Voss at [unixtime wrote:1197364093[/unixtime]]
Prak_Anima at [unixtime wrote:1197360924[/unixtime]]]I agree, in fact, I think most military personel receive at least basic training in this kind of thing, warriors from tribal societies were trained as hunters, and so know this kind of thing, and the tumbling acrobatic swashbuckler already, as an archetype, knows this kind of stuff. So fighters should totally do this. So much so, in fact, that rogues and fighters should be able to scout in two entirely different ways. Rogues can sneak up, look around the corner, and come back telling you how many and what you're dealing with, fighters can walk over, assess the situation, and possibly stride right over, trade some military/merc jargon, have a nice chat and a cup of ale, and bring you back numbers, types, ranks, positions, food, and possibly invitations to the chief's tent and to sleep with his daughter.
Well... it depends. I'd hesitate to say this, actually. It gets a bit funky depending on who you're talking about. Roman troops were often quite clueless when it came to outdoors shit. Depending on the period, most (citizens) will be city-dwellers, or idle fucks used to lounging about country homes. When they started pushing north, their enemies were more woods-crafty, but had shit for discipline as they were more warriors than soldiers.
In early periods, depending on who you're dealing with, your skirmishers might actually wander into the enemy camp, hang out, and drink with the enemy troops. But there would be a decent chance (especially if they're conquered subjects of one of the major players like Egyptians or Assyrians) that they would switch sides and give them your numbers instead.
And of course, when you're dealing with tribes and what not, there is a damn good chance that your people and their people can't actually talk to one another.
And fuck do I hate D&D's language model.
good point, I should have realised sooner that when I was talking about scouting, I was actually talking about two entirely different things,
Recon and
Wilderness Survival. The trained soldier should be good at recon because of training to be such, the swashbuckler's recon is going to be "walk up, silvertongue some info outta the guards, and sleep with every woman on the way out." and the tribal warrior's recon shouldn't, but like would, be "smash stuff, come back and let the party know that stuff was smashed and unfortunately the enemy now knows your out here" and
should be "stalk the enemy like hunted game then let the party know it's every move." The trained warrior should, ideally, have some wilderness survival skill, though, as you said, Romans were shit at outdoorsy stuff. However, they likely knew where the best places for drinks and sex were, swashbucklers should honestly be shit in the woods, a rapier and some witty reparte isn't gonna catch a rabbit for dinner, and this leads me to think that while the romans were trained soldiers, they fit the swashbuckler role, outside of combat, more than a soldier one, though this is more because of their culture and the apparent roman attitude of "If it ain't us, it doesn't matter". Tribal warriors would be superb at woodsy stuff, or whatever environment they come from... a Desert Nomad is going to know how to survive with just a dead camel, a Boreal tribesman is going to know the taletell footprints of a rabbit, and be able to track said prints to a warren full of them. So perhaps fighters should get some rogue-ish skills for reconn, whatever form it takes, and a special ability relating to "survival" in a certain environment, chosen by the player to reflect the fighter's background.
So the roman soldier would put ranks into intimidate and bluff for recon, and "city" as his "survivable environment", while the swashbuckler would also choose city for survival, but put ranks into bluff, diplomacy and gather info for recon. The Desert Nomad would choose probably put ranks into hide, move silently, diplomacy, intimidate and bluff for recon, and obviously "desert" for his environment.
The Swashbuckler and Roman Soldier would get bonuses to gather info and diplomacy checks made to "survive" in a city(would probably mostly come into play when haggling for a room or finding the best hooker/temple preistess). The Desert Nomad would just get a straight bonus to Survival checks made in the desert, and would have everything he needs(take 10?) if he had a dead camel, or could easily procure one. The Boreal Tribesman would have straight bonuses to survival in Cold Forests and be able to track small-medium game, possibly even allowed to take ten on such.
