Skill of the Day: Scholarship!

SCHOLARSHIP
Primary Ability: Intelligence
Alternative Abilities: Wisdom
Usual Time Requirement: varies, not usable in combat
Availability: Level 1
Type/Rate of Development: Campaign/Strategic; Slow (1:3)
FREE DEVELOPMENT BY CLASS:
OSRIC: Magic-user, Alchemist (2), Artificer
Swords & Wizardry: Magic-user
Labyrinth Lord: Magic-user, Alchemist (2), Artificer, Bard, Investigator, Metaphysician (2*).
FREE DEVELOPMENT BY RACE:
OSRIC: none
Swords & Wizardry: none
Labyrinth Lord: none

Today, I rolled a couple of 9s on my d12s, and came up with the skill Scholarship, which is one of the more off-the-beaten-track skills, but one that I would call a Strategic or Campaign skill, rather than a Tactical or Adventure skill. Campaign skills are, of course, less likely to crop up in the dungeon (but it’s not impossible that Scholarship might prove useful: how best to navigate that secret Drow library?).

However, I can think of manifold uses for the skill in a broader campaign setting: obviously the skill subsumes research skills and organization of knowledge, but I assume that it also provides a certain boost to social interactions with fellow-scholars (who often move in a quite different milieu to the rough-and-ready adventurer). It could be, for example, used to lower the required Competency Level to persuade a stubborn archivist to give a Magic-User ten minutes to peruse the only surviving copy of MogKilwan’s Guide to Enchaining Fey.

If you look at the summary chart above, you’ll note that the rate of development is “slow”: you gain 1 Competency Level for every three adventuring levels. You’ll also see that there are some Classes that get Scholarship for free at level 1 (including some third-party classes) , but the Alchemist and Metaphysician have some odd notation: the parenthetical (2) indicates that the Alchemist and Metaphysician receive two Competency levels at level 1. The (*) indicates that the Metaphysician develops the Scholarship skill at 1 Competency Level per two adventuring levels. (Had there been two asterisks “**”, that would have meant development at 1:1). However, my current working rule is that Campaign skills don’t develop faster than 1:2, due to the fact that adventurers are, well, busy adventuring.

The Alchemist and Artificer are drawn from Old School Magic by Charles Rice, whilst the LL Bard, Investigator and Metaphysician come from the Class Compendium by James M. Spahn