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Skills.... those things that help outside of combat, and let you do things beyond killing stuff...

In older editions they were called "Proficiency" and fuck me if I remember how they worked, particularly in second edition...

3rd ed, introduced "Skill Points" and made it harder to take cross class skills...but now everyone could theoretically learn how to sneak, climb a rope effectively, remember a historical detail, or smith a few horseshoes...

4th did away with all that and introduced the check mark proficiency again, 5th did something similar again, only now any use of tools was a separate proficiency that didn't require expending any leveling abilities....just time to learn how to use it...


Lamentations of the Flame Princess gives everyone a 1 in 6 chance of succeeding at any skill...except for the specialist, the only class that gives skill points and can get better at them...

Sine Nomine's games give skill points per level, and don't require rolling a d20....instead 2d6 plus the skill level to hit a TN...

But what about the rest of you? How do you handle skill use in your games? What's your preference? Do you think skill points are necessary? Should only some classes be able to advance in them? What about how to roll for them? Much as I love 5th edition, I kinda hate it's skill system, as it seems to encourage failing..

I like making use of skills like perception, insight, investigation and other such things to add more depth to the game outside of killing and looting (That and I started with Whitewolf games, so a game without skill use was alien to me for a long time)..

So what about you? How do you prefer their handled in level based games?

I prefer skills to be completely absent in class based systems. They mix with classes and levels like oil & water.

A skill only based old school type game would be alright I suppose.

Class based games support strong archetypes. A class is who you are not merely a laundry list of job skills. This is also why systems which feature a plethora of ridiculously narrow character archetypes are crappy too.

Archetypes should be broad enough to accommodate a fairly wide variety of character types within them. You shouldn't need a special class to play a left handed warrior that wields a trident. That is fucking stupid. Skills ADDED on top of hyper-specialized classes are even worse. These systems are all about defining precisely what you CAN'T do. Often this is taken so literally that common everyday tasks that any person should be able to perform are suddenly "challenging" for no real purpose other than to justify stupid die rolls.

A class based system (should) assume that ANY adventuring  character with such a class is competent in doing basic things. Unique class abilities will define the differences.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844206A class based system (should) assume that ANY adventuring  character with such a class is competent in doing basic things. Unique class abilities will define the differences.

Fair enough and a viewpoint I can see the appeal of... But how do you handle certain situations, like say... The Wizard wanting to sneak up on a group of enemies? Is it something he can do like the Thief? Is he just worse at it? Or is sneaking just a general Dex check for everyone with some modifiers depending on class and armor?

Is only the bard capable of recalling old lore and history, or is it a general Intelligence check for everyone?

Not trying to discredit your preferred method here, generally inquiring how you would rule on these situations.

Quote from: Orphan81;844209Fair enough and a viewpoint I can see the appeal of... But how do you handle certain situations, like say... The Wizard wanting to sneak up on a group of enemies? Is it something he can do like the Thief? Is he just worse at it? Or is sneaking just a general Dex check for everyone with some modifiers depending on class and armor?

Is only the bard capable of recalling old lore and history, or is it a general Intelligence check for everyone?

Not trying to discredit your preferred method here, generally inquiring how you would rule on these situations.

Every adventurer should have basic competency at "adventuring" activities including sneaking around. The chances  for success will depend upon the approach taken, appropriate precautions, and the watchfulness of the enemies.

The thief is the cause of much misery. Once the thief became a character class of its own, it was used as an excuse to suddenly make every other class a bumbling fool that couldn't make a move without alerting everyone in a 100 foot radius. This HAD to be you see in order to make the thief useful. :banghead:

Instead of the ACTUAL intent, which was to give the thief abilities BEYOND what every character could normally do, it was interpreted that now that there was a class to handle this stuff all other character classes acquired incompetency at a whole slew of activities. This was the beginning of the dreaded path of what is on the character sheet is the extent of what your character can possibly do that has dominated the fucking game ever since.

If you examine the thief table in B/X for instance you will see the abysmal chances the thief has to perform his functions at first level, that is, IF you interpret those listed chances as the ONLY chances to anything of that sort.
The language was very bad in spelling out that hide in shadows DIDN'T universally mean any attempt to be stealthy or hide, so many people took it as such. For some reason common sense seems to have been forgotten in these matters.

If my thief (clad in dark clothing with soft boots) wants to tiptoe down a hallway and hide behind some barrels to spy on some hobgoblins in a guard room why in the nine hells would I need to make a fucking roll to hide in SHADOWS!  Think about it. I have actual objects to hide behind, why would I need to rely on shadows? In this scenario I could be in a brightly lit room and still hide.
The other thing is that my fighter buddy, if not equipped with loud bulky gear, could reasonably be assumed to come and hide with me in such a situation.

The argument against any other class being able to do anything remotely stealthy was that the thief wouldn't be useful if they could. Anyone perusing the XP tables should have noted that the thief WAS indeed a weaker class and advanced more rapidly because of this. D&D through the editions continued to power up the thief, making it a more skilled fighter than the fighter. So it was ok to make everyone else in the world incompetent at  anything stealthy but it was fine to make the thief into a top tier warrior?


As far as lore and history, generally every class will have knowledge pertaining to their area of expertise. A fighter might know quite a bit about military history & such, a cleric about religion & philosophy, and a wizard about a whole bunch of stuff because " being smart and knowing shit" is part of the wizard's function.

When using classes instead of skills, remember that they serve as a broad archetype which encompasses more than the spelled-out class abilities.

I don't like skills in D&D, I prefer broad competency, plus your class gives special insight in relevant areas, as does your background. For checks I like attribute checks. My Mentzer classic game uses d20 roll-under, my 5e game I give Proficiency bonus to the d20 check whenever possible. Pathfinder and 4e I use RAW.

I consider a game bland without a skills system, and in need of it being transplanted it. They're a really simple way to put some differentiation on otherwise same-y characters.

I like the ACKS approach, with Proficiencies (which despite the name are nothing like AD&D2e's Non-weapon Proficiencies). They're each broad categories of skills either imparting knowledge, giving you the ability to earn a living at a trade/profession, or allowing skill rolls in particular circumstances.

For example:

QuoteCraft (G): The character has studied under a guild craftsman,
such as an armorer, bowyer, jeweler, leatherworker, smith,
shipwright, or weaponsmith. The character is considered an
apprentice in his trade. He can manufacture 10gp per month
of goods, and can identify masterwork items, rare materials,
and famous artisans with a proficiency throw of 11+. The
character must choose the craft at the time he chooses the
proficiency. He can spend more proficiency selections to have
several types of craft proficiencies. If a character selects the same
craft twice, he is considered a journeyman in his trade. He can
manufacture 20gp per month of goods, and supervise up to 3
apprentices, increasing their productivity by 50%. If he selects
the same craft three times, he is considered a master craftsman.
He can manufacture 40gp per month, and supervise up to 2
journeymen and 4 apprentices, increasing their productivity by
50%. He could work as a specialist in this craft (as described
in the Hiring Specialists section).

In my game, I folded Thief skills into Proficiencies, allowing me to kill the Thief class altogether.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844229The thief is the cause of much misery. Once the thief became a character class of its own, it was used as an excuse to suddenly make every other class a bumbling fool that couldn't make a move without alerting everyone in a 100 foot radius. This HAD to be you see in order to make the thief useful. :banghead:

Instead of the ACTUAL intent, which was to give the thief abilities BEYOND what every character could normally do, it was interpreted that now that there was a class to handle this stuff all other character classes acquired incompetency at a whole slew of activities. This was the beginning of the dreaded path of what is on the character sheet is the extent of what your character can possibly do that has dominated the fucking game ever since.

This.  Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack nestled between Ishtar's perfect tits, this.

This this this this this.

Alas, alack, weladay, and wooja wooja woo, I must lay the blame for this squarely at Gary's feet.  The introduction of the Thief in GREYHAWK vis-a-vis special abilities is possibly his least clear bit of writing.  Combine this with reorienting the game towards adolescent boys a few years later and you're doomed.

Yeah, I prefer ACKS' method of handling this; Proficiencies are a mix of unusual abilities (Sniping: backstab at very close missile range), supernatural abilities (Lay on Hands: healing touch once per day), skills possessed only by those with training (Kiero's Craft example, above), or unusual facility with existing abilities (Black Lore of Zahar: control undead as half-level cleric, necromantic spells and research are performed at plus two caster-level). They are all mechanically light enough and sparsely available, so there's little problem with "build" syndrome. There are also no Proficiency chains (i.e. you must have Proficiency A to take Proficiency B); each one stands alone, although some (e.g. Craft) can be taken more than once (i.e. Craft 1 = Apprentice, Craft 2 = Journeyman, Craft 3 = Master).

The other nice thing about ACKS' Proficiencies is that they don't (barring a few edge cases) represent things that any character should be able to attempt, but only someone with the Proficiency can do. For example, every PC (or classed NPC) has Adventuring Proficiency, which covers the mundane tasks an adventurer would be reasonably be expected to know (how to make camp, start a fire, tie a rope, ride from "A" to "B" on horseback, care for their gear, etc.). There might appear to be overlap with Riding Proficiency, but this explicitly covers someone who can live and fight in the saddle.

On the other hand, things like persuasion, searching, being sneaky, etc. are things anyone can attempt, and ACKS makes good use of old-school mechanics to handle these things (e.g. general Hear Noise chances and Surprise rolls for sneaking) without resorting to Proficiencies as Skills for adjudication. Of course, this inevitably brings up Thief skills, which a lot of people have trouble with...

In ACKS, Thief skills are handled in the same manner as Proficiencies (in fact, some of them can be gained by any character as a Proficiency selection), but their definitions are explicitly not ordinary. Move Silently isn't about moving quietly, it's about moving without making any sound, and would stack with the odds of sneaking from above (i.e. Hear Noise and Surprise). On a successful attempt, no sound is made (and hence, Hear Noise can't succeed - there's nothing to hear!). A Thief who fails a Move Silently attempt isn't some clumsy oaf that just knocked over the silverware, (s)he is merely being only as quiet as the next sneaky adventurer. Similarly, Hide in Shadows isn't about hiding behind a wall, it's about hiding in plain sight while in a slightly shadowed corner. In short, something no ordinary person can do. Ordinary hiding is handled by Evasion and Surprise, and once again, the Thief's ability stacks.

All in all, the Proficiency system in ACKS is tight, and works extremely well in actual play. It provides a tiny amount of mechanical differentiation that provides enormous flavour in-game. If you're looking for a skill system for an OSR game, it's worth a look as a potential bolt-on. The reverse also holds, and you could easily drop Proficiencies altogether while playing ACKS.

I like skills. There are just a few of them that kind of trip me up, but otherwise I think it is useful to have skills in the game. So long as people are not using them as buttons (which can happen), I'm fine with them.

Levels indicate general competency.  If you're a 4th level fighter you're a Hero.  If a Hero can do it you can do it.  You might fail at swinging on the chandelier across the room or leaping off your horse onto the bad guy's horse, but you can certainly try and expect to do as well as a Hero.  (Rolling for failure is mostly to give me a chance for a comedic complication.)

If you're a 4th level magic user you can do anything magic-userish.  You can probably recognize general stuff like "this is an early Paleoflatus Dynasty grimiore" without reading it, even if you can't swing from a chandelier like your pal.

In special cases like a thief or a monk, I'm willing to add special abilities.  This is in keeping with wargame design where troops are largely defined simply and special abilities are tacked on.

But the introduction of skills in general to D&D was a huge-ass mistake.

In a very off-screen manner.  I asked Gary once about skill systems, did he look back when in late AD&D at other systems that had skills and think "I wish I'd put skills in AD&D" and his response was no, that he felt in a level/class game that your character before they became an adventurer should be basically competent at foraging, swimming, climbing a rope (not the same as a thief's Climb Walls skill - that's for sheer, unassisted climbing up nearly impossible smooth surfaces, etc.), riding a horse and so on.  Additionally, the "secondary professions" could blossom out into opportunities for players (for example, we have in the Fri. night game a player of a dwarf who happens to also be a lapidary, so pricing gems is easy enough for the party).

Also, the idea of "background skills" and "crafting" and such is an utter ho-hum to me.  So I'm a harness maker.  Yippee.  By the time I've gotten enough gold to be 2nd level in D&D, buying mundane shit is simply no longer an issue.

Empire of the Petal Throne had this entire section on mundane skills PCs had.  By second or third level they were never referred to again in fifteen years of gaming.  They're a waste of ink.

And I don't WANT to play in a game where I have to grub for coppers by repairing bridles between adventures.

If I'm playig Star Wars I want to play Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, not Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844273Also, the idea of "background skills" and "crafting" and such is an utter ho-hum to me.  So I'm a harness maker.  Yippee.  By the time I've gotten enough gold to be 2nd level in D&D, buying mundane shit is simply no longer an issue.

Empire of the Petal Throne had this entire section on mundane skills PCs had.  By second or third level they were never referred to again in fifteen years of gaming.  They're a waste of ink.

And I don't WANT to play in a game where I have to grub for coppers by repairing bridles between adventures.

If I'm playig Star Wars I want to play Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia, not Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru.

You made your point, several times.

I disagree, characters are bland in the extreme in un-skill-augmented B/X, you can easily summarise them in a single line of stats.

Skills give you an actual, concrete, mechanical means to distinguish Henchman #1 who's a Normal Man from identically-equipped Henchman #2 who's also a Normal Man.

Your last point about who you want to play has pretty much nothing whatsoever to do with the present of skills in a game. So par for the course, I guess.

