Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;376160You have to decide what is most important: class and background, or skills and stats.  Then have the less important one act as a modifier on the other one.

Basically. You could select one of the many cool variants of this thread, or stick with your own, and just use class and background as mods on either the roll, or the difficulty to beat. It could be variable for instance, whether it's dead on, close or rather far from the class and/or background concept. A hunter trying to hunt could get up to a +5 to his ability to then beat under with a d20. A Cleric trying to understand the religious paintings on the wall from another religion could get a +3. A carpenter trying to identify tools used for stonecarving could get a +1. And so on.

Quote from: Benoist;376200. A Cleric trying to understand the religious paintings on the wall from another religion could get a +3. .

or a -4

Quote from: Benoist;376200A Cleric trying to understand the religious paintings on the wall from another religion could get a +3.

What's to understand, clearly it is just delusional heresy.  It might be interesting to also throw in a + based on alignment similarity.

Quote from: Xanther;376224What's to understand, clearly it is just delusional heresy.  It might be interesting to also throw in a + based on alignment similarity.

Absolutely.

Quote from: Aos;376199Actually, as pointless as it sounds, I've gotten a lot of satisfaction from reinventing the wheel. I imagine it was fun in '78, and, for me at least, it's fun right now.
...

Actually I don't find it pointless at all.  I went down this road myself to get to the homebrew monstrosity I use today.  It's still fun and I like alot of the ideas here, the class based / saving throw chart with modifier in particular.  I also like the idea of using the combat tables and if the area is on point to your class you use the fighter table, if far off you use the mu table, etc.

I do find it ironic in a way that a retro clone is being modified to do this, as part of the whole retro clone movement (I thought) was to get back to the way D&D was.  Yet we are already traveling away from that.

Quote from: Aos;376199Actually, as pointless as it sounds, I've gotten a lot of satisfaction from reinventing the wheel. I imagine it was fun in '78, and, for me at least, it's fun right now.

Absolutely, it's fun, AND it's useful to you, and the people who find some inspiration in the stuff you share on your blog, as well. Useful because the rules become literally yours, your own, and useful for others, because they might inspire them to build their own, and make the resulting game their own, through and through.

So I'd say: It's fun, and there's a point to it too!

Quote from: RandallS;376168Here are the Skills rules from the current draft of my Microlite75 system. With slight modification they should work in S&W, OD&D, 1e, etc. without much problem. Even if you don't like them (as they are D20-like because they are written for a Microlite20 variant or something), they might give you ideas for ways to handle skill rolls you like better.

Nice stuff.  A BoL with more meat it seems to me.  How specific are you in these prime skills, etc.  Are they general like fighting, magic, etc.?

Quote from: Benoist;376229Absolutely, it's fun, AND it's useful to you, and the people who find some inspiration in the stuff you share on your blog, as well. Useful because the rules become literally yours, your own, and useful for others, because they might inspire them to build their own, and make the resulting game their own, through and through.

So I'd say: It's fun, and there's a point to it too!

Amen to that.  I may have ended up farther afield, but this still applies.

Another way of handling skills would be to expand on the d6 mechanic in OD&D (though I wouldn't call it a *cough* "skill system" *cough* originally). Basically, everyone has a 1 in 6 chance of succeeding anything. Then, according to race, class, etc, character gain advantages expressed as a +1 or more on a d6. Dwarf? +1 to detect concealed pieces of masonry. Relevant ability score (Wis for concealed pieces of masonry, say) above a score of 12, as per S&W rules? +1 to the check. Engineer background? +1 to the check. And so on.

If you want modifiers to not affect probabilities too drastically, spread them out with levels, or whatever, you could change the die type from d6 to d12 (a die that is not nearly used enough, by the way).

Quote from: Xanther;376230Nice stuff.  A BoL with more meat it seems to me.  How specific are you in these prime skills, etc.  Are they general like fighting, magic, etc.?

I just decide whether what the character wants to do is directly related to his class or background, somewhat related, or not really related. If I decide a die roll is needed, this determines which type of skill roll I ask for. It's really a simple system -- it basically treats class and background as two fairly broad "skills" which define how likely a character is to be successful at what he tries to do.  This is less hassle than a narrow skill system (and much harder to min-max) and seems -- to me, at least -- to fit better with a class-based game.

Addenda to Benoist's idea, you might notice that there are checks that started out as a '1 in 6' roll by default in AD&D (Listening at doors, surprise), but that some classes got bonuses on by having these 'skill' chances increase when levelling up (monks or thieves). Usually they just converted the 1 in 6 to an equivalent percentage ( a base 15% chance), then slowly add percentiles each level.

Dragon #156 had an optional OD&D skill system that used percentages too ("Can you swim? Juggle? At the same time?").

The skill system in Majestic Wilderlands is pretty great.

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