Profession skill and Knowledge skill


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion


Quotes:

“A Profession skill represents an aptitude in a vocation requiring a broader range of less specific knowledge.”
“You can also answer questions about your Profession. Basic questions are DC 10, while more complex questions are DC 15 or higher.”

A character with Profession Soldier, for example, can answer questions about fortifications (knowledge engineering), strategic use of terrains (knowledge geography), wars (knowledge history), battle customs (knowledge local), military heraldry (knowledge nobility) etc., etc.
But Knowledge is an Intelligence skill and their answer are product of understanding, learning and reason. Meanwhile Profession is a Wisdom skill and their answer are product of common sense, personal experience and intuition.

So a character with the relevant knowledge skill will have a better, deeper and more complete understanding of the specific subject in contrast the character with the profession will have broader but more intuitive, generic and superficial understanding.


What are you getting at?


I am very sorry, English is not mi first language and sometimes I'm not sure how to express myself, also when I made the post it was late and I had been reading old arguments about the profession skill.

What I getting at is the use of profession as alternative knowledge, like sometimes is use the skill diplomacy (gather information) instead a knowledge local to know somite in a town or city.

It’s possible? Is it feasible? It is practical?

Liberty's Edge

This can occasionally come up with certain Knowledges, yes. Usually only Engineering, Geography, History, and occasionally very specific subsets as Local and Nature, but it could happen.

It's only a very narrow subset of the things those Knowledges do and few Professions will include more than a couple of those, but I see no reason it wouldn't work on occasion.


Another thing to keep in mind is that while professional skill can give you some information of a lot of subjects they all have to relate back to the profession. Professional skill soldier my give you the correct military ranks and forms of address for officers in the military, but it does not give you the ranks or forms of address for anything else. You may know to call a knight sir, but you have no clue what to call the bishop, or the lady of the manor.

It gets even more complicate because in some cases you have both a professional skill and a knowledge skill. Engineering is probably the best example of this. Someone with the knowledge skill engineering can recognize the styles and history of a particular building. They can tell the difference between a pyramid build by Egyptians vs one built by Aztecs. They will also be able to recognize particularly famous buildings. What they will not be able to do is to design or plan a building, that would require the professional skill engineering. But the person with the professional skill may be able to plan and design the building he does not really know much about the history of the style.

Basically a knowledge skill is book learning, where a professional skill is actually being able to do the job.

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