I can handle noncombat stuff without a skill system (and without any infelicitous siloing of basic adventuring abilities), so the only appeal would be to help differentiate characters. OSR PCs definitely tend to feel same-y. Gameplay that harshly punishes incompetent killers and looters will do that. But I think 5e's backgrounds are probably a better way to differentiate PCs than skills. When I think of what makes people interesting as individuals, I'm thinking first of their goals, bonds and flaws, rather than which one is good at haggling and which one knows a lot about boats, etc.

If I were to adapt 5e's backgrounds to an OSR game I would try to collapse them into race and class. For me the warm fuzzies of knowing that any race and background can become any class isn't worth the trouble of having to steer players away from the goofy combinations.

Quote from: Libramarian;844290I can handle noncombat stuff without a skill system (and without any infelicitous siloing of basic adventuring abilities), so the only appeal would be to help differentiate characters. OSR PCs definitely tend to feel same-y. Gameplay that harshly punishes incompetent killers and looters will do that. But I think 5e's backgrounds are probably a better way to differentiate PCs than skills.

The way to differentiate PCs is roleplaying.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844294The way to differentiate PCs is roleplaying.

It's certainly one of the ways to do so.

Quote from: Orphan81;844202But what about the rest of you? How do you handle skill use in your games? What's your preference?

Mongoose Traveller.

Quote from: Orphan81;844202Do you think skill points are necessary?

Yes.

Quote from: Orphan81;844202Should only some classes be able to advance in them?

Screw classes.

Quote from: Orphan81;844202What about how to roll for them? Much as I love 5th edition, I kinda hate it's skill system, as it seems to encourage failing..

Good GMs just know how to handle skill checks in their games.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844294The way to differentiate PCs is roleplaying.

Wrong, that's merely one of the available ways. Something enhanced by actually having some meaningful, concrete elements...like skills to hang it off.

Personally, I like them better as "backgrounds", or "careers", which you can be assumed to be competent at:). Add your "Pirate Prince of the Black Coast" Background to Dexterity for swinging from the mast, add it to Intelligence for navigation, or add it to Charisma to intimidate people that might have heard of you, or add it to Wisdom to spot when people are trying to encircle you while pretending nothing's going on!

This is from Scarlet Heroes, BTW, the only thing I've added to it is that I allow people to change it when they level up, or even immediately, to reflect the fact that their "Noble Dafu" is now a "Noble Dafu With A Death Sentence" instead;)!

It really depends on the system. I do like how clean the LotFP skill system is. I think an OSR type game can benefit from skills so long as its clean and doesn't require a lot of book thumbing to use (like it did with AD&D 3rd Edition & Pathfinder). Assessing difficulty seems to be the messiest part to me.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;844301Mongoose Traveller.

Yes.

Screw classes.

Good GMs just know how to handle skill checks in their games.

Well, if Mongoose Traveller counts as OSR, than yes. It's one of my favourite systems as well:).
And it not having classes is a plus;).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844294The way to differentiate PCs is roleplaying.

The challenge is to encourage *good* roleplaying :) rather than just goofy, uncoordinated thespianism. I think a little structure during character creation goes a long way to help with that.

Not that I as GM hate and discourage goofy thespianism. I find my players get tired of it around session 3 and stop doing it on their own.

Quote from: Shawn Driscoll;844301Screw classes.

Screw classless games.

Given my druthers I'd simply eschew classes and levels altogether; failing that I agree with Exploderwizard. Adventurers should generally be broadly competent with individual areas of focus in which they're a little better than others. To my mind there shouldn't be a dramatic difference in capability between, say, a 4th level fighter and a guard captain in a frontier town who's used to fighting off bandit raids, but the former might have studied and learned how to make effective pit traps while exploring a tomb at some point. Which could be where skills come in.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844206I prefer skills to be completely absent in class based systems. They mix with classes and levels like oil & water.

That generally my take on it these days.

Quote from: AsenRG;844304Personally, I like them better as "backgrounds", or "careers", which you can be assumed to be competent at.

Though I like that approach as well.

I like skill-based games without classes/levels, BRP is my general go-to favorite, but D&D-ish OSR games appeal to me for their abstract simplicity... and skill rules/lists get in the way of that.

I like M20's way of handling them, which is basically narrowing them down to 4-5 very broad categories, with some classes being 10-15% better in their key areas. Everybody gets better as they level, and characters with high stats in certain area can apply their natural gifts to the checks. Simple, broad, effective.

Quote from: Orphan81;844202Lamentations of the Flame Princess gives everyone a 1 in 6 chance of succeeding at any skill...except for the specialist, the only class that gives skill points and can get better at them...

This is good because it makes clear that ANYONE can try any skill, like many have pointed out.

Quote from: Orphan81;844202Sine Nomine's games give skill points per level, and don't require rolling a d20....instead 2d6 plus the skill level to hit a TN...

This actually works BETTER than rolling a d20 in d20 games such as D&D, because combat is make of multiple rolls and skills usually with a single roll.

Quote from: Orphan81;844202Do you think skill points are necessary?

Not really, but I like them to customize chrachters. Id prefer a game with two or three flexible classes than one with dozens of strict classes.

But you can use abilities intead of skills, which also works well enough (as long as abilities evolve with levels).

Quote from: Orphan81;844202What about how to roll for them?

Like I said above, just dont use a d20. Take 10, use 1d6, 2d6 or 3d6, but not a d20, or results will be all over the place, specially when comparing different charachters. I wrote about this here (http://methodsetmadness.blogspot.com.br/2015/02/dungeons-dice-part-iii-comparing-sizes.html).

My favorite (currently) is 3d6, although in very tempted to use 2d6 for everything - morale, reactions, skills, etc.

Quote from: Orphan81;844202Much as I love 5th edition, I kinda hate it's skill system, as it seems to encourage failing.

Same for me! Try using 3d6, and maybe lower the DCs a little (or use 4d6 intead!).

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844270Levels indicate general competency.  If you're a 4th level fighter you're a Hero.  If a Hero can do it you can do it.  You might fail at swinging on the chandelier across the room or leaping off your horse onto the bad guy's horse, but you can certainly try and expect to do as well as a Hero.  (Rolling for failure is mostly to give me a chance for a comedic complication.)

Would you mind explaining how this system works? Say, if I was playing at your table, what should I roll when I tried swinging on the chandelier?

And how different would be this roll for a 1st, 4th and 10th level charachter?

I agree with the reasoning, Im just not sure how would this work.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;844343Would you mind explaining how this system works? Say, if I was playing at your table, what should I roll when I tried swinging on the chandelier?

And how different would be this roll for a 1st, 4th and 10th level charachter?

I agree with the reasoning, Im just not sure how would this work.

I've never played with Gronan, much to my chagrin, so this is pure speculation. Still, if I was running a game like this, I'd make it by changing the stakes of winning and failure.
A 1st level Veteran trying to jump on the enemy's horse during a chase jumps successfully behind him if he makes it. He just falls off if he fails the Dex check or whatever I'm using.
A 4th level Hero trying to jump on the same horse jumps and throws the guy out of the saddle if he makes the roll. If he fails the roll, he twists in the air and ends up in the saddle, but with his back to the enemy's back, so he has to improvise something now!

So with all that in mind, the best iteration of d&d is?

Either way, I heard similar about the Ranger. Or, a ranger is nothing but a 'fighter' who prefers to spend most of his time in the wilds.

Quote from: Kiero;844285I disagree, characters are bland in the extreme in un-skill-augmented B/X, you can easily summarise them in a single line of stats.

Skills give you an actual, concrete, mechanical means to distinguish Henchman #1 who's a Normal Man from identically-equipped Henchman #2 who's also a Normal Man.

I don't remember one instance in 30 years of GMing where a skill list was the defining factor of distinguishing characters of the same class (in games that had classes and individually learnable skills, such as Midgard or AD&D2).
It was always the character history/biography, e.g.

• that Thorsvedt the magician was the last of his order/cabal,
• or that Crenokar the elf was a prince in exile,
• or that Cantlion only became a cleric because his older brother had run away and someone had to follow their bishop father's footsteps -

and never a difference of +1 in climbing, or the existence of the tracking skill.

Quite the contrary, I found that especially first-time players (for 6 years I had an open table at a game store, with at least 1 newbie every session) are easily confused or intimidated by a detailed skill list. They feel that all those things must mean something and that they must use them (or else those fiddly skills wouldn't take that much space on the character sheet, would they?).

This is especially weird when they try to "activate" skills in situations when they are not needed (or helpful) at all - the idea of seemingly important rules that only see use every three sessions or so (like a specialist skill such as 'contortionist' or 'sailing' or 'forgery') is alien to them. So they try to poke at rules to see what they do in the game.

"Sorry, but 'sailing' won't help you finding the hidden portal, or crossing the chasm, and 'mapping' is not about finding a map to find a route around the chasm..."

I'm not talking about a detailed skill list. I'm talking about ACKS' Proficiencies. Which aren't like 3.x's ridiculous shopping list.

And the point is that the skills make that background or history meaningful. Not just something we made up on the spot and maybe forgot later.

Quote from: Kiero;844285I disagree, characters are bland in the extreme in un-skill-augmented B/X, you can easily summarise them in a single line of stats.

Um. Nope. You may be able to summarize their mechanical representation in a single line of stats, which is a good thing, because bloated statblocks are a crashing bore.

Here is the thing- a character is only bland if there is nothing more to him/her than the statblock, whatever it may contain. That is because role playing games are social affairs and the spark that makes things come alive and not be bland must come from people.

Quote from: Kiero;844285Skills give you an actual, concrete, mechanical means to distinguish Henchman #1 who's a Normal Man from identically-equipped Henchman #2 who's also a Normal Man.

Henchman #1 is a foulmouthed jerk with bad breath that drinks all his earnings away at the tavern after every adventure. Henchman #2 is a polite young man who always says please and thank you. He also collects rare coins.

I think these descriptions bring these guys to life a lot better than adding, Henchman #1 has a +2 to ride skill and Henchman # 2 has +2 to craft (smithing)

Quote from: Kiero;844302Wrong, that's merely one of the available ways. Something enhanced by actually having some meaningful, concrete elements...like skills to hang it off.

Unless you can embrace the fact that something interesting but not mechanical in nature can have an important concrete effect on the game then you have failed role playing 101 because PEOPLE and their contributions to game play matter little to you.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844384PEOPLE and their contributions to game play matter little to you.

...you DO know who you're talking to, right?

Quote from: Eric Diaz;844343Would you mind explaining how this system works? Say, if I was playing at your table, what should I roll when I tried swinging on the chandelier?

And how different would be this roll for a 1st, 4th and 10th level charachter?

I agree with the reasoning, Im just not sure how would this work.

Well, I play by "Free Kriegspiel," so "it depends."

My default mechanic is roll 2d6, high is good.  What happens next is a subjective judgement on my part based on your level, any exceptionally high stats, circumstances, and what you're trying to do.  I'll also, if asked, say things like "You think you've got a pretty good chance" or "you think this will be really tough" or whatever.

Higher level characters tend to "succeed bigger" when they succeed, and suffer less from bad consequences.  Taking 1d6 of damage might kill a 1st level character, where a 9th level character will just laugh.

Other than that I'd need more specifics.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844392...you DO know who you're talking to, right?

Yeah, I was thinking that, too. The irony is, you can have a little of both those things, skills and backstory. Unfortunately, we get into chicken-egg arguments about what drives or reflects what.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844394Well, I play by "Free Kriegspiel," so "it depends."

My default mechanic is roll 2d6, high is good.  What happens next is a subjective judgement on my part based on your level, any exceptionally high stats, circumstances, and what you're trying to do.  I'll also, if asked, say things like "You think you've got a pretty good chance" or "you think this will be really tough" or whatever.

Higher level characters tend to "succeed bigger" when they succeed, and suffer less from bad consequences.  Taking 1d6 of damage might kill a 1st level character, where a 9th level character will just laugh.

Other than that I'd need more specifics.

Thanks. 2d6 roll high is probably one of my favorite methods as well.

So you mean its all subjective? You dont add DEX mod or level to the roll?

Let me try something more specific: two charachters are in a horse race for some reason (or some other kind of race or conflict, but not a fight). One is a 3rd level Fighter with STR 15 and DEX 16, and the other a 10th level Fighter with STR 12 and DEX 8. Who wins, and how?

Quote from: Eric Diaz;844406Thanks. 2d6 roll high is probably one of my favorite methods as well.

So you mean its all subjective? You dont add DEX mod or level to the roll?

Let me try something more specific: two charachters are in a horse race for some reason (or some other kind of race or conflict, but not a fight). One is a 3rd level Fighter with STR 15 and DEX 16, and the other a 10th level Fighter with STR 12 and DEX 8. Who wins, and how?

Yes, it's all subjective.  OD&D doesn't HAVE a dex mod, and I use level to derive the results, not alter the roll.

Well, a horse race I'd roll to see who has the best horse.  The higher level fighter might be a bit better rider, but it's the horses competing.

It makes me wonder, if perhaps using something along the lines of "Careers" such as in Barbarians of Lemuria would be a better "Skill" system for Level games..

Assume everyone has at least the "Adventuring" Career which allows for all of the things adventurers are expected to do...

But then one can take a background from D&D 5th and apply it to give all the "Skills" one would get with that background.... Perhaps as you level up every few levels you can add a "new" background to represent learning more things?

Quote from: Orphan81;844415It makes me wonder, if perhaps using something along the lines of "Careers" such as in Barbarians of Lemuria would be a better "Skill" system for Level games..

Assume everyone has at least the "Adventuring" Career which allows for all of the things adventurers are expected to do...

