Quote from: Zalman;980870This is true in relative terms, when comparing one (equal-level) character's ability to another. But higher DCs still theoretically represent increasingly difficult tasks and a character's ability to perform them.

Or do some people actually play 3E as if the skill DC ("easy", "moderate", "difficult", etc.) is relative to the character attempting the task? If that's the case, I see your point, though no one I know played it that way.

It was the way official published materials worked.

Quote from: Spinachcat;980780I fucking hate skills.

A silly game. The only way to win is not to play.

But many players feel their character is incomplete without skills. It's the main complaint I hear when I run OD&D or Gamma World.

I get why Sine Nomine bolted the Traveller 2D6 skill system to D&D core for SWN.  But for me, the end result is akin to Palladium bolting on the RQ skill system, aka a "best of the worst" solution.

The lack of a skill mechanic is not a problem unless it is important or interesting for your campaign to have characters be better at things other than combat, magic or other supernatural abilities. The inclusion or lack of a skill system is not a design flaw. Rather it is a matter of taste as to what one likes and think they ought to have in a campaign.

 Also the trend since I started playing in the late 70s has been towards increasing the options one has for customizing a characters. Skills lend themselves well to scratching that particular itch.

For the Majestic Wilderlands I made up an ability system and a series of Rogues classes that better at certain abilities than other classes.

In keeping with the spirit of the original rules, any character can try any ability just some are better at certain abilities than others. Because I did that I opted to call them abilities rather than skills. Because the default way of thinking for skills is that if you have the skills you can can't use it which is not the case with my take.

Quote from: Baulderstone;980948

Quote from: ZalmanOr do some people actually play 3E as if the skill DC ("easy", "moderate", "difficult", etc.) is relative to the character attempting the task? If that's the case, I see your point, though no one I know played it that way.

It was the way official published materials worked.

I recall that was the case for 4e. If it was supposed to be so in 3e no one I know figured it out. Do you have a reference on the nature of DCs in 3e handy that demonstrates as much? I'd love to see what we missed. I do have a Pathfinder book handy, but in Pathfinder DCs are only relative to the difficulty of the task itself, not the level of the character. For example, in Pathfinder the DC to Jump a certain distance is entirely based on the distance jumped.

Of course regardless of how 3e was intended to work, the core point I'm making isn't changed: it's not the fact of higher DCs that brings Ability Score bonuses to the fore during task resolution, it's the fact of shifting DCs, relative to character level.

Quote from: Spinachcat;980994But many players feel their character is incomplete without skills.

Many players can't seem to shit unassisted, either.

Coincidence? I think not.

Quote from: estar;981027The lack of a skill mechanic is not a problem unless it is important or interesting for your campaign to have characters be better at things other than combat, magic or other supernatural abilities. The inclusion or lack of a skill system is not a design flaw. Rather it is a matter of taste as to what one likes and think they ought to have in a campaign.

Exactly. My issues with skills are (1) bloated lists of increasingly narrow skills and (2) the amount of dick-measuring they encourage, which together lead to insane skills like 3e Boot Hill's roll to make a really good saddle on time for a customer and player characters as hyper-specialized SWAT teams.

I'm fine with the skill systems in some of the games I've played but playing 1e Boot Hill for the past year, where our 'skill system' is, 'Your character is a cowboy? Okay, he's good at cowboy stuff,' has really left me with a jaundiced eye for anything more complex than that.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;981065Exactly. My issues with skills are (1) bloated lists of increasingly narrow skills and (2) the amount of dick-measuring they encourage, which together lead to insane skills like 3e Boot Hill's roll to make a really good saddle on time for a customer and player characters as hyper-specialized SWAT teams.

I am a fan of GURPS and thought it well designed. Then I got into rolling my own with the Majestic Wilderlands and now I am more inclined to a more limited list. It can be tricky but I think if it starts to get over two dozen items you got to starting asking yourself does this really need to be this way? My own list been pretty stable this year until I added two more, Seamanship and Shipwright. I created and borrowed some rules to handle ships and trading and those represent the things that the characters can be better at if they choose to be.
 

