I did already.

I don't really have a problem with any specific skills, but I hate when skills ambiguously overlap. I've been playing the FFG Star Wars games since playtest, and I still can't always tell where the breaks between Cool & Discipline, Deception & Skulduggery, Perception & Vigilance, and a few other edge cases are supposed to be drawn. Of course, this is a game where you use the same skill for piloting both a walker and a low-orbit-capable airspeeder (or just as oddly, a capital starship and a starfighter walking on legs...), so it's not the most rigorous of skill systems to begin with.

Beyond the Wall has a playbook for the Assistant Beast Keeper which can give both the Animal Ken and Animal Lore skills, with no definition of either skill. It is left entirely to the GM to decide if either or both apply in any given situation.

Quote from: Harg of the City Afar;932585Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man. :cool:

And you should heed it.

Remember, Question Authority, then listen very closely to the fucking answer.

I find the perception skill is typically head and shoulders more useful than any other skill, which I dislike.

Quote from: Psikerlord;932863I find the perception skill is typically head and shoulders more useful than any other skill, which I dislike.

I find this to be as it should be;).

Quote from: Psikerlord;932863I find the perception skill is typically head and shoulders more useful than any other skill, which I dislike.

How about adding Perception as a new ability score and just roll it like you would any other strength or dex check?

Quote from: hedgehobbit;932891How about adding Perception as a new ability score and just roll it like you would any other strength or dex check?

He did exactly that in his game, check his signature;).

Quote from: hedgehobbit;932891How about adding Perception as a new ability score and just roll it like you would any other strength or dex check?

This is the Fallout S.P.E.C.I.A.L. approach; to Luck as well.  Another approach is to make it similar to a save/ability such as in Dragon Warriors; an approach that is highly recommended.

Quote from: Psikerlord;932863I find the perception skill is typically head and shoulders more useful than any other skill, which I dislike.

Quote from: AsenRG;932868I find this to be as it should be;).

I agree with Asen, perception is a skill, we call it many things, but I like what Sherlock Holmes calls it "Observation".  It's a trained ability that's important for both realism and plausibility reasons.  Realism:  Humans base 90% of their sensory input into their visual sense, everything we do tends to lead back to what something LOOKS like, whether it's taste, sounds, smells, we assign a visual to it.  This detail of human life leads into the plausibility factor, our fiction is abound with people who have the mental acuety to understand what their sense are telling them when they enter a room of a crime.

It's a trained ability.  Is it important?  Yes, it's possibly the most important skill any 'adventurer' should have.  Which is why I give it out for free in the majority of the games I run (Depending on what the setting is of course.)

Random, unconnected thoughts inspired by the OP--

Any social skill runs into problems, because X% of any gaming group is going to want to play someone more (or even less) capable of influencing others than they are, but Y% will feel that it cheapens their attempts to actually use their roleplayed words and arguments as an avenue of success.

Perception has a bit of this, as it can easily compete with "I look at the wall, is there any possibility that there's a secret door there?" and otherwise get rewarding for thinking things out. OTOH, there are things beyond a players control about what their character sees or notices that should be adjudicated by a dice roll (which is either a skill check or a skill-by-another-name check).

I never much liked the late 1e and 2e AD&D (and BECMI D&D) skill systems, as before you implemented them, the characters were usually omnicompetent medieval travelers (fully capable of riding horses, swimming when not armored, hunting, and starting a fire in all but a torrential downpour), but after had to choose a small subset of those abilities (with slots that were competed for with etiquette, weapon-smithing, and herbalism). I'm not even sure I like the addition of the thief class (even though I only experienced what it was like before they were introduced retroactively), as it either took away from what all characters once were able to do, or made two disparate systems to accomplish the same thing. Once 3e-5e made skills an integrated part of the game, I'm fine with it.

More purely skill based systems (like GURPS, etc.), usually the issue becomes how to split up skills, or whether each one should cost as much as the others. I think GURPS 3e had both cryptography and cryptanalysis, which seriously what am I supposed to do with this? GURPS at least had expensive and cheap skills. Other systems often adding the crafting skill is just a skill tax for the person who wants to add flavor to their character (unless, again, if crafting lets you turn junk piles into magic item equivalents).

Yeah, I think that perception is usually better handled as a straightforward ability score check. Characters who have some kind of racial bonus or amazing special training to increase their perceptive powers can get some small bonus.

I've designed tons of skill lists for my BRP, and FUDGE games, and for my own homebrews.  It's is tedious work.

2 consistent problems I run into:

1) Balancing skill breadth and usefulness.  Related problems are a) having enough skills to provide necessary detail but keeping the list as short as reasonably possible. b) balancing game-usefulness with "real-world" difficulty (It is easier to learn to swing a sword than to learn a new language - but the former is generally much more useful in a game than the latter).

2) Some "skills" are more dependent on natural ability than others, have different learning curves, or different maximum potential.  This may seem fiddly, but it is the problem with perception and sense motive.  These aren't things you can typically train to do.  Similarly, it is hard to interpret "dodge" as a skill in the same way as "history," "perform" or "craft."  You can perfect your ability to play a musical instrument with training and practice, but your ability to get out of harms way in an instant of action is more a function of agility and intuition (unless it's some kind of ninja game).  Similarly, some skills can be honed to finer point than others, so a rapier should have a higher max skill level than a 2 handed sword skill.

I have come up with kludges to address all of these issues on a skill by skill basis for many games, especially BRP, and they work, but I think the heart of the problem is in the distinction between attributes and skills.  If you remove that distinction, and can swallow some abstraction, many of these problems go away (often to be replaced by a new set of problems).

Quote from: RPGPundit;934118Yeah, I think that perception is usually better handled as a straightforward ability score check. Characters who have some kind of racial bonus or amazing special training to increase their perceptive powers can get some small bonus.

OTOH, I find that perception is very much a skill.  People often don't realize when they have been practicing it, but it is developed with practice and exercises like any skill.

Quote from: Madprofessor;934265I've designed tons of skill lists for my BRP, and FUDGE games, and for my own homebrews.  It's is tedious work.

2 consistent problems I run into:

1) Balancing skill breadth and usefulness.  Related problems are a) having enough skills to provide necessary detail but keeping the list as short as reasonably possible. b) balancing game-usefulness with "real-world" difficulty (It is easier to learn to swing a sword than to learn a new language - but the former is generally much more useful in a game than the latter).

2) Some "skills" are more dependent on natural ability than others, have different learning curves, or different maximum potential.  This may seem fiddly, but it is the problem with perception and sense motive.  These aren't things you can typically train to do.  Similarly, it is hard to interpret "dodge" as a skill in the same way as "history," "perform" or "craft."  You can perfect your ability to play a musical instrument with training and practice, but your ability to get out of harms way in an instant of action is more a function of agility and intuition (unless it's some kind of ninja game).  Similarly, some skills can be honed to finer point than others, so a rapier should have a higher max skill level than a 2 handed sword skill.

I have come up with kludges to address all of these issues on a skill by skill basis for many games, especially BRP, and they work, but I think the heart of the problem is in the distinction between attributes and skills.  If you remove that distinction, and can swallow some abstraction, many of these problems go away (often to be replaced by a new set of problems).

I find it amazing that you managed to write a post where I disagree with basically every single sentence, and yet you just did:D!

An easy solution to skills like Perception is to have the GM decide when to roll those on behalf of the player. That makes it more of a passive, you happen to notice, kind of thing, and not this button they can push to make sure they've combed through an area sufficiently (if you are trying to encourage getting them to engage with the surrounding environment and be more specific about their exploration).