But then one can take a background from D&D 5th and apply it to give all the "Skills" one would get with that background.... Perhaps as you level up every few levels you can add a "new" background to represent learning more things?

It's already implemented not only in BoL, but in DCC with the professions, and in Scarlet Heroes with the much more extensive Backgrounds system, which is like a freeform BoL:).
There's a reason SH is one of my top 5 favourite OSR implementation;).

Quote from: Simlasa;844335Though I like that approach as well.

I like skill-based games without classes/levels, BRP is my general go-to favorite, but D&D-ish OSR games appeal to me for their abstract simplicity... and skill rules/lists get in the way of that.

Yeah, I'm coming from the same place. And maybe not surprisingly, that's my take on it as well. It's also why I repeat that BoL is one of my favourite OSR variants:D!
The mechanics are actually unimportant in that case.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844265This.  Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack nestled between Ishtar's perfect tits, this.

This this this this this.

Yeah, Exploderwizard said it really well.

Quote from: cranebump;844337I like M20's way of handling them, which is basically narrowing them down to 4-5 very broad categories, with some classes being 10-15% better in their key areas. Everybody gets better as they level, and characters with high stats in certain area can apply their natural gifts to the checks. Simple, broad, effective.

It's solid.  Though I did find d20 + modifier to be really variable in results compared to something that is like 2d6 or 3d6 or whatever.  In the end I reduced the M20 skills to be more like adjudication reminders and not have numbers attached to them at all.  

I'm actually quite okay with the idea that anything not specifically covered by the rules can have a narrower range of possible competency and it can be handled by a simple universal mechanic like Gronan's 2d6 roll high approach.

That said, I am a fan of BRP/RQ2/Call of Cthulhu, but that's for a totally different approach to gaming that I don't think blends well with OSR D&D.

I like reeeeeally narrow skills. When you have broad skills you have characters trying to beat obstacles into submission with their skill checks rather than think about how to interact with the environment to get what they want.

For the same kind of reason why I love giving players spells like Command and Control Normal Fires rather than Cure Light Wounds and Sleep and why a Bag of Holding is the best magic item. Very powerful but you have to THINK how to use it.

Same deal with skills. "Stealth" is a horrible skill since you solve problems with it by saying "I roll stealth." A better skill is "hamster mastery" is a good skill since you have to put some thought about what you`re going to order your crate of hamsters to do.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844384Um. Nope. You may be able to summarize their mechanical representation in a single line of stats, which is a good thing, because bloated statblocks are a crashing bore.

Where did I ever say I wanted bloated stat-blocks? There's a huge excluded middle between a character on a single line, mechanically, and a 3.x statblock.

Here's an entire, complete stat-block for a henchman in my ACKS game:

QuoteDeon of Miletos - Bastard son of a Milesian aristocrat by one of his house slaves, Deon was raised with his half-brothers and freed when they went off to fight in the many wars raging across Asia Minor. He survived the campaiging, they did not, and unable to face going home to Miletus chose to sell his services instead. Philipos dragged him out the bottom of a bowl of wine and gave him a reason to live. He stands on Philipos' left in the battle line.

Fighter 2. Move 90', AC 7/9, HD 2+2, hp 14, Att 7+/9+, Saves: Fort 12+ Ref 14+ Will 14+, Init +1, Mor +4
Dmg: 1d6+4 (spear), 1d6+3 (sword), 1d4+3 (dagger), 1d6+4 (javelin)
Str+2, Wis+1, Con+1.
Proficiencies: Seasoned Campaigner, Endurance, Manual of Arms, Pankration, Riding, Weapon Focus (spear).
Languages: Ionic Greek, Aramaic
Equipment: Scale thorax (good), greaves and helmet, large shield, spear, short sword, dagger, javelins (2). Enc 8/8 stone.

About a third of that is biography.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844384Here is the thing- a character is only bland if there is nothing more to him/her than the statblock, whatever it may contain. That is because role playing games are social affairs and the spark that makes things come alive and not be bland must come from people.

None of which is contrary to what I've already said, which is that having actual skills enhances all of those things. It's not an either/or.

It brings them alive and makes them real.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844384Henchman #1 is a foulmouthed jerk with bad breath that drinks all his earnings away at the tavern after every adventure. Henchman #2 is a polite young man who always says please and thank you. He also collects rare coins.

I think these descriptions bring these guys to life a lot better than adding, Henchman #1 has a +2 to ride skill and Henchman # 2 has +2 to craft (smithing)

Does anyone read anything I've actually posted before leaping in with stupid assertions? How about I put it up in big, bold letters:

When I say "skills" I do not mean D&D 3.x-style skill points and +2 to this and that.

I'm talking about ACKS-style Proficiencies, which are nothing like. There are fewer of them, they're much broader, they don't involve +2 to this or that.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844384Unless you can embrace the fact that something interesting but not mechanical in nature can have an important concrete effect on the game then you have failed role playing 101 because PEOPLE and their contributions to game play matter little to you.

I can embrace it just fine. However, it's vastly improved by actually having something to hang it on.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844392...you DO know who you're talking to, right?

Yeah, someone honest enough not to change their username to conceal a long-standing identity. Old Geezer.

Quote from: Daztur;844454I like reeeeeally narrow skills. When you have broad skills you have characters trying to beat obstacles into submission with their skill checks rather than think about how to interact with the environment to get what they want.

I would say that is more of a problem of the player invoking game mechanics instead of just describing what the character is doing. No matter what system of abilities are used, it is the DM who decides if a check is needed in the first place , and then what abilities come into play or are rolled.

I really can't stand super narrow skills because you get skill lists like:

Observation
Perception
Notice
Awareness
Spidey Sense
Notice Obvious
Perceive Specific
Listen
Listen Carefully
Hear
Hear Unusual


These skills are ranked on a 1-10 scale. You have 30 points to distribute between them.  This is fucking Rolemaster by the way or a semi-accurate parody. You can either suck in general or hope the GM calls for the ONE type of skill where you have points. Good luck.

Quote from: Daztur;844454Same deal with skills. "Stealth" is a horrible skill since you solve problems with it by saying "I roll stealth." A better skill is "hamster mastery" is a good skill since you have to put some thought about what you`re going to order your crate of hamsters to do.

"Stealth" is only a bad skill if you allow players to invoke them in the abstract, FATE Aspect manner. When I am DM I never allow "I roll perception!" - players will always have to describe their actions in natural language. And it's me asking for a stealth check - or, adjudicating the situation, a DEX check, or an NPCs awareness check, or no check at all.

As a DM narrow skill lists drive me nuts, as I have to remember all the different uses for closely similar skills, and statting (and deciphering) NPCs becomes a chore.

Quote from: Orphan81;844415It makes me wonder, if perhaps using something along the lines of "Careers" such as in Barbarians of Lemuria would be a better "Skill" system for Level games.

Yup, seems the best approach to me. If you really want to differentiate characters further, have them make career rolls using whatever attribute is relevant to the task at hand. This makes your high Int low Cha rat catcher different from a high Cha low Int one.

Quote from: Kiero;844457About a third of that is biography.

Leaving aside that the skills list look a lot like (mostly combat relevant) feats, biography is less useful to me when GMing than personality. The most useful version I've seen of this was in some 3rd party (I think) cyberpunk adventures where NPCs had an inmode (what they were like underneath their public mask) and an outmode (their public mask). So you could have outmode: extraverted, inmode: fearful (and random tables for both). Personally I'd phrase them more like aspects, but either way I can get more roleplaying milage out of two words and the conflict between them than a three page backstory.

Quote from: apparition13;844473Leaving aside that the skills list look a lot like (mostly combat relevant) feats, biography is less useful to me when GMing than personality. The most useful version I've seen of this was in some 3rd party (I think) cyberpunk adventures where NPCs had an inmode (what they were like underneath their public mask) and an outmode (their public mask). So you could have outmode: extraverted, inmode: fearful (and random tables for both). Personally I'd phrase them more like aspects, but either way I can get more roleplaying milage out of two words and the conflict between them than a three page backstory.

Some of us can derive personality just fine from seeing the biography so far. I suspect Kiero likes that approach as well.
For the guy he described, the relevant phrases would be, I suspect, "guilt of the survivor" and "finding a new reason to live".

Quote from: apparition13;844473Leaving aside that the skills list look a lot like (mostly combat relevant) feats, biography is less useful to me when GMing than personality. The most useful version I've seen of this was in some 3rd party (I think) cyberpunk adventures where NPCs had an inmode (what they were like underneath their public mask) and an outmode (their public mask). So you could have outmode: extraverted, inmode: fearful (and random tables for both). Personally I'd phrase them more like aspects, but either way I can get more roleplaying milage out of two words and the conflict between them than a three page backstory.

That's because that character in particular was a Fighter, though Manual of Arms, for example means he's an experienced trainer of fighting men.

Here's another example, another henchman:

QuoteNikeratos of Kyrene - a half-Libyan philosopher with interests in a wide range of topics, he was a contemporary of Hegesias and Anniceris in the Cyrenaic School, and recently studied under Epicurius in Athens. He claims to hold no allegiance to any particular school of thought, finding both merits and flaws in all. He's one of the few men Septimus has ever met who is able to match wits with him.

Expert 2. Move 120’, AC -1, HD 2, hp 6, Att 11+, Saves: Fort 13+ Ref 14+ Will 13+, Init +0, Mor +4
Dmg: 1d3-1 (fist)
Str-1, Int+3, Wis+1, Dex-1.
Proficiencies: Healing II, Knowledge (architecture), Knowledge (astrology), Knowledge (mathematics) II, Knowledge (natural philosophy) II, Knowledge* (philosophy) II, Navigation, Theology (Priest of Apollo).
Languages: Aegyptian, Aramaic, Libyan, Koine Greek, Nubian.
Equipment: Clothing, scrolls, various implements and tools. Enc 1/4 stone.

That one is a total non-combatant (though he is quite literally one of the smartest men alive). Septimus is the Latin PC who has the most interesting retinue, I'd say. He has a couple of philosophers, a couple of assassins and a trio of Cilician pirates. His player immediately saw the value of henchmen and went for maximum Charisma and took a full complement.

Quote from: AsenRG;844539Some of us can derive personality just fine from seeing the biography so far. I suspect Kiero likes that approach as well.
For the guy he described, the relevant phrases would be, I suspect, "guilt of the survivor" and "finding a new reason to live".

Exactly. Give me a short bio and some broad skills, and I've got a working character I can play for ages.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844459I would say that is more of a problem of the player invoking game mechanics instead of just describing what the character is doing. No matter what system of abilities are used, it is the DM who decides if a check is needed in the first place , and then what abilities come into play or are rolled.

I really can't stand super narrow skills because you get skill lists like:

Observation
Perception
Notice
Awareness
Spidey Sense
Notice Obvious
Perceive Specific
Listen
Listen Carefully
Hear
Hear Unusual


These skills are ranked on a 1-10 scale. You have 30 points to distribute between them.  This is fucking Rolemaster by the way or a semi-accurate parody. You can either suck in general or hope the GM calls for the ONE type of skill where you have points. Good luck.

It's fine for a player to invoke a game mechanic if it represents a concrete thing their PC is doing though. Players invoke spells and magic items directly.

It feels like an "I win" button if the skill is too abstract, like "I use Diplomacy on the Margrave".

But if the skill represents a concrete task, like Open Locks, then it's fine for the player to say they're using it (Unless you require your player to describe how they manipulate their thieves' tools before you call for the check. But no one does that. There is a peculiar degree of unspoken agreement between different groups on the appropriate level of abstraction for task resolution).

What's important is that the skill represents a concrete task, not how narrow it is as such. "Obsequious Inveiglement" is a narrower concept than "Diplomacy" but not really any closer to being an appropriate thing for a player to invoke. In fact that would make me more curious about what exactly the PC is doing than Diplomacy.

So to make "Perception" better, instead of dividing it into rods and cones-based vision or whatever you want something like "Read Lips". Skills that give the players more options in typical game situations. In play this functions more like a Ring of X-Ray Vision than a traditional descriptive skill. I guess some people would rather call this a "talent" than a skill.

I think there are a few good skills here for OSR D&D, but it's a pretty small design space. I recall Arcanum by Steven Michael Sechi had some cool skills like this but I didn't get around to adapting them. I run a pretty high magic game with the players often controlling multiple characters so I don't need any more fiddly bits. I'd look into it for a low magic game.

Since we're talking D&D, I'll say I tend to use the classes -- with their included skills! -- that are pretty well established in OD&D/AD&D. Others may be added as well.

A class gives some special advantages. Besides being interesting in its own right, the diversity of specialties puts a premium on teamwork, which tends to be a good thing for such a social game.

However, there's a sensibility at work in choosing what to play up like that. Who gives a fig about proficiency at blacksmithing or accounting? That's not the stuff of high adventure. We have hirelings for such mundane tasks.

Likewise, riding a horse or sailing a ship is interesting mainly in terms of where we're going and what we do when we get there.

When something's important enough to define a class (or race or whatever 'type'), that means it's not easy for others to do it as well (if at all).

For other things, the ref analyzes the situation at hand with the MK 1 Eyeball and comes up with a result. Why make the small stuff complicated?

I don't like mixing skills and D&D.

I haven't seen a way that makes me happy. At best, I use the 2 in 6 chance +1 or -1 Ability modifier in S&W.

Quote from: Orphan81;844202So what about you? How do you prefer their handled in level based games?

