From this entry on RPG.ney, it does bring up an interesting point on how useful Prof:Sailor is. In short, skills like Climb(rigging), Use Rope(Splicing, Knots), Know-Geography(Navigation)
Swim(Obvious) are better investments for skill points since the characters are going to make money by pirating rather than have a day job. Any opinions on whether or not Prof:Sailor is worth it?
In this AP Prof Sailor is useful for a lot of things, IMO.
Definately sink ranks into Use Rope. That's key in Skull & Shackles.
Actually, almost every Pathfinder-edition character I make takes the feat Skill Focus (Use Rope).
Profession is a catch all for a specific subset of things. You might have to make a Survival, Intelligence or Wisdom check instead of a Profession (cook) check, for instance. You might make Charisma, Intelligence, Appraise, Diplomacy or Sense Motive instead of Profession (innkeeper). Now, the question is-- what happens when Diplomacy, Appraise and Sense Motive aren't on your class skill list and your backstory says you're a fighter who owned an inn? Try being an innkeeper with 2+int skill points. But there's the Profession skill. Profession lets you spend 1 skill point to be great at all related tasks for one thing-- perhaps being a lawyer. Where the Sorcerer with the Inevitable bloodline (yeah I know) might need Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Bluff, Appraise, Perception, Linguistics and Knowledge (local) to have all of the skills to be a lawyer, one rank in Profession (lawyer) applies for when the PC wants to be a lawyer. By association, they don't need to be just as good at debating with centaurs as they are with debating the fine points of peasant law. It helps fit backstories. And if the sorcerer wants to have some of those skills to connect their Profession with the rest of their skill set, sure, that's fine!
TLDR Profession helps the spectrum of possible characters based on skills-per-class and point buy from becoming narrower.
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For one : in this specific AP, Profession Sailor.. ahem... rules. There are countless rolls throughout the AP, being set on ships and such, which profit from it, directly
Overall Profession (sailor) includes most of the easy and not so easy knowledge about ships, boats, the sea (size of waves, types of waves ) wind direction, how to handle a ship , what NOT to do, shipboard traditions, codes of conducts among sailors...
It is experience in a certain field of work actually having done things. You may climb like Reinhold Messner, you may swim on olympique levels... but that won't amount to much if you have no clue which end of the ships is which or where to lay the rudder in a split second during combat.
And be it only to understand your fellow pirates shouting at you "...to grab the staysail sheet, belay it on the leeward-chains pin-rail, on the double-quick and make that a double tie ".
Yes, that was a factual naval command. Will "climb" help you with that ? Guess not^^
oh, and nevermind that landbased navigation (aka "Survival") actually helps you... like, not at all on the water ? No trees, no landmarks, good luck navigating by the sun without any fixed points to relate to... Same for knowledge geography... what part of open ocean is actually "geo-graphy ?"
Astronomy, Mathmatics, Perception... more like it.
yeah simplification in RPGs... that's what Profession (sailor) is for
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Climb(rigging), Use Rope(Splicing, Knots), Know-Geography(Navigation)
If anyone cares, there's no use rope skill any more, climb isn't split into sub-skills that specify certain things you know how to climb, and Knowledge (Geography) is a skill itself that doesn't need to be further split to encompass naval navigation.
...Unless of course your GM is houseruling a 3.5-esque skill system in there, in which case poor you, because that skill system is needlessly complicated.
Vikingson sums it up pretty well. Profession (Sailor) is probably the single most important default skill to have in this AP, as situation after situation comes up in the various modules where PCs are required to "make a (whatever) or Profession (Sailor) skill check".
After that it's probably Diplomacy and/or Intimidate, and Swim. Knowledge: Local, History, or Geography seem to come up a lot as well.
Profession (sailor) is so important in this AP that one of my PCs has actually made a character that is optimized around it.
Human Ranger (Guide, Skirmisher archetypes)with the Focused Study and Heart of the Fields alternate racial features (which collectively give a +1/2 X level bonus and Skill Focus)
at level 5 he has a +16 profession sailor modifier...
+5 Skill Ranks
+3 Class Skill
+2 Wisdom
+2 Heart of the Fields
+3 Skill Focus
+1 Besmara's Blessing trait
and can roll twice and take the higher result 4X per day using his skill sage hunter's trick. We have had three ship-to-ship combats and the party has yet to lose a single roll with him at the helm.
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We've got one really good sailor, two or three passable sailors, and my wizard holding the rear with a whopping +2 (-2 Wis, 1 rank, +3 class skill bonus). And believe me, it comes up enough to be something worth putting at least a point into.
Unless you want to spend most of the AP taking the uncontrolled action while chasing down other ships, that is. :P
In my experience, Climb and Swim have also come up a lot (Climb to get aboard the enemy ship or to get up on the rigging, Swim to keep you alive when in the drink). A lot of the other skills are useful if at least one person knows 'em, but Climb and Swim help out anyone hoping to get over to where the fight is, or get away from one. Not everyone can hide on their own ship flinging spells like my gimped wizard has to.
Probably Nature and Local. If you have someone be an astronomer, they can navigate.
In the same vein as the original question, what sort of Knowledge skills come in most handy, if any, for this AP?
Engineering, Nature, Local and Geography seem to be the most common, with local leading the pack by a small margin.
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Knowledge skill wise, definitely nice to have someone who knows something about all of 'em. My wizard's got a least a rank in each, which for her makes her darn good at all of them (+6 Int, 1-5 ranks, +3 class skill bonus; +1 to History and Local from that one trait). So far, I don't think I've used Knowledge (local) as much as I'd like, but that might just be the GM noticing my 20+ rolls and just telling us stuff.
Trying to rack my brain, but I know I've rolled Knowledge (geography) a few times. And I picked up Knowledge (engineering) 'cuz the Skull & Shackles Player's Guide told me to.
I guess this is the "how useful are skills" thread.
If I make an investment in Perform (as a monk, not as a bard), is that going to pay off in any meaningful way? Will that even a little bit ever suffice as a substitute for Diplomacy?
How much trouble will we have if our party has no Disable Device?
Perform : I couldn't say without spoilering the Ap, but.. there are some perforem rolls far down the line. Diplomacy on the other hand. Needed from day one.
Disable Device : not a necessity, but useful, especially for locks
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Don't forget that having at least one rank in Profession (sailor) keeps you from having to make Fortitude saves to prevent being nauseated (seasick) for the day. Sure, the DC is low and two saves back to back (representing two days of acclimating to the motion of both ship and water) means you don't have to worry about it for the rest of the voyage, but if you don't have to make the roll in the first place, so much the better.
I found, in reading only (haven't run this yet) the Player's Handbook for Skulls and Shackles to sum up what skills the PCs should look into quite nicely.