How exactly would you interpret the use of the accounting skill? Can it be used outside the “get a job” to restore resources or is it limited to that and forking?
Useful when you want to embezzle funds or when a lord wants to hide the money they’re using to hire a mercenary army and take down the king.
I think there are useful uses out there.
Littlefinger in Game of Thrones definitely comes to mind.
If you want to recover taxed resources, you’ll need to Get a Job. Apart from that, you could use accounting to help run a profitable business or manage an estate, uncover graft (or commit it!), or devastate a national economy if your name is Baru Cormorant. Don’t forget linked tests! Even a lifestyle test might benefit from your accounts being in good order, if you go about it the right way.
You can use almost any skill for Get A Job. It depends upon how you go about it, you can say for instance you take time to sell some good or preform work for a lord or organization. If you have a weapon skill you can use that to Get a job as a guard or mercenary.
This is like asking when it’s useful to use all kinds of skills. Much like Administration, or Rule of Law, or Bureaucracy, it only really matters for certain characters in certain games, but those times it’ll really matter. Want to figure out why an organization is broke even though it shouldn’t be? Accounting. Want to prove someone is (or isn’t) corrupt? Accounting. Want to know if you can afford this shiny new thing and still make rent next month? Accounting.
I made one of the characters make an accounting roll to go over a corrupt merchant company’s books and determine that they are actually a front for the secret cabal of wizards that controls the country.
Years ago, in our Burning THAC0 game, with many adventures under our belt, we arrived in the dwarven nation of Rockhome, ready to press our companion’s claim to the throne. He was the rightful heir, but the scheming Stonebeard Clan had usurped his family and been running things for several centuries. We had accumulated a great deal of wealth in our previous adventures, so the first thing we did upon arriving in Rockhome was to establish a bank. We used a combination of accounting and other skills to identify prominent noble families that had fallen on hard times, but could regain their former prestige with the right loan. We financed a number of individual dwarves and clans with the understanding that they would support our friend Dvalinn’s bid for the throne.
Once we put Dvalinn on the throne, we used accounting to keep track of what his debtors owed and made sure to keep them in debt so we could sway their actions.
I should add that we soon had branches of the THAC0 & Co. Bank all over Mystara. One of the most important magic items we have in our possession is a Ring of Accounting.
If you have a noble in-game who actually has to rule over some shit, they’d better have someone around with an Accounting skill.