I dislike defined skill systems in D&D; I don't think such systems fit well with D&D's class/level design, especially when they're awkwardly grafted on to the existing system.  (I don't mind skill systems in skill-based RPGs that were designed to be skill-based systems, though.)

The only "skill system" I ever found worthwhile in D&D is the "secondary skill" approach from the 1e AD&D DMG.  And it's not really a skill system, it's more like "randomized background for your PC."

Quote from: Orphan81;844209Fair enough and a viewpoint I can see the appeal of... But how do you handle certain situations, like say... The Wizard wanting to sneak up on a group of enemies? Is it something he can do like the Thief? Is he just worse at it? Or is sneaking just a general Dex check for everyone with some modifiers depending on class and armor?

All PCs use a surprise check when sneaking up on enemies.  Special precautions, magic, class abilities, and the circumstances at hand can all modify the chance to surprise.

A Thief has the ability to move silently, and would receive a bonus on his surprise check (perhaps even negating the need for a surprise check, depending on the circumstances).  A wizard would not enjoy the same chance as a Thief who had succeeded at moving silently, although if the wizard was using some sort of magical silence, then their chances would be the same.

QuoteIs only the bard capable of recalling old lore and history, or is it a general Intelligence check for everyone?

It depends on the piece of lore and history that is under consideration.  Do any of the PCs have a class or background that might allow them such knowledge?  How obscure is the information?  Et cetera.  I would judge the situation and assign a chance of success, if applicable, then I'd make or call for a roll.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844265This.  Sweet Crom's hairy nutsack nestled between Ishtar's perfect tits, this.

This this this this this.

Alas, alack, weladay, and wooja wooja woo, I must lay the blame for this squarely at Gary's feet.  The introduction of the Thief in GREYHAWK vis-a-vis special abilities is possibly his least clear bit of writing.  Combine this with reorienting the game towards adolescent boys a few years later and you're doomed.

How freaking unclear is hiding in shadows,  moving silently,  climbing sheer surfaces?

Spotting and disarming traps was originally stipulated as concerning such small devices as poisoned needles in the locks of treasure chests -- like picking the locks themselves, and picking pockets, presumably (if perhaps anachronistically or even fantastically for the mechanisms) an art demanding more finesse than easier and messier brute force.

Least clear bit of writing? No way, not in the same league as the "whichever is applicable" initiative enigma in the DMG. The Monk surprise chance in the PHB has a simple meaning (which I hear eluded DM Prada in writing ADDICT), but it's stated in a roundabout way. The Chainmail figure vakues and HD progressions in Men & Magic are similar in the obscurity of the pattern, and may indeed be too unclear to reduce to single best-fit interpretation.

Quote from: Kiero;844557Exactly. Give me a short bio and some broad skills, and I've got a working character I can play for ages.

Sure you can. Some other people find it easier to use explicit notes on personality, though, as demonstrated in the thread:).

If you ever publish your setting, which I hope you do, just make sure to include both guidelines and bio in the example NPCs descriptions;).

Skills are great.

AD&D's implementaiton of skills was horrible. You have 3 concurrent skills systems. theives' skills, rangers' tracking and background professions. Thieves' skills have laughably low base chances, the background system is entirely DM fiat and can lead to either dickish DMs making traps for PCs who think their background makes them competent or by bolshi players trying to wheedle their "I used to be a barrel maker so of course I can make a ship" etc.
The ranger skill is the only one well thought out and detailed which is why it looks like a typical skill from another game.

If D&D had wanted to stay true to its vague and ill defined roots with all adventurers can do adventurer stuff (so the fact that Mouse is sneakier and a better pickpocket than Lord Crush Skull is because Mouse is a 3rd level fighting man and Lord Crush Skull is 12th level oh hold on...) then the thief abilities should have been read to read - a 1st level theif can add 1/2 their level as a bonus to any ability check to Open Locks, Pick Pockets etc ... the background skills should have been a +1 bonus to stuff that suits that background and the Ranger added 1/2 their level to tracking checks...(using that Perception Stat that D&D forgot to add to the game ).

Instead you get three mismatched skill systems - don't blame early days of the hobby either Traveller, Bunnies and Burrows and Runequest were all knocking about by the time the DMG was printed.

I love skills because they let me do this .
"As you enter the room you notice the table and chairs are all over the place there has obviously been a fight in here and the place was knocked up a bit and the window is smashed."

"You would guess from the wreckage that there were two men sitting round the fire. Two more men entered through the door and launched themselves forward. They were both carrying short bladed swords as you can make out the fresh marks where the blows hit the table and the back of one of the chairs. Then the two seated men took action. It looks like one of them let leash some sort of electrical strike as there are burns here and here and the handle of the outer door has been fused by extreme heat. One of the attackers fell and the other was struck with a mighty blow with a chair which shattered upon impact throwing the man out of the far window you sumise."


I think often it's easier if you have a threshold for a skill and if the PC supasses the threshold they succeed and the quality depends on the degree of excess.

Quote from: Phillip;844641How freaking unclear is hiding in shadows,  moving silently,  climbing sheer surfaces?

Based on forty years of stupid-ass interpretations, pretty unclear, apparently.

I forgot I' m in a place where I can say " lots of gamers apparently have really shitty reading comprehension" and get away with it.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844709Based on forty years of stupid-ass interpretations, pretty unclear, apparently.

I forgot I' m in a place where I can say " lots of gamers apparently have really shitty reading comprehension" and get away with it.

Admittedly while the skill TITLES may seem straightforward, the actual descriptions of those abilities is certainly not. If anything, the text in the PHB & DMG would actively discourage such a generous interpretation of thief abilities
(at least in 1e  - I don't recall much in the way of descriptive text in ODD for the thief).

Here's how I'm doing it these days:

https://shade-isle.obsidianportal.com/wikis/skills

(It's easier to just post a link that re-write an explanation that already gets my point across.)

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;844392...you DO know who you're talking to, right?

A dork who changed his screen name! :)

I read a couple posts wondering who this Gronuts of Dorkmerya was and then then reread your sig!

When is your book coming out?

How is it progressing?

Have you planned a Kickstarter for it?

Quote from: Eric Diaz;844406Let me try something more specific: two charachters are in a horse race for some reason (or some other kind of race or conflict, but not a fight). One is a 3rd level Fighter with STR 15 and DEX 16, and the other a 10th level Fighter with STR 12 and DEX 8. Who wins, and how?

Here's what I would do in my OD&D/S&W game.
1) Does either Fighter have any background in horseriding?
2) Does either Fighter have any knowledge of the terrain?
3) Is there any notable difference in their horses?
4) Is there any notable differences in their encumbrance?

I'd build out some modifiers based on those questions. Then I would have the player character Fighter make saving throws.

If two PC fighters were racing, then the greater level of success would be the winner.

I would also not make it one roll. I'd probably make the race 3 laps or 3 areas, aka long hard run, obstacles, tight curves. Then depending on the terrain, I would consider if we would be looking at STR, DEX or WIS saving throws where the appropriate ability score would affect the situation.

Also, by making it 3 sections, pulling ahead in one section gives you bonuses for the next, etc.

Quote from: Exploderwizard;844459I would say that is more of a problem of the player invoking game mechanics instead of just describing what the character is doing. No matter what system of abilities are used, it is the DM who decides if a check is needed in the first place , and then what abilities come into play or are rolled.

I really can't stand super narrow skills because you get skill lists like:

Observation
Perception
Notice
Awareness
Spidey Sense
Notice Obvious
Perceive Specific
Listen
Listen Carefully
Hear
Hear Unusual


These skills are ranked on a 1-10 scale. You have 30 points to distribute between them.  This is fucking Rolemaster by the way or a semi-accurate parody. You can either suck in general or hope the GM calls for the ONE type of skill where you have points. Good luck.

Don't think I was explaining my position very clearly. Don't want big long lists of narrow skills. I want a short list of very narrow skills and no juggling of ranks (something a bit like ACKS for the mechanics of gaining and using profs, just different profs) with lots and lots of holes in it. I really don't like "a skill for everything and everything covered by a skill" types of system in which players start drawing blanks if they don't have a relevant skill and then try to use their skill ranks to beat obstacles into submission without putting in much thought to HOW their  character would do different things (yeah as said upthread you can deal with that by asking "how" a lot but can get tiresome, especially with players who are used to other GMs). For me good skills would be the following:
-Stuff that'd be really really boring to ask players "how are you doing that." For example: open lock. Nobody wants to ask the players "how are you opening that lock" and get a spiel about tumblers.
-Reaaaaaaally reaaaaaally specific stuff that cries out for the players to think of creative ways to get some use out of it. Stuff like, for example, wine tasting, mimicry, cat herding, gorging, princess spotting, kite flying, contortionism, etc.
-Quasi-supernatural stuff that allows players to do things that regular PCs just plain can't do because they're not the sort of things normal people can do so you don't have to deal with making it look like you're disallowing PCs without these profs from doing mundane tasks or making them incompetent at them. Stuff like "hide in shadows" is great for this if you take it exactly literally since being in plain sight in a shadow without any cover and making people not be able to see you is something regular people just can't do. Also stuff like language: crow or smell gold, or being able to walk across snow in regular shoes without sinking in like Legolas or being able have your dwarf PC be immune to poison. That sort of thing.

Other stuff like "use rope, take shit, wipe ass" really don't need profs or skills.

Quote from: Libramarian;844562It's fine for a player to invoke a game mechanic if it represents a concrete thing their PC is doing though. Players invoke spells and magic items directly.

It feels like an "I win" button if the skill is too abstract, like "I use Diplomacy on the Margrave".

But if the skill represents a concrete task, like Open Locks, then it's fine for the player to say they're using it (Unless you require your player to describe how they manipulate their thieves' tools before you call for the check. But no one does that. There is a peculiar degree of unspoken agreement between different groups on the appropriate level of abstraction for task resolution).

What's important is that the skill represents a concrete task, not how narrow it is as such. "Obsequious Inveiglement" is a narrower concept than "Diplomacy" but not really any closer to being an appropriate thing for a player to invoke. In fact that would make me more curious about what exactly the PC is doing than Diplomacy.

So to make "Perception" better, instead of dividing it into rods and cones-based vision or whatever you want something like "Read Lips". Skills that give the players more options in typical game situations. In play this functions more like a Ring of X-Ray Vision than a traditional descriptive skill. I guess some people would rather call this a "talent" than a skill.

I think there are a few good skills here for OSR D&D, but it's a pretty small design space. I recall Arcanum by Steven Michael Sechi had some cool skills like this but I didn't get around to adapting them. I run a pretty high magic game with the players often controlling multiple characters so I don't need any more fiddly bits. I'd look into it for a low magic game.

This. This. This. Exactly this. Skills should call for something CONCRETE not something fuzzy and abstract like "diplomacy."

Read lips is a great skill since everybody knows exactly what the PC is doing and how: he`ll looking at some guys` faces through a spyglass and figuring out what they`re saying. That`s a specific task and he can do it.

It`s just like spells: you don`t nees to explan HOW you`re casting sleep on the orcs, you just say you`re doing it and boom they`re asleep. Skills should be the same way.

Abstract skills that can be applied all sorts of different ways are annoying for the same reasn a lot of free form magic systems are annoying.

Quote from: Daztur;844837It`s just like spells: you don`t nees to explan HOW you`re casting sleep on the orcs, (...) Skills should be the same way.

Abstract skills that can be applied all sorts of different ways are annoying for the same reasn a lot of free form magic systems are annoying.

Thank you for this food for thought.

I am all for broad skill categories (Microlite's four skills) or skill groups (BoL's careers or Risus's traits) but I have tried free form magic systems and the jury js still out whether I like them better than defined spells.

I have something to think about a bit longer...

Quote from: Dirk Remmecke;844959Thank you for this food for thought.

I am all for broad skill categories (Microlite's four skills) or skill groups (BoL's careers or Risus's traits) but I have tried free form magic systems and the jury js still out whether I like them better than defined spells.

I have something to think about a bit longer...

Well if you're going to have abstract skills, then really limiting the number is probably the way of go. Attribute checks are also basically really broad and abstract skills.

You could also have a few really specific and concrete skills that are really narrow but by having the skill the player is so good at them they'll try to figure out ways to use them and then have the abstract stuff as a fall back.

For example:
"I've got five trained marmots who'll always follow my commands exactly as long as they're within earshot, you're the best wine taster in the world, Kate knows how to fly giant kites even in a hurricane, Jim can speak with pigeons, and Sara never ever looses her balance no matter what. For other stuff we've got middling stats. We've got 24 hours to rescue the princess. Let's start brainstorming a plan people!"

The biggest issue I have with the current edition of skill is the lack of competency when it comes to skills.  Every class usually end up with 4 to 5 skills (including special 'tools', like Thieves Tools or a Musical or Crafting set), but that's all that will ever 'grow' in terms of Proficiency bonus.

I don't know about anyone else, but if you manage to survive for a while in say a wilderness setting, even without being taught, shouldn't you get better at survival?

And then there's languages, live in a place long enough and you pick up some of it, and sometimes, enough to speak it, if roughly.  Most literary heroes tend to do it after a while.

I was thinking of adding half your level to all skills, you still add Proficiency to the ones you chose/get via class and backgrounds on top of that, but I have no idea if that's balanced or not, or if it would make a mess of things.

I prefer simple systems as opposed to what happened in 2e, where you have a whole slew of math on one character sheet.  Why make more work for yourself?

Quote from: Daztur;845008Attribute checks are also basically really broad and abstract skills. (...)

You could also have a few really specific and concrete skills that are really narrow but by having the skill the player is so good at them they'll try to figure out ways to use them and then have the abstract stuff as a fall back.

