Focus for Skillfully Skinning an Animal

[Elfie]

What kind of test would you use for someone to skillfully skin an animal in order to result in a sellable pelt? It should also apply to something like removing the scales from a drake in a way that someone else could make armor out of them.

The closest things I can think of would be Dexterity (Crafting) or maybe Cunning (Evaluation), but neither of those really feels right.

[Lynata]

Off the top of my head I'd have said "Cunning" - but when Crafting is "Dexterity" the latter would seem more consistent.

In a way, you could even argue that skinning is a Crafting skill as well, thus using the same focus? Just in case you might not want to introduce an extra one only for such a rather limited task - for what it's worth, the difference between skinning an animal and building a chair is not much bigger than between carpentry and blacksmithing. Though I do believe that Set 2 actually introduces additional difference between the various crafting subtypes (would have to re-read that section), so this point might be moot.

[Elfie]

Actually it's Set 2 that introduced Crafting in the first place. And it suggests optional sub-focuses if needed. So maybe it IS crafting and we just role-play the difference between knowing how to skin an animal and knowing how to do something with that skin.

[Lynata]

Hah, my memory again. Able to recite passages of the Chant of Light yet forgetting about the new focus rules in Set 2. Shows where my priorities are.

Yeah, in that case I'd just go with Crafting - as in this case the character might actually be able produce (or at least improvise) useful things from time to time. It would be bad if a Dalish character who wants to build jackets out of self-hunted animals has to pick up two or even three different focuses (skinning, tanning, peltmongering) to do so with the skill you'd expect from a "wild" elf. But obviously, common sense needs to be applied so that someone who has the Crafting skill cannot just use it for everything.

Personally, I'd be more lenient with skills like Crafting because I think social and civilian focuses have a lesser impact on the game than combat abilities, who deserve more specialization because of their importance, i.e. how often they are used/rolled for.

[Loswaith]

I tend to use crafting as a general focus that covers most crafting styles rather than being one in of itself, rather than having to have an exaustive list of focuses covering every single possible crafting skill that could come up in DA games.

So I'd likely go Dexterity(Skinning) for removing pelts/scales, and knowing how to keep them preserved in the short term (through salting or whatever) and Cunning(Tanning) to cure the pelts/scales for final constructions leaving armourer / tailor / cobbler for creation of a final product.