I don't need a reason to drop a skill, I need a reason to keep one.

[InFerrumVeritas]

I always presented the use of stunts as an alternative for people who didn't want to fold the trappings into other skills. Or at least that's what I tried to do.

I don't need a reason to drop a skill, I need a reason to keep one.

And I, as well as many posters, need a reason to change the game we purchased.  If there's no reason, we'll play as written. 

You seem to be largely interested in game design.  In coming up with a "second edition," and use a very large number of houserules and errata.  But this isn't how the majority of gamers approach games.  We just want to play.  We'll only make changes if we think they're needed.  Otherwise, we use the system we paid for.  We paid for someone else to design it, so that we wouldn't have to.

And yes, I've come up with a bunch of custom powers, stunts, etc.  But in actual play, our houserules are pretty much me acknowledging that the way we thought things worked in the first place was incorrect and noting the nonstandard interpretations. 

My posting here is largely me working through the system, thinking about things that I like and don't like, and asking for ramifications of making a change or critiques on homebrew. 

At this point, Scant, you're not playing the same game as everyone else.  And sometimes, this means you're not having the same discussions.

[Sanctaphrax]

Actually, I play by more or less the same rules as everyone else. Most of my projects have not been fully integrated into a game, though I use almost all of them here and there.

This whole discussion has been about the best way to houserule; it started when Ophidimancer suggested giving it a Deceit trapping and I said it'd be easier just to remove the skill. "Not houseruling" isn't really on the table.

Unless somebody changed the terms of the debate while I wasn't looking, I guess.