For example:
[snip]

Oh yes, that's basically the core of my heartbreaker I GMed for a short campaign in 1996. The attributes were not Str, Dex, or similar, but Combat, Wilderness, Subterfuge/Stealth, (General) Knowledge, etc. (= skill groups), and the classes had 10 class abilities to choose from (= special abilities or feats as they are commonly called today).

I never thought about that game having a "skill system" at all - for me it was a pure class-and-level game, like B/X. Skills as I understand them are what RQ, Palladium, Midgard, or RM used. Most games use skills in parallel to other kinds of abilities (sometimes called, "virtues" or "advantages"), like Ars Magica, BESM, or dK.

If you include feat-type abilities then yes, they are -by far!- my favourite kind of skill system.
A variant version of the above mentioned heartbreaker used (narrow) skills that weren't checked at all - if you were proficient in a skill it meant automatic success.

In both Arrows of Indra and the "Appendix P" system featured in Dark Albion, I treat skills in much the same way. There's no list of "these are the 17 skills you can find in this game" as such, but rather anything can be a skill, which is represented as a bonus to checks done on a D20 modified by an ability score.

Who invented the "good at" house rule/"skill system" for OSR games?
(I thought that it was in an early fanzine, like Fight On! or Knockspell, but apparently I misremembered that bit...)

l quite like C&C where you've got a target number that is based on your class proficiencies. That is to say, if you're a thief, and when you do anything that can be related to your class you're using your primary target number (anything over 12 if I remember). If it's beyond your knowledge then it moves up to an 18. Of course these are modified by your level, and attributes, etc.

Other Dust is pretty cool too as was mentioned by the OP.

I use Beyond the Wall, my favourite iteration of D&D. Beyond the Wall skills provide a bonus to ability checks in situations where the skill applies. Characters who do not have a relevant skill can still try to do things, they just don't get the bonus. I also will give information or automatic success in minor tasks to characters with appropriate skills. A character with the "Gardening" skill can tell you what vegetables are planted in a garden and when they will be ripe without needing to roll, but they would be required to roll to recognize the herbs in a witch's garden.

The thing about BTW skills that encourages roleplaying in my experience is that they are defined only by their names. "Forbidden Knowledge", "Folklore", or "Mythical Beast Lore" each could give a bonus to figuring out what sort of supernatural beastie is besetting the village based on peasants' descriptions. "Rune Carving" might help to read and translate ancient runes, or identify a particular rune carver by their individual style."Lock Picking" is obvious and available to any character, just because you are a Wizard doesn't mean you can't have learned a few shady skills on the side.

Begining characters generally have three or four skills. This helps avoid analysis paralysis brought on by scanning a page and a half of character sheet looking for the most advantageous skill.

Quote from: Orphan81;844415It makes me wonder, if perhaps using something along the lines of "Careers" such as in Barbarians of Lemuria would be a better "Skill" system for Level games..

Assume everyone has at least the "Adventuring" Career which allows for all of the things adventurers are expected to do...

I use BoL style Careers for the RPG I wrote/am-writing--class-less, level-based system. We've been playing the system for 6+ months and the careers work great. In my system, everything is tied to die sizes. Non-career skills are limited to a d4. Career-related skills use a die size based on the character's level.

It works really well. My players don't generally have to guess if careers apply and they know they can _try_ anything they want.

Quote from: DavetheLost;979010I use Beyond the Wall, my favourite iteration of D&D. Beyond the Wall skills provide a bonus to ability checks in situations where the skill applies. Characters who do not have a relevant skill can still try to do things, they just don't get the bonus. I also will give information or automatic success in minor tasks to characters with appropriate skills. A character with the "Gardening" skill can tell you what vegetables are planted in a garden and when they will be ripe without needing to roll, but they would be required to roll to recognize the herbs in a witch's garden.

The thing about BTW skills that encourages roleplaying in my experience is that they are defined only by their names. "Forbidden Knowledge", "Folklore", or "Mythical Beast Lore" each could give a bonus to figuring out what sort of supernatural beastie is besetting the village based on peasants' descriptions. "Rune Carving" might help to read and translate ancient runes, or identify a particular rune carver by their individual style."Lock Picking" is obvious and available to any character, just because you are a Wizard doesn't mean you can't have learned a few shady skills on the side.

Begining characters generally have three or four skills. This helps avoid analysis paralysis brought on by scanning a page and a half of character sheet looking for the most advantageous skill.

Defintely! Beyond the Wall (one of my favourite games) and has a neat task resoloution system (simpler than the C&C's as well).

Quote from: DavetheLost;979010Beyond the Wall skills provide a bonus to ability checks in situations where the skill applies. Characters who do not have a relevant skill can still try to do things, they just don't get the bonus. I also will give information or automatic success in minor tasks to characters with appropriate skills. A character with the "Gardening" skill can tell you what vegetables are planted in a garden and when they will be ripe without needing to roll, but they would be required to roll to recognize the herbs in a witch's garden.

The thing about BTW skills that encourages roleplaying in my experience is that they are defined only by their names. "Forbidden Knowledge", "Folklore", or "Mythical Beast Lore" each could give a bonus to figuring out what sort of supernatural beastie is besetting the village based on peasants' descriptions. "Rune Carving" might help to read and translate ancient runes, or identify a particular rune carver by their individual style."Lock Picking" is obvious and available to any character, just because you are a Wizard doesn't mean you can't have learned a few shady skills on the side.

Begining characters generally have three or four skills. This helps avoid analysis paralysis brought on by scanning a page and a half of character sheet looking for the most advantageous skill.

Pretty much describe what I do in the Majestic Wilderlands supplement. In 2008 when I writing the supplement I wanted a set of classes who were better at other things than fighting, or spells (divine or arcane). But I dislike the approach taken by the original thief, and view GURPS and Runequest style skills as overkill.

After following older edition discussions and reading the Old School Primer, I decided that the basic principle was to be any character can attempt any skill but some are better at some skill than others. The Rogue classes happened to be those that are better at skill although the original three (Cleric, Fighter, Magic-User) got some skill bonuses as well. Finally I decided to call them abilities rather than skills because the default idea of skill is exclusionary. If you don't have the skill you can't use it. Completely opposite to how I present abilities.

The resolution mechanism I adopted was a 15+ on 1d20+attribute bonus+ability bonus. Over the years since my release I started taking the approach that if the character has the time to carefully exercise the ability then I will tell the character to roll a d20 and an adverse result only occurs on a natural 1. But if you have to do RIGHT NOW! Or there are unknown consequences. Or similar stressful circumstances than I have them make a roll looking for a 15+ (sometimes 10+ if that easy, or 20+ if that difficult).

As for ability bonuses I find that d20 and 5e of +/-1 for 2 attribute point get out of control too quickly. So I count +/- 1 for every three attribute points with a 18 being +3. There are also less than 20 abilities to pick from and in the nine years I been using this only ever found the need to add two new abilities Seamanship and Shipwright because I finally had a campaign where the players bought a ship and are merchant traders.

Quote from: Daztur;844454I like reeeeeally narrow skills. When you have broad skills you have characters trying to beat obstacles into submission with their skill checks rather than think about how to interact with the environment to get what they want.

For the same kind of reason why I love giving players spells like Command and Control Normal Fires rather than Cure Light Wounds and Sleep and why a Bag of Holding is the best magic item. Very powerful but you have to THINK how to use it.

Same deal with skills. "Stealth" is a horrible skill since you solve problems with it by saying "I roll stealth." A better skill is "hamster mastery" is a good skill since you have to put some thought about what you`re going to order your crate of hamsters to do.

I disagree here. I think games with fewer but wider skills are often better. I even hacked Rolemaster to make it this way. It keeps things moving. Besides, some people are just stealthier than others. Anyway, because I like these broad categories that you can roll for, I am more into Runequest-type rules and tend to dislike D&D-based systems.

Still, I can sort of see what you're saying. Your solution looks more like those films where each character has a few very specialized skills (Police Academy comes to mind, but I am sure there are better examples)

You realize you're disagreeing with a necro'd comment made 2 years ago?

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

In older editions they were called "Proficiency" and fuck me if I remember how they worked, particularly in second edition...

Each proficiency was linked to a stat. d20 roll under that target number (the stat)  to succeed. With some die modifiders tossed in.

QuoteBut what about the rest of you? How do you handle skill use in your games? What's your preference? Do you think skill points are necessary? Should only some classes be able to advance in them? What about how to roll for them? Much as I love 5th edition, I kinda hate it's skill system, as it seems to encourage failing..

So what about you? How do you prefer their handled in level based games?

Last time I ran Dark Sun was with 2nd edition. I did quite a bit of houseruling. One was to make proficiencies a roll-over DC, like in 3rd edition. I also reverse engineered the thief skills to work like these proficiencies.
I'm very likely going to keep using that house rule. It streamlines the proficiency system, and makes the thief abilities better in one swing.

Quote from: Kiero;844285. . . you can easily summarise them in a single line of stats.

(https://blog.versionone.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2013/01/feature.jpg)

Quote from: Willie the Duck;979036You realize you're disagreeing with a necro'd comment made 2 years ago?

:D ...

Quote from: Black Vulmea;979057(https://blog.versionone.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2013/01/feature.jpg)

Oh, clever...

Quote from: Ratman_tf;979058:D ...

Yeah, but...that subthread does a good job illustrating a point Clash made ages ago about the utility of "centrally defined" abilities. I think this is also the point about Beyond the Wall (which I haven't read). You can have lots of abilities without fragmenting/pixel-bitching actions, provided you understand that abilities can have overlapping application. So Awareness and Spidey Sense can coexist--they both apply in some cases, but other times only one or the other does.

I guess this does raise questions of stacking, and sometimes of defaulting. Like these two abilities should each enhance a default chance of detecting/anticipating danger. But if you don't have anything related to medicine or surgery, you're not going to be able to remove someone's appendix.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;979057(https://blog.versionone.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2013/01/feature.jpg)

Awesome.  As in, "I am in awe."

"It is remarkable.  I would remark upon it."

Q: Skills, OSR, D&D, How do you prefer they're handled?

A: I don't remember D&D having any skills when I played it. But I like skills to be handled as in Traveller (die modifiers) or The Fantasy Trip. I also like a limited number of broadly defined skills; I think the original West End Star Wars struck the right balance.

I like my skills broad and no more prominent than the secondary skills in the DMG for 1E; i.e., you have a history of a certain type of non-adventuring occupation, and the DM has wide latitude to interpret that as being applicable to a situation - or not.  It is determined at creation and from that point forward "skills" are not part of leveling up.

I think Earthdawn nailed the balance between skills and classes in the 90s. That's why I have played and ran it for almost 20 years.

It has Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Toughness, Perception, Willpower, Charisma) as broad abstract skill-like categories (& a set of "default skills" everyone can use at rank 0). Then it has specialist skills (learned slowly) as magical Talents (learned via 8-hour chunks of meditation). The classic example is theivery. The non-adept cut-purse or second-story man with with the pick locks skill must have a set of lockpicks in order to make the attempt, but will add their rank to their Dexterity step to get the final dice pool. The Thief Adept with the Pick Locks Talent can summon a set of blue telekinetic lockpicks out of thin air (& can always "burn a karma point" to add a d6 to their dice-pool result), and if they have an actual set on them it's enchanted or something. Thief Adepts are part of in-game secret societies that teach their magic secrets to their brotherhood. About 10% of the setting's population are Adepts.

I started with TFT:
No classes or levels, but ability is based on attribute levels, combined with talents that give you basic or advanced levels of competence in things, both combat abilities and other abilities.

Now I generally use GURPS, which is basically more detailed TFT, and works about the same way but with more attempted accuracy and detail, mainly by adding a level for every skill, and many more skills.

Quote from: Black Vulmea;979057(https://blog.versionone.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2013/01/feature.jpg)

Ok, that just won the Internet for July.

I prefer simple attribute checks to skills. However in Low Fantasy Gaming I did want a separate skills/backgrounds system so folks could customise their PCs more. So I made skills/backgrounds grant access to your limited Reroll Pool. So if Barbarian tries to break the door down, rolls (equal or under) Str check and fails, if she is trained in Athletics, player can spend a point from the reroll pool and reroll. So those who have the skill (or background if not a specific skill, like say merchant background if you're trying to appraise something, as their is no LFG appraise skill) will tend to succeed more, and as they level up, your reroll pool gets bigger.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;979101Awesome.  As in, "I am in awe."

"It is remarkable.  I would remark upon it."

Quote from: CRKrueger;979201Ok, that just won the Internet for July.

(https://i1.wp.com/static.tumblr.com/ooicj30/I9Fltwzyw/graceful_bow.gif)

There is also the Metamorphosis Alpha method a space on the character sheet labeled: "Judge given skills & items" for when you really want to kick it old school.

Quote from: Psikerlord;979401I prefer simple attribute checks to skills. However in Low Fantasy Gaming I did want a separate skills/backgrounds system so folks could customise their PCs more.

I find this is only very occasionally an issue. Normally I'm going to take it that the Barbarian PC certainly is skilled in athletics. For instance GMing White Star OSR sf right now, in the list of optional skills there is exactly one that can't be subsumed into the class competencies of the core & companion classes - that's Medicine. There is a Combat Medic class in a pdf supplement, but no easy way for a standard class to also be a medic. Every other skill listed is already a core skill of one or more classes.

I created my own skill system for AD&D some 20-25 years ago because I didn't like the NWP system. As a default, nobody got any special skills. They were things you could opt to learn (you could begin with as many as three, or just learn whenever it seems logical throughout the game), and the cost would be a penalty to all future XP earned.

