i have a couple skill questions

[zainale]

1.)what skill would you used to identify the best quality of some items that are the same? say you have 3 rock and you want to choose the best of the three of rocks i say an appraise or profession check and not a craft check. rocks don't have a value per say but to you they do have a value since you are try to choose the best one.
2.)you use Arcana to identify magical creature. how hard would it be to identify it if it exhibits abilities that it should not have and you have never seen before except in books, maybe. and is from a different region of the world?

[Tarik Blackhands]

1) Can range from a variety of skills depending on the items in question, but by and large it'll be Appraise or the appropriate Craft/Profession skill and maybe a few outliers in Know (Engineering or Geography), with Appraise being the catch all.

2) Pathfinder says nothing on this regard and is fully up to the GM. Finding out that French Goblins throw stinky cheese is probably not that hard, but knowing about the GM's mutant red dragon that is immune to cold and breathes cheese is probably not going to happen unless there happen to be in game legends on the matter.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

It's a heavily context dependent question. Are you appraising for jewel value, or are you looking for sling shot ammunition?

[zainale]

there is a Reincarnated Druid that just woke up naked in the woods. he would normally use weighted ball and chain thing as a weapon so he goes about and uses craft to make a rope and needs to chose between three rocks to weigh the end of rope. so he has a weapon to protect himself. in this hypothetical scenario i argued that he would have to use appraise to find the best rock for his uses while the other guy argued that you would use craft masonry. and he was adamant that he was right and that i was wrong. that you can not use the skill appraise to find the best quality rock because those rocks have no value. i stated that the rock does have a lot of value to a naked man lost in the woods it may save his life. i also stated that with appraise i might find some flaw in one or more of the rocks making them useless for his purpose.

[zainale]

i also told him that craft masonry would be useless because i was not building a stone building or bridge but a weapon.

[QuidEst]

Craft(Masonry) makes more sense than Appraise. The latter is used to assess the monetary value of things, not their usefulness, while the former would at least allow one to identify the type of stone.

The answer is more likely that this shouldn't be a skill check. An untrained person's selection and the selection of somebody who has trained for years in a remote monestary of eccentric monks dedicated to the optimal selection of rocks for constructing improvised rock-flails would not be meaningfully different.

[Ravingdork]

Sounds to me like any of those skills would be appropriate. I could also name a few others. Since it's not really covered in the rules, there is no real wrong answer here. Choose something that makes a modicum of sense and is fun for everyone, then move on.

As for Knowledge: Arcana, yes, you can use it to identify magical beasts and their abilities, even highly unusual or exotic ones (such as a half-dragon griffon rather than an ordinary griffon).

The DC is traditionally 10 + CR of the magical beast you're attempting to identify. The DC could also be 5 + CR for common creatures (which didn't sound like what you were describing) or 15 + CR or higher for especially rare creatures, such as the Tarrasque. If you beat the DC, you generally know the creature's name and type and subtypes (as well as any abilities associated with those types or subtypes), plus one other useful piece of information for every 5 points by which you beat the DC (such as special attacks, defenses, social habits, etc.). Unlike your first question, which isn't really covered in the rules, this is pretty straightforward ad it is (more or less) outlined under the Knowledge skill description in the Core Rulebook.

[Mark Carlson 255]

IMHO, it sounds like you are making a weapon that will not last and just drilling a hole in a rock and attacking it to a stick with a string will work for a time, it should break fairly quickly. IMHO.

MDC

[rainzax]

In general, if it feels like two or more skills would cover it, I allow any of them to do the thing.

[zainale]

the person is making a weapon. he or she is just using appraise to decide which rock would be better for his purpose. also using appraise to find any possible flaws in the stones.

[Klorox]

Appraise is heavily slanted to appraising monetary value, or quality of precious materials (gems etc). As a DM I'd set very high target numbers to meet to use it for estimating practical quality (i.e., I'd rather use profession soldier to evaluate the practical aspects of a weapon, rather than its monetary worth and value as a prestige item, and craft (weaponsmith) to assess the suitability of material for making a weapon)

Just my 2 euro cents

[Mark Carlson 255]

I agree with Klorox on this one.

I also think that just picking the best of three rocks to make a fail again in my game it would not last that long as it would be an improvised weapon.
Rocks tend to fracture and break after a period of time which is why they were used for things like sling bullets and not clubs.
Yes some stone Obsidian makes great knives but the blades tend to also be very fragile and break even tough they are very very sharp. IIRC some of the best scalpels used today are make of Obsidian as the edge is finer than that on any man made metal.

I also like the way you are trying to figure out weapons that you can use when the situation clearly is designed so you have nothing.

MDC

[Mysterious Stranger]

Since what you are doing is making a weapon craft weapon is the skill you should be using. Neither of those skills is appropriate for what you are looking to do. Selecting the proper material for crafting is part of the craft skill. Craft masonry is not appropriate because he is not building a structure or wall, he is building a weapon. What may be the best rock to build a wall may end up being the worst to use as a weapon.

It sounds like the player has craft masonry and wants to use it because he has a better roll. Since craft can be used untrained I would simply have him make an untrained craft weapon roll to determine how well he is able to make the weapon. I also think you are going into way too much detail about what he wants to do. Did you require him to make perception rolls to find the rocks, and STR rolls to pick them up?

[zainale]

it was a hypothetical debate no actual skill exist to base skills on.and we are not crafting rocks. just deciding which is best.

there are three stones in front of you. you must choose the best one for a weapon. each is about 3 or 4 pounds each size wise. i said i would use appraise to evaluate each rock. he said you cant use that skill because rocks have no value. i also said that those three rocks do have value to the person making the choice. if he chooses the wrong rock it may be too heavy or the wrong shape or too fragile. the right rock would have more value then the wrong rocks to the person that would need it.

if i really wanted to make the best skill check i would have used profession (geologist). but that seems like a wang move since a geologist does not exists in a fantasy world that i know of.

[Mark Carlson 255]

IMHO, the skill would be Profession: Weapon Smith or any skill at making improvised weapons.

Also, your other post has some good info for your PC and you.

Good Luck and Have Fun.

[Drahliana Moonrunner]

zainale wrote:

the person is making a weapon. he or she is just using appraise to decide which rock would be better for his purpose. also using appraise to find any possible flaws in the stones.

It's essentially a craft weapon check with appropriate penalties for improvised materials and complete lack of tools. There's generally a reason that primitive tribes never made the equivalent of maces and flails.

[zainale]

Mark Carlson 255 wrote:

IMHO, the skill would be Profession: Weapon Smith or any skill at making improvised weapons.

Also, your other post has some good info for your PC and you.

Good Luck and Have Fun.

which post are you talking about?

[Mark Carlson 255]

The thread was the one about traits that can help you out with improvised weapons. I thought there were some good ones there in which they provided some good info and character benefit to your adventure. ie wake up with no equipment, nothing and start adventuring from there.

MDC

[Mysterious Stranger]

Appraise is more about supply and demand and local market conditions. It’s about the relative value of the goods rather than the absolute value. It will allow you to figure out who would be willing to purchase it. But other than who is willing to purchase it and for how much you appraise is not going to tell you much about the item.

Even if you are not actually making a weapon out of the rock craft weapon would still be the skill to use to evaluate the rocks suitability to be used as a weapon. If you were going to use the rock for something else than another skill would be used. Say for example if you are using the rock to make into a statue you would use craft sculpture. If you wanted to figure out which rock would be best as an anchor than profession skill sailor would be the most appropriate. To figure out if the rock any minerals that would make it valuable professional skill miner would be appropriate. Many different skills can be used to determine what the rock would be suitable to be used for.