Quote from: Black Vulmea;981065I'm fine with the skill systems in some of the games I've played but playing 1e Boot Hill for the past year, where our 'skill system' is, 'Your character is a cowboy? Okay, he's good at cowboy stuff,' has really left me with a jaundiced eye for anything more complex than that.

That is a little too basic for me. There are a handful of different stock cowboy/western types so in my view a few abilities would be warranted. But only a few.

Quote from: estar;981137There are a handful of different stock cowboy/western types so in my view a few abilities would be warranted. But only a few.

I'm not following you here.

My characters have abilities - one is a cowboy, another a buffalo hunter, a third a mining engineer. And that's all the description I need to know what they can and can't do.

And when they want to learn new skills, we roleplay it out. One character made friends with someone who could tutor him about investing his cattle drive profits. Another is learning the saloon business while working in a place as a gambler.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;981162I'm not following you here.

My characters have abilities - one is a cowboy, another a buffalo hunter, a third a mining engineer. And that's all the description I need to know what they can and can't do.

And when they want to learn new skills, we roleplay it out. One character made friends with someone who could tutor him about investing his cattle drive profits. Another is learning the saloon business while working in a place as a gambler.

Naturally you are going to update the Promise City blog and get into this in more detail as well as recount their latest adventures and hijinks.

This is also an area where I think Earthdawn has the right balance. You have a "Class" (the "Discipline" that your character practices), which comes with certain abilities (called Talents) that have individual Ranks. All die pools are Attribute + Ability Rank. You can take optional Skills to flesh out the gaps, but they are "less powerful/less useful" versions of Talents. Then, each Discipline has what is called "half-magic" - those things that are inherently part of the knowledge of practicing the Discipline. Characters are allowed to roll an Attribute Step + their Circle ("level") whenever half-magic is appropriate (GM's call, and this is where each group gets to customize what half-magic means for the group).

Example Talents for a 2nd Circle Warrior:
Durability 7: +(7*Circle) to KO Rating, +(7*Circle + Circle) to Death Rating
Defense: The adept adds +1 to his Physical Defense.
Discipline Talents (Circle 1): Avoid Blow, Melee Weapons, Thread Weaving (War Weaving), Tiger Spring, Wood Skin
Discipline Talent (Circle 2): Wound Balance
Novice Talent Options (choose 1 Talent Option at each Circle): Acrobatic Defense, Anticipate Blow, Danger Sense, Distract, Fireblood, Maneuver, Missile Weapons, Shield Bash, Tactics, Unarmed Combat

Half-Magic for a Warrior: Warriors can use half-magic when caring for or repairing their weapons and armor, knowledge of military tactics and strategy (recognizing the safest approach to a target when planning a battle, for instance) and to recall events of Barsaive's military history. They also use half-magic to recognize warrior orders, famous ancient Warriors, and ancient arms and armor.


Characters can increase the rank of their Talents, and must have a certain # of talents at a minimum rank # (= to the new Circle) to advance to that Circle. But when you do, you Half Magic step (& any "Free" talents like Durability in this case) is automatically raised to your "level".

[thanks for catching the typo Dumarest]

Quote from: Telarus;981194This is also an area where I think Earthdawn has the right balance. You have a "Class" (the "Discipline" that your character practices), which comes with certain abilities (called Talents) that have individual Ranks. All die pools are Attribute + Ability Rank. You can take optional Skills to flesh out the gaps, but they are "less powerful/less useful" versions of Talents. Then, each Discipline has what is called "half-magic" - those things that are inherently part of the knowledge of practicing the Discipline. Characters are allowed to roll an Attribute Step + their Circle ("level") whenever half-magic is appropriate (GM's call, and this is where each group gets to customize what half-magic means for the group).