For me, there were a lot of benefits to doing it this way.
-It doesn't have a fixed number of skill or proficiency slots, so you don't have to alter how you imagine your character to fit the game system.
-It's kind of like customizing your class--the more abilities you have, the longer it takes to level, so unlike most skill systems, I feel this one actually fits well with a class-based game.
-They were what I call player-optional. If a player decides this is needless complexity, they don't need to have any special skills for their character and not be at any disadvantage.
-Because the number of special skills can be zero, many characters can still be summarized in one line (especially NPCs).
-It bridged the gap between PCs who earn XP and NPCs who don't. The more you load up on skills, the less XP you earn, right on up to a -100% XP penalty, so an adventurer can transition into an expert.

I opted for a percentile mechanic. The benefits of that were
-They functioned just like Thief abilities.
-It interfaced well with the expert hireling section of the DMG, as some of them already had percentile listings. The armorer, for example, up to 50 skill could only make ring, scale, or studded armor, 76 skill was required to make chainmail, etc.
-It gave a naturalistic way of applying the numbers to the system. 50 skill as a hunter increased probability of surprising game animals by 50%, so a base 2 in 6 surprise probability becomes 3 in 6.

The skills I used were pulled from the secondary skills table plus the expert hireling professions. I was dealing in skill bundles, yes, but skills were bundled according to profession rather than similar activity. For example, D&D has come to use the skill "Sleight of Hand" which includes pocket picking. If stage magicians were a common trope in my campaign, my skill system could make finer distinctions, so pocket-picking and sleight of hand were truly different skills, but in a way that didn't require a 300+ skill list.

A few years later, I would get my hands on the beta edition of Legendary Adventure (it was spelled with a g and not a j during beta), and that was a great fit for what I was doing, so I pulled a few more skills from there. The way some of the skills interfaced with the combat system also struck me as really neat, so I began to blaspheme and include skills that could have a substantial impact on combat. In a way, this almost recreated the idea of "attack ranks" from BECMI. I would have Archery, for example, give hit bonuses with ranged weapons. An elf fighter who hit max level could then just focus on improving Archery skill up the wazoo (who cares about growing an XP penalty when you're at max level anyway?)

I think a somewhat polished skill system that could do all that would be a blessing.

In my OD&D game, I use "roll 2d6 and consult the Reaction Table" to cover any kind of attribute or "skill" checks, with modifiers for relevant class/level, background, environment, etc.  It's fast, easy, and can do simple success/fail or degrees of success.

Quote from: nightlamp;980111In my OD&D game, I use "roll 2d6 and consult the Reaction Table" to cover any kind of attribute or "skill" checks, with modifiers for relevant class/level, background, environment, etc.  It's fast, easy, and can do simple success/fail or degrees of success.

I'm Black Vulmea, and I endorse this product or service.

Welcome to the adult swim.

Quote from: nightlamp;980111In my OD&D game, I use "roll 2d6 and consult the Reaction Table" to cover any kind of attribute or "skill" checks, with modifiers for relevant class/level, background, environment, etc.  It's fast, easy, and can do simple success/fail or degrees of success.

 Clever and suitably ill-defined. I like it.

Quote from: nightlamp;980111In my OD&D game, I use "roll 2d6 and consult the Reaction Table" to cover any kind of attribute or "skill" checks, with modifiers for relevant class/level, background, environment, etc.  It's fast, easy, and can do simple success/fail or degrees of success.

That's pretty cool. How do you handle the various modifiers? It's really easy to break a 2d6 roll when you are piling on modifiers for "relevant class/level, background, environment" and so on. I know some people have tweaked the Reaction Table to a 3d6 to allow for modifiers. This might be a case where that version is useful.

Quote from: Baulderstone;980317That's pretty cool. How do you handle the various modifiers? It's really easy to break a 2d6 roll when you are piling on modifiers for "relevant class/level, background, environment" and so on.

Here's what I do for modifiers:
General attribute bonuses are relatively low (15-17 = +1, 18 = +2).  
For a relevant background or a non-combat "skill" that might be known to a specific class (a Cleric recognizing a rite or ritual of another religion, a Fighter observing an enemy camp's defenses for weak points, etc.), a +1 or +2 modifier.  
For thiefly tasks such as picking a lock or sneaking, anyone can try it but Thieves add 1/2 their level (round up.)  
Negative modifiers usually range from -1 to -4 for environment (poor light, high winds, etc.), encumbrance, and so on.  

It's easy and flexible, exactly what I want when I'm running OD&D.

I really like 5e's proficiency bonus for all proficiencies.  I dislike the exception based design that clogs much of the system but skills aren't part of the problem.

Quote from: Baulderstone;980317That's pretty cool. How do you handle the various modifiers? It's really easy to break a 2d6 roll when you are piling on modifiers for "relevant class/level, background, environment" and so on. I know some people have tweaked the Reaction Table to a 3d6 to allow for modifiers. This might be a case where that version is useful.

I've tended to leave the table alone, and include situational modifiers in what the outcome is. Partial success when playing a skilled stealth character might mean being able to sneak up to a guard on duty (full success would allow you to sneak past), where for a guy in plate armor it might only work for sneaking up on a guy off duty sitting at the campfire.

Since I last commented on this thread, I must have written about 7 different (and incompatible) methods for OSR skills...

My conclusion, I think, is that they are all useful, depending on what you want for your game.

- Do you want stats to matter more than level, or the opposite?
- Do you want PCs to start weak or somewhat competent already?
- Do you want generalization or specialization (i.e., "Perception" or "gear notiises", "finde hidden doors", etc.)?
- Do you want the perfect system for every skill, or just use one system for everything (DC being similar to AC etc)?

And so on. Any system can work. WotC D&D has the worst systems, IMO, but anything will do depending on your goals.

I fucking hate skills.

Unfortunately, most players love them.

I have never seen a D&D skill system that I've really liked and I've used all the official, all the OSR, and a dozen of house ruled ones over the years.

Palladium tacked on RQ's skill system. Maybe the best of the worst ideas in 80s.

C&C's Primes is probably the current best of the worst. It has loads of issues, but it moves fast at the table and gets the job done. I gotta respect it for that. At the end of the day, if my players want there to be skills, I demand the system to be swift and easy to adjudicate on the fly.

I've never used, wanted, or missed anything in an OSR D&D game called "skills" that wasn't prefixed by "thief". My preference for OSR is that characters have class abilities, and that a character's class is their profession, and continued advancement in that profession requires 100% of the character's "skill development" time.

In game, I prefer that characters "describe actions" and the GM "resolve actions". "Testing skills" isn't part of that vocabulary.

That said, when "resolving actions" in an OSR game I like to use whatever core mechanic the game uses for resolving action in general, rather than introducing a new system, and my preference is for that core mechanic to be strongly class- and level-based.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;980719And so on. Any system can work. WotC D&D has the worst systems, IMO, but anything will do depending on your goals.

For all the talk of a unified mechanics WotC made when it released 3E, it really was a fucking mess. TSR's most common approach in late AD&D 1E supplements, RC/BECMI, and AD&D 2E was non-weapon proficiencies. It covered all the shit that wasn't part of a class. Not everyone needed it, but it worked fine, and they were smart in tying it to attributes and not level. Level described how good you were at your class. It wasn't an entirely unified mechanic, but it was simple.

With the supposedly more unified 3E, you had NWPs split up into both skills and feats. It lead to wonky crap like Tracking being both a class ability and a feat, and you needed another skill to use it. And rather than the mostly binary NWPs, you have to dutifully put points into a skill every level or it would quickly diminish into uselessness and DCs raised every level.

In theory, you could vary where you put your points every level, which was the whole reason you got a fresh set of point to spend each time. Of course, that was just a noob trap. If you wanted a skill to stay useful, you needed to pick your skills carefully at first level and dutifully apply one point to each at each level to avoid falling backwards of the accelerating conveyor belt. As varying your skill buys from one level to the next was a trap, it made allocating skill points into stupid busy work. It's easier just to pick NWPs at first level and be done with it.

The inflating DCs in 3E meant that if you kept putting in one point per level like you were supposed to, what mattered most was your ability modifier. You might as well just buy the NWP, and make flat ability checks.

I'm probably not saying anything that we all don't know, but I have been looking at all the skill systems in D&D and its various clones recently, and WoTC really did do the absolute worst job it.

Quote from: Baulderstone;980855The inflating DCs in 3E meant that if you kept putting in one point per level like you were supposed to, what mattered most was your ability modifier.

This 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.

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.

IIRC this was EXPLICITLY the case in 4e, but not in 3e.

In any case, some skills will be opposed, so a character has to deal with other characters of the same level (and NPCs had classes in 3e).... I dunno, maybe it can be a problem.

Quote from: Eric Diaz;980905IIRC this was EXPLICITLY the case in 4e, but not in 3e.

In any case, some skills will be opposed, so a character has to deal with other characters of the same level (and NPCs had classes in 3e).... I dunno, maybe it can be a problem.

I guess the upshot is that if you build the character "like you're supposed to" (and I agree that 3e strongly "encourages" that line), that all the fuss over "skills" and "skill points" winds up being determined by class and level in the end anyway. To me the lesson there is that a superior system will cut right to the chase of which factors you want to stress when resolving actions.

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.

Quote from: estar;981277That 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.

Sounds like a class-based no-skills system, ie what I like! I dropped skills from my 5e online game, works great. In my 5e tabletop we use skills but I often say 'trained only' so eg only the Wizard rolls Arcana. I could just say "Wizard only".

Quote from: S'mon;981325Sounds like a class-based no-skills system, ie what I like! I dropped skills from my 5e online game, works great. In my 5e tabletop we use skills but I often say 'trained only' so eg only the Wizard rolls Arcana. I could just say "Wizard only".

Yep, I like to say, e.g., "Wizards only", and then explain the rule by way of exclusive required training.

Quote from: S'mon;981325Sounds like a class-based no-skills system, ie what I like! I dropped skills from my 5e online game, works great. In my 5e tabletop we use skills but I often say 'trained only' so eg only the Wizard rolls Arcana. I could just say "Wizard only".

I didn't say what you should like. I was addressing your assertion that skills system have to be exclusionary and define what a character can't do. The fact you prefer classes in your D&D 5e campaign is not germane to the assertion you made in that sentence

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

Quote from: S'mon;981325I often say 'trained only' so eg only the Wizard rolls Arcana. I could just say "Wizard only".

You managed to do your ruling on the character classes the very thing you criticize with skills. In RAW D&D 5e a fighter can do arcana and a wizard can do athletics. Although it likely a Wizard will be better at Arcana and vice versa a fighter will be better at Athletic.

The alternative view that OD&D has is that characters can  do the same things except for a small number of specific abilities.

Quote from: estar;981332You managed to do your ruling on the character classes the very thing you criticize with skills.

Er, yes - I like class defining what a PC can do, it's much simpler than most skill systems. And no problem of "Oops, your Fighter didn't take Athletics/Your Thief didn't take Open Locks".

Quote from: Baulderstone;981285As 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.

No, choosing the class will take time, too - and for the same reason buying equipment takes time. "What's best? What do I feel like doing?" Making choices takes time. That's why character generation takes forever in games like GURPS.

How do you distinguish 20 types of fighter? They must each be different in some way other than their name. So each will have special abilities that others don't - like an AD&D1e's ranger with tracking vs a paladin with healing ability. This is the beginnings of a skill system, it's simply that the skill is restricted by class and entirely binary, either you have it or you don't, a paladin can't track at all, a ranger can't lay on hands and heal.

With just 3 types of fighters - fighter, paladin and ranger - half a dozen special abilities is sufficient to distinguish them. But if you have 20 different fighters, then you'll need 20-60 different special abilities. And then people will say, "if I give up power X from this class, can I have power Y from that class?"

And this is why every game with lots of character classes eventually develops a skill system, of one kind or another. But if every class can take any skill, you may as well just do away with classes and just have skills alone.

Of course you may respond, "yeah but we want the player to be focused, more or less." And this is why Rolemaster had it that you chose a class, and this affected how much skills cost. So a fighter could do weapons for 1 point or magic for 20 points, and a wizard vice versa. That does work but it's complicated and means a lot of charts (50 classes x 200 skills is a lot of entries on the chart).

What's simpler is just to have skills alone. If you're really keen on focus then you can put the skills in categories and say that you can only take skills from 3 different categories, or whatever. But even if you don't, what you find in practice is that players will tend to go broad if they're making a character on their own, and narrow if they're making a character in a group. On their own players think, "my guy has to be able to do everything." In a group they say, "oh, you're doing all combat skills? great, I'll be the sneaky scout, then." In a group most players will try to fill some niche.

Quote from: S'mon;981356Er, yes - I like class defining what a PC can do, it's much simpler than most skill systems. And no problem of "Oops, your Fighter didn't take Athletics/Your Thief didn't take Open Locks".

1) That fine
2) That not what I replied about
3) In the Majestic Wilderlands and D&D 5e there is no "opps the Fighter didn't take Athletics and the Thief didn't take Open Locks. Everybody can do them, if you do happen to take them you are just better at them. In Fifth edition at 1st level this means a +2 bonus from proficiency. In the Majestic Wilderlands it means you just get your attribute bonus. To me what simpler is not worrying about whether a character can do skill based action or not. The answer is always simple, yes they can make the attempt and the odds are not terrible especially if you have a high score in the relevant attribute.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;981376No, choosing the class will take time, too - and for the same reason buying equipment takes time. "What's best? What do I feel like doing?" Making choices takes time. That's why character generation takes forever in games like GURPS.

A well designed class system will beat out a well-designed skills based system in terms of character creation every time. I played GURPS, Hero System, Fudge, Fate, Runequest, and dozens others of skills based system for nearly 40 years. I also played dozens of class based system as well. When you do everything you can to make character creation easy, class will out over skill every time.

The trick to quick character generation to not to use the rule books but use cards as a reference. Regardless of what characters are based on, you do the following.

1) Start off with a one page summery of the character types explained in english. The player picks one and I hand them the cards corresponding to the character type.
2) Give them one page summary of character background which includes character race if that part of the campaign. They pick one, I hand them the card.
3) Give them a card with general character info like what the attribute means and how to roll them.
4) Give them a equipment card that has the price list along with all in one packs priced out. (Similar to what 5e does). Before 5e I called them load outs  borrowed from GURPS.
5) Each card had step by step procedure listing the choices and the alternatives.

Take about 15 to 20 minutes to get through the cards for a class based system even Pathfinder and Fifth edition which have more choices than OD&D or AD&D.  Take twice as long if it primarily skill based. GURPS, Hero System, Fate, Fudge, doesn't really matter. Once the focus on skills the player take longer.

There is one point that class based character gen hangs up and that buying equipment. Even with packs and load outs, the average player take a little time to weigh the options often coordinating with the other players. With skill based character generation, picking skills AND buying equipment are the parts that take the longest.

I used this dozens at home campaigns, conventions and game stores sessions. It gotten to the point my players are disappointed if I don't everything setup in cards. Which happened in Adventures in Middle Earth. Talk about excess wordage in their rule books.

Quote from: estar;981387A well designed class system will beat out a well-designed skills based system in terms of character creation every time. I played GURPS, Hero System, Fudge, Fate, Runequest, and dozens others of skills based system for nearly 40 years. I also played dozens of class based system as well. When you do everything you can to make character creation easy, class will out over skill every time.

Estar, usually your posts are well thought out and intelligent but that's just a nonsensical assertion.  "This is better than that because my experience" doesn't cut it. Explain  why class-based game keeps adding more and more classes to accommodate different types of characters if they work as well as you claim?

Quote from: Dumarest;981392Estar, usually your posts are well thought out and intelligent but that's just a nonsensical assertion.  "This is better than that because my experience" doesn't cut it. Explain  why class-based game keeps adding more and more classes to accommodate different types of characters if they work as well as you claim?

I understand the confusion as I dropped an important phrase, I was referring to the speed of character creation not overall quality.

As for quality there are well designed class-based character creation system and there are well design skill based character creation. Neither are better than the other but there are consequences. One consequence is that  anytime a players is presented with a list to choose during character creation from that will add time to the process. I personally enjoy GURPS (big skilled based system), the AGE system (a hybrid) and OD&D (pure class). One reason I enjoy because to me they are well designed system in of themselves that work elegantly for what they do.

As for the expanding number of classes, a class is a package or template that represents something within the setting or genre. Change the setting or twist the genre opens up the possibility that by adding new classes or altering existing ones make it easier for players and referee to run campaigns within that setting or genre.

The current good example of this is Adventures in Middle Earth versus D&D 5th edition Core books. The set of AiME classes were designed to work together help players make character that feel like they are part of Middle Earth. D&D 5th edition shoot for the broader fantasy palette.

Skill based RPG are not immune to this. The BRP system originated in Runequest and specific implementation were designed to cover very different genres and settings.

In the end what matters is whether a specific work does it job in presenting a decent framework that saves the referee work in running a campaign.

Sorry for the misunderstanding that was a bit nonsensical without the caveat.

Quote from: estar;981400I understand the confusion as I dropped an important phrase, I was referring to the speed of character creation not overall quality.

Agree - the big benefit of Class-based creation is that if done well, you get to start playing right away. Choose your archetype and go. No-archetype skill-based systems are really bad that way, the initial barrier to entry is terrible (WEG d6 Star Wars with its Template PCs worked well, though).

Edit: Also, class-based systems don't have to keep adding more and more classes. It wasn't a big issue with 4-class Classic D&D, for instance. If there is an obvious gap (no Engineer class in White Star, say) for the kind of game you want then yes, go on and fill it. Still much easier than trying to define all of human activity via skills.

When it comes to D&D Zeb Cook introduced skills as a bit of flavour to indicate your character had some distinctive background beyond generic fighter #3. In that way I don't mind skills in a class-based system.

Quote from: Voros;982212When it comes to D&D Zeb Cook introduced skills as a bit of flavour to indicate your character had some distinctive background beyond generic fighter #3. In that way I don't mind skills in a class-based system.

Heh, this very thing always drove me nuts. As if a professional warrior and adventurer, who is constantly gaining experience and learning new fighting skills -- to the point of eventually becoming the equivalent of a one-person army, somehow also finds time to perfect confectionary decorations on cupcakes, as a skilled Baker ...

That just breaks all verisimilitude for me, based on my real life experience. I find it's possible to maintain skills in multiple fields at a time with some effort, but rapidly gaining skills requires dedicated focus. Sure, people can do two things at once -- in my experience at about half the pace of advancement in each, i.e. "multiclassing".

Meanwhile, there are plenty of ways to distinguish one fighter from another without adding some secondary mundane profession that they are supposedly also moonlighting in, you know, in their "off" time ...

Meh, YMMV. I don't recall skills being something gained at a great rate and gaining them was optional. A wizard improving his scholarly or alchemical skills makes sense to me. The 'mundane profession' is simply to give the character some background before they turned adventurer, so the noble is good with horses and the sailor is good with boats. Seems pretty simple to me but I know people love to find things to complain about.

Quote from: Zalman;982263Meanwhile, there are plenty of ways to distinguish one fighter from another without adding some secondary mundane profession that they are supposedly also moonlighting in, you know, in their "off" time ...

To paraphrase Sir Lawrence Olivier's comment to Dustin Hoffman, "Next time, try role-playing."

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?29374-How-to-be-a-special-snowflake

Quote from: Zalman;982263Heh, this very thing always drove me nuts. As if a professional warrior and adventurer, who is constantly gaining experience and learning new fighting skills -- to the point of eventually becoming the equivalent of a one-person army, somehow also finds time to perfect confectionary decorations on cupcakes, as a skilled Baker ...

You're a 4th level fighter.  You're a Hero.  You do Hero-type things as well as a Hero would.

How well do you cook?  Well, back in the day the usual would be to ask the referee, "How good a cook am I?"  A dice roll makes you either good, average, or bad.  Then hilarity and mayhem ensues.  "Greatest swordsman in the Duchy, can't boil water without burning it!"  That would lead to awesome role play!

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;982295To paraphrase Sir Lawrence Olivier's comment to Dustin Hoffman, "Next time, try role-playing."

Sure but so what if someone wants to have a few skills written on their sheet to help them think out their PC and RPing? What skin off your back is that exactly?

Oh wait, you linked to a thread by BV, the guy who thinks how he plays pretend makes him more of a man than others. Got'cha.

* checks watch * Yep, right on time.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;982297You're a 4th level fighter.  You're a Hero.  You do Hero-type things as well as a Hero would.

How well do you cook?  Well, back in the day the usual would be to ask the referee, "How good a cook am I?"  A dice roll makes you either good, average, or bad.  Then hilarity and mayhem ensues.  "Greatest swordsman in the Duchy, can't boil water without burning it!"  That would lead to awesome role play!

That's what we always did and it was oftentimes hilarious.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;982304* checks watch * Yep, right on time.

I could have set my watch to your 'just RP' it response. And I haven't even been here long.

I actually agree with you that background, etc can all just be RP'ed but as I said if someone wants a minor bit of flavour semi-mechanic in the game to note on their sheet what skin off your back is it? Answer? You've got nothing.

But if you weren't complaining about how others play 50 percent of your posts wouldn't exist.  (Cue the 'you're the same!' rant from CKruger).

Quote from: Voros;982348I could have set my watch to your 'just RP' it response. And I haven't even been here long.

I actually agree with you that background, etc can all just be RP'ed but as I said if someone wants a minor bit of flavour semi-mechanic in the game to note on their sheet what skin off your back is it? Answer? You've got nothing.

But if you weren't complaining about how others play 50 percent of your posts wouldn't exist.  (Cue the 'you're the same!' rant from CKruger).

Well, complaining about how other people post or the topic of their posts, is a significant chunk of your own posts, Voros, you have to admit that (and that you felt it necessary to preempt the point is admission itself).

Also, what skin is it off your back if Gronan plays differently, or if his stated opinion is that he wouldn't like someone else's way of playing?  You got nothing either.  Your stated opinion that you don't like his stated opinion is worth and means just as much, or as little.

But, for the topic, I understand the "If you want to be a Duelist, a Knight, a Berserker, roleplay it" but I've never really bought it.  The reason is, to paraphrase the kid from The Invincibles - "If everyone is Zoro, then no one is."  If I can pick up a rapier and carve a "Z" into someone in one round, and be just as adept at swinging a War Maul and firing a Longbow, fighting naked and wearing Full-Plate, then we're moving into the realm of hyper-competency that hits the low range of Supers like Batman.

Meh.

Humans can get good at a lot of things, but, with all due respect to Heinlein, not everyone, not even all PCs, should be a polymath.  Choosing what to be good in, thus realizing you may be less good in something else is part of "Consequences for One's Actions and Choices", perhaps the most important and fundamental one.  The fact that this is overlooked by many Old Schoolers is a bit of a blind spot, I think.   Move one step away from OD&D, the inevitable result is not Pathfinder.

For example, if you want a super light fantasy system, I think the careers system of BoL gives meaningful choice and consequence better than the strict class system of OD&D.

Quote from: CRKrueger;982374Well, complaining about how other people post or the topic of their posts, is a significant chunk of your own posts, Voros, you have to admit that (and that you felt it necessary to preempt the point is admission itself).

Hah true enough. I do feel our arguments are going in circles. I'll try to let it go more often.

Quote from: CRKrueger;982374Choosing what to be good in, thus realizing you may be less good in something else is part of "Consequences for One's Actions and Choices", perhaps the most important and fundamental one.  The fact that this is overlooked by many Old Schoolers is a bit of a blind spot, I think.

Not by this old schooler.

Some of you guys know I'm a trainer. Now, some of my lifters go to powerlifting meets. I took these two guys, Aron and Matt. Aron has a PhD in Economics, Matt has a Diploma of Civil Engineering. Aron opens with 160kg squat, Matt's doing 210. They chat. Aron finds out that when Matt started with us, he already had squatted 165. He says, "So basically, you started where I took four years to get to."

Matt being a very positive helpful guy was quiet and searching for nice words. I just said, "Yes, but Matt doesn't have a PhD." Now, that's no insult to Matt. He's an intelligent and educated guy. But what it comes down to is that Matt was lifting 3 times a week with not more than 2 weeks break in 3 years, meanwhile Aron was lifting 2 times a week and takes about 3 months off a year to go to conferences, all those contacts he makes develop his career. Lifting, work, academia, all the same: you get xp when you show up.

Later in that meet a guy in Aron and Matt's weight class opened with 300kg. I don't know what he does for a living, but he had an A for anarchy tattoo on his neck so I suspect he wasn't in the white collar field, if you know what I mean. And he definitely didn't have a PhD.

From effort comes results. You can't be good at everything. There's the occasional guy who rolled good stats and multi-classed, but most of us only rolled enough for one character class.

Quote from: estar;981277That 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.

My system is a class-less, level-based system, that uses careers for skills. Other than things that require specific training or equipment, anybody can try anything. But if it isn't in your career, you are stuck at the lowest skill level.

Quote from: Tod13;983044My system is a class-less, level-based system, that uses careers for skills. Other than things that require specific training or equipment, anybody can try anything. But if it isn't in your career, you are stuck at the lowest skill level.

I think picking a lock is the sort of thing that does require training to have any chance of success, whereas anyone can attempt to sneak & climb. That's how I tend to run 5e, anyway - sometimes only the Arcana-trained PC or the Wizard can attempt the Arcana check, only the Thief can attempt the Thieves' Tools check, but anyone can roll Perception, Stealth & Athletics.

Quote from: S'mon;983206I think picking a lock is the sort of thing that does require training to have any chance of success, whereas anyone can attempt to sneak & climb. That's how I tend to run 5e, anyway - sometimes only the Arcana-trained PC or the Wizard can attempt the Arcana check, only the Thief can attempt the Thieves' Tools check, but anyone can roll Perception, Stealth & Athletics.

Your game, your rules. :) But we used to pick locks at our desks at Lockheed/NASA with paperclips, because we didn't have keys and wondered if we could.

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

In older editions they were called "Proficiency" Snip
So what about you? How do you prefer their handled in level based games?

Don't pollute my D&D with skills by any name. There is no places for skills in a class based, level based game.

Quote from: Tod13;983257Your game, your rules. :) But we used to pick locks at our desks at Lockheed/NASA with paperclips, because we didn't have keys and wondered if we could.

So you had Proficiency, but not Expertise. :)

Quote from: S'mon;983261So you had Proficiency, but not Expertise. :)

LOL I don't play 5ed, but got that enough to make me laugh. I needed a laugh this morning. Thanks!

As a whole I think skills are often done badly, even in OSR games.  But I do like having things that make characters diverse from one another.

The person running this website is a racist who publicly advocates genocidal practices.

I am deleting my content.