Example Talents for a 2st Circle Warrior:
Durability 7: +(7*Circle) to KO Rating, +(7*Circle + Circle) to Death Rating
Defense: The adept adds +1 to his Physical Defense.
Discipline Talents (Circle 1): Avoid Blow, Melee Weapons, Thread Weaving (War Weaving), Tiger Spring, Wood Skin
Discipline Talent (Circle 2): Wound Balance
Novice Talent Options (choose 1 Talent Option at each Circle): Acrobatic Defense, Anticipate Blow, Danger Sense, Distract, Fireblood, Maneuver, Missile Weapons, Shield Bash, Tactics, Unarmed Combat

Half-Magic for a Warrior: Warriors can use half-magic when caring for or repairing their weapons and armor, knowledge of military tactics and strategy (recognizing the safest approach to a target when planning a battle, for instance) and to recall events of Barsaive's military history. They also use half-magic to recognize warrior orders, famous ancient Warriors, and ancient arms and armor.


Characters can increase the rank of their Talents, and must have a certain # of talents at a minimum rank # (= to the new Circle) to advance to that Circle. But when you do, you Half Magic step (& any "Free" talents like Durability in this case) is automatically raised to your "level".

Personally that's a bit much for my taste. Classic Traveller is about the limit for me.

Also what is "2st"?

Quote from: Orphan81;844202Skills.... those things that help outside of combat, and let you do things beyond killing stuff...

For class and level-based systems, I don't like skills much. The point of a character class is that it's a broad skill. There are things a level 3 fighter will know that a level 5 magic-user won't, like how to lay an ambush, whether a sword is a good one, and so on; and vice versa, of course. You can simulate this by saying that class X gets X-group skills only, but then what are you using skills for? The point of skills is so that you can take some stuff outside your class, like a fighter being able to use some magic; if the fighter can only take fighting skills, you may as well not bother with separately-listed skills at all, they're just "Fighter - 3".

Some people deal with this by having more character classes, so you have Fighter (swashbuckler) and Fighter (barbarian) and Fighter (Heavy Infantry) and so on. But if you have enough character classes, you may as well do away with classes entirely and just have skills. And skill-based systems work fine, though you have to keep the number of skills sensible.

In playtesting skill-based systems of my writing, what we found was that <30 skills was just a character class system, because in practice in a particular campaign at most half the skills would ever be useful, so you'd end up with 12-15 different ones people always took. If a class is just a broad skill, then a bunch of broad skills are just classes in disguise.

And more than 100 skills got annoying and argumentative, with players saying things like, "What do you mean I can't use a shortsword, I have high longsword skill, a blade is a blade, isn't it?" So you'd end up granting defaults from other skills and so on, and before you know it, it's become pretty complicated, unless you're having clusters of skills default to each-other, in which case it's usually easier just to collapse several skills into one and save all that looking up of charts and all that.

So for skill-based systems, we found the sweet spot was 30-100 skills, erring on the lower side, since some will be hydra skills - one body, many heads, like Craft (woodworking), Craft (blacksmithing), Craft (macrame) and the like.

Classes or skills. Not both.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;981202Classes or skills. Not both.

Indeed. I'm loving running class-based, no-skills White Star. All skills do is tell you what a character can't do. Maybe players see them as a ward against mean GMs. If you trust your GM - and if you don't, you're not going to have much fun in any RPG - then you don't need skills.

Quote from: S'mon;981258All skills do is tell you what a character can't do.

That your intrepetation. Try ruling that all characters can do any skills (with no penalty or bonus other than what an attribute confers) but some are better at certain skills than other.

A mage can pick a lock. A cleric can sneak around. A fighter can climb. But a thief will be better at all three.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;981202

QuoteSome people deal with this by having more character classes, so you have Fighter (swashbuckler) and Fighter (barbarian) and Fighter (Heavy Infantry) and so on. But if you have enough character classes, you may as well do away with classes entirely and just have skills.

I don't agree with that. If you are playing D&D, a game with high PC attrition at low levels, you want to have speedy character generation. As long as you have clear, archetypal name for your classes (as opposed to classes like Asmolian Arbiter), even if you have 20 of them, I can pick one quickly and start playing. The build is made for me and buying equipment is the only thing that takes time.

If I am playing 3E, and I decide I want a swashbuckler, I pick a fighter, and then have to allocate skill points, feats, and even consider future prestige classes that I am building towards. It's prep work that could have been avoided by just having a swashbuckler class.