I recommend you do the same.

so the problem is this.
I, as a GM, want to use skills in a similar way to rolling on a random table when the outcome of an action is in doubt or hard to eyeball fairly. Like, making a skill roll and rolling on a reaction table serve basically the same function. They're a tool to decide the narrative at certain junctures, not a tool to control the fiction with.
This is, I think, how D&D was meant to be played originally. You say what you're doing, the GM tells you what happens. Dice come out in combat because its often hard for the the GM to be 'fair' about that since character death is on the cards. Similarly, saves used a dice roll so that when a player says 'but the poison needle can't kill me, I'm wearing gloves!' you can roll some dice to resolve it quickly rather than arguing about the penetrating power of a needle on a spring vs some leather. The point is that you only bring them out when a sensible judgement is difficult.

Players tend to want to use skills to be able to concretely Do A Thing. The intent when a player says they want to roll a skill is to apply a mechanic in such a way as to fix the fiction in place. IE 'it HAS to be this way because the Dice n Rules say I SUCCEEDED'. Why is this?
I think it boils down to the fact that lots of GMs are bad. If a player is constantly getting railroaded ('the goblin snuck up on you and stole your magic arrows, cross them off your sheet') or has a GM that likes to kill them arbitrarilly ('you didn't say you looked before crossing the street, you get hit by a car and die lol') and that makes them powerless, which is just not fun. So pointing at the dice to say to the gm 'no, actually you can't just make me fail' becomes a defense mechanism against getting screwed.

*****

Personally, I tend to run it as 'roll a d20 and hope it's under the relevant stat' whenever it becomes relevant. Thieves with their thief skills (and other classes with similar abilities) get to roll two d20s and pick the better result. It's simple enough, and only needs to come out when there's actual doubt. IE, if you hide and there's cover, you hide automatically. If the monsters start looking for hidden enemies, do they find where you've gone? Roll to find out.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;9864141. I want a comprehensive skill list.

2. I don't want skills with a lot of overlap, particularly if the system expects you to roll both to accomplish generally unified tasks. (Hide/Move Silently or Listen/Spot in 3E being key examples.)

3. In D&D, I want the things I can do with my skills to progress commensurately with my other abilities. Yes, a 10th level Rogue with a maxed out Balance skill and a magical artifact boosting that skill even higher should be able to race across treetops like Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And a 20th level one is a demigod who should be able to balance on a wisp of cloud.

4. Skills should not play the game for the players. Simply shouting out the name of a skill ("I used Diplomacy on it!") is not acceptable. (But this is generally not a mechanical issue; it's just the GM displaying a bare minimum amount of competence (http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/4238/roleplaying-games/the-art-of-rulings).)

Agreed, one of my major beefs with 3e is the players would not roleplay or describe in detail what they do while using the skill. A specific example being;

Player: "I go into town and use my Gather Information skill (rolling a d20) to find out what time the castle guards change shifts, ...so we can sneak in in disguise as part of the new guard shift to steal the Dukes Gemstones and Jewelery.

Me (GM): "Wait, ...What? Who, exactly did you talk to, ...and what exactly did you ask them?"

Player: "Doesn't matter... I rolled a 14, with my +7 skill I got a 21 and know what time the guards will change shifts. We are going in at that time..."


For the GM how this happens is really important because who the players ask in town may or may not elect to tip off or alert the town guardsmen as to whether they are being scouted out. If the guards become aware, they'll set an ambush. ...If, for example they are asking a member of the local thieves guild instead, the guild may use the information that the players are planning a break-in  to arrange an op or two of their own which may or may not be related to what the players are doing. All of these roleplaying opportunities lost though if the player simply rolls a d20 and is informed "Oh, the local bartender says the releived guards show up at 9 PM after their shift every day."

What happens the next time? Are the guards forever on the 9PM shift change?,... and how do we add or change to the roleplaying for that if and when the players need to sneak into the stronghold a second time, or for some other completely unrelated reason?

Having the players actually role-playing what is happening is a bit of work, this gives the GM many more opportunities to add to, or change details about the situation, on-the-fly, and makes for a much more dynamic, and immersive game.

I think 0D&D Chargen should include an option for automatically adding and maintaining skills and specially trained abilities. The players should have to regularly practice their skills to retain proficiency, and there should be a way to add new skills with a boost or bonus to existing skills provided whenever the character levels until maximum proficiency is reach with a skill. For the record, with a +10 on a d20 roll, a player automatically has a 50% base chance of success. I would argue that maximum proficiency would be 5x whatever the Skills Ability Attribute is. Let's say the player has to pick the Ability used for the skill and for this example elects to use Wisdom for Blacksmithing for example, and he has a wisdom of 14, which would mean he would be successful whenever he rolled a 14 or less rolling a d20, or using percentile dice, Otto would have a base chance of 70% to successfully craft or repair a sword or armor provided Otto has the necessary supplies to complete the job as well as the time.

When the game begins right at character generation the player for Otto the Fighter states that young Otto had spent his formative years working as an apprentice for his uncle, a Blacksmith and is adept at forging swords and crafting armor. The player should be granted that skill with a +4 skill bonus modifier to favor the player whenever he uses that skill. This means that Otto would be able to subtract 4 from his d20 skills check roll (he has to roll under his wisdom to succeed, or his percentile roll success chance is increased by +4 (or 20%) so that anytime he rolled a 90 or less, Otto would be able to successfully craft or repair a sword or armor.

After their first adventures in the dungeon, Otto then returns to town with three hundred and seven gold pieces, as well as fifty seven silver pieces earned, with two 50 Gp Emeralds. He spends about fifty gold buying a new anvil, Five gold for twenty iron ingots, Fifty gold for twenty steel ingots, Five gold for the brick and mortar to build his own forge, A steel hammer 3 Gp, Backsmiths Iron Tongs 1 Gp, 100 Iron or Copper Jump rings 1 Sp (a set of full chainmail requires 300 rings) 50 steel jump rings 1 Gp, 100 Lb of soft coal 5 Gp, A Bellow 5 Gp, A Quenching Bucket 5 Cp, Three barrels, two for quenching, one to store rings.

So here is his basic outlay to startup the Smithy;
Anvil 50 Gp
x20 Steel Ingots 50 Gp
x20 Iron Ingots 5 Gp
Forge 5 Gp
Steel Smiths Hammer 3 Gp
Iron Smiths Tongs  1 Gp
600 Iron Rings 3 Sp
600 Copper Rings 3 Sp
600 Steel Rings 12 Gp
100 Lb. of soft Coal 5 Gp
A Bellow 5 Gp
A Quenching Bucket 5 Cp
Three Barrels 3 Gp
Ball Peen Hammer 2 Gp
Flat Peen Hammer 2 Gp
Large Sledgehammer 5 Gp
Small Sledgehammer 2 Gp

Total: 151 Gp 6 Sp, 5 Cp

Now Otto spent about a week building his Smithy, and he has one more week before the adventurers are scheduled to depart, so he starts with a steel sword. This is going to take three weeks to craft. First the blade needs to be forged, Then a steel pommel created and attached, and last the handle/grip has to be attached and fashioned. He makes his smithing roll for his first week and rolls a 4 on a d20. Being proficient he needs an 18 or less to succeed, and Huzzah!! manages to heat and hammer two steel ingots out into about a twenty-six inch flat blade with two rough edges.

Otto leaves his work and goes on another adventure, and comes back a month later with a couple hundred additional gold. He has two weeks to work in his blackmith shop before the group departs again. He works the pommel on the second week rolling a 1 CRITICAL SUCCESS for a roll under roll, so this will be a masterwork or +1 Sword with an exceptional well crafted Pommel. During the last week he affixes a leather wrapped wooden handle just about a foot long to the end of the blade just above the counter-weight. On his final skills check he rolls an 11, So three successes and a masterworked longsword is the result. This is good for 150 Experience points, and he can now sell the sword for 10 Gp if he wants or trade the sword to another party member for some other treasure...

If a skill fails the sword crafting materials is lost. If he critically fails, then he fumbles and harms himself during the crafting or....the item is crafted, but there is a hidden defect or vulnerability, or maybe the item is cursed with a -1 hit probability or does 1 less damage than normal.

...and so it goes. Skills. done. the. right. way. makes the game go waaaaay better, both for the skill user, and for everyone else playing. ...If you do it right. Most GMs are too lazy though.

Also, welcome to the RPGSite cavegirl!

Quote from: GameDaddy;986533Agreed, one of my major beefs with 3e is the players would not roleplay or describe in detail what they do while using the skill. A specific example being...

Pretty sure his point was that this is not a question of systems but GMing.

Quote from: Voros;986536Pretty sure his point was that this is not a question of systems but GMing.

Agreed, even in the most wargamish of RPGs (like D&D 4e) I was able to make it work by insisting players describe first, roll second. And if they didn't do that I would negate the roll, have them pick it up then  give me a description afterward they can now roll. They learn quickly after losing a critical result.

Quote from: cavegirl;986450so the problem is this.
I, as a GM, want to use skills in a similar way to rolling on a random table when the outcome of an action is in doubt or hard to eyeball fairly. Like, making a skill roll and rolling on a reaction table serve basically the same function. They're a tool to decide the narrative at certain junctures, not a tool to control the fiction with.
This is, I think, how D&D was meant to be played originally. You say what you're doing, the GM tells you what happens. Dice come out in combat because its often hard for the the GM to be 'fair' about that since character death is on the cards. Similarly, saves used a dice roll so that when a player says 'but the poison needle can't kill me, I'm wearing gloves!' you can roll some dice to resolve it quickly rather than arguing about the penetrating power of a needle on a spring vs some leather. The point is that you only bring them out when a sensible judgement is difficult.

Players tend to want to use skills to be able to concretely Do A Thing. The intent when a player says they want to roll a skill is to apply a mechanic in such a way as to fix the fiction in place. IE 'it HAS to be this way because the Dice n Rules say I SUCCEEDED'. Why is this?
I think it boils down to the fact that lots of GMs are bad. If a player is constantly getting railroaded ('the goblin snuck up on you and stole your magic arrows, cross them off your sheet') or has a GM that likes to kill them arbitrarilly ('you didn't say you looked before crossing the street, you get hit by a car and die lol') and that makes them powerless, which is just not fun. So pointing at the dice to say to the gm 'no, actually you can't just make me fail' becomes a defense mechanism against getting screwed.

I think that's a pretty compelling analysis*. Certainly the first parts (to a DM dice checks exist to adjudicate situations that are unclear in their outcome where a GM would be challenged to be consistently fair, to a player skills exist to define player capability within a rules framework). I'm not sure that the DMs even have to be bad** for this to work. I think that players, in a game where uncertainty (both in the dice, and what is around the next corner, want an ability to influence the certainty of the situation. What's the old adage of early dungeon-crawling--You want to make sure you never enter combat unless the outcome is a foregone conclusion? A player can't pre-emptively set up the situation such that they will win***, but they can preemptively arrange their skills, attributes, equipment, or whatever else the game provides such that when they run into the next unexpected situation, they will have the best possible odds of coming out alive/unscathed/successful at the end. It's giving them a sense of agency, and control over their fate. It might be a false sense (in that, if the skill system were not there, they and the GM would have to battle-of-creativity it out, and they might have better chances there), but that sense of preemptive control over the situation is a tempting one, and not just in games.  
*As this thread shows, there's also interest in using skills as a way to differentiate between characters, but that's a separate issue.
**Or rather, every player having played under a bad GM at some point, which incentivized a preference.
***Well, they can by good information gathering, planning, etc. And there is an argument that can (and has) be made that adding game-mechanical solutions to problems disincentivizes player ingenuity.

Quote from: GameDaddy;986533Agreed, one of my major beefs with 3e is the players would not roleplay or describe in detail what they do while using the skill. A specific example being;

Who running the session? Are the books exerting enough mind control on you that you can't utter "Pick up the dice and describe to me what you are doing and then roll."?

Quote from: cavegirl;986450so the problem is this.
I, as a GM, want to use skills in a similar way to rolling on a random table when the outcome of an action is in doubt or hard to eyeball fairly. Like, making a skill roll and rolling on a reaction table serve basically the same function. They're a tool to decide the narrative at certain junctures, not a tool to control the fiction with.

One alternative is to ignore the rules, tell the players to think of themselves actually there as their character with their character's abilities and describe to you what they are doing. Then you decide which combination of rolls (using the system as a guide of course) is needed. Or whether any roll is needed because it makes sense that the action immediately succeeds or fails.

I seen a lot of RPGs built around what I call a "cute" dice trick and totally miss the point of why we have skill levels and skill rolls in the first place. My recommendation is to focus on the following

1)How to effectively get the players describe what they are doing in a way that is fun and quick.
2)Assemble the tools and technique you need to come up with a series of rolls to determine what happens with the results are not certain.
3) While keeping in mind the possibility of allowing for extreme success and extreme failure.

If player say "I'm going to use my DIPLOMACY skill" and just roll the dice...

one night have them all play DIPLOMACY, the game.

Quote from: cavegirl;986450Personally, I tend to run it as 'roll a d20 and hope it's under the relevant stat' whenever it becomes relevant. Thieves with their thief skills (and other classes with similar abilities) get to roll two d20s and pick the better result. It's simple enough, and only needs to come out when there's actual doubt. IE, if you hide and there's cover, you hide automatically. If the monsters start looking for hidden enemies, do they find where you've gone? Roll to find out.

I like this.  Simple is good.   But with this method, do your Thieves get better with their thief skills as they increase in level?

Quote from: Crusader X;986817I like this.  Simple is good.   But with this method, do your Thieves get better with their thief skills as they increase in level?

They don't. It's a kludge but I've not really found a better option: perhaps roll the attribute check and the thief skill and if either succeeds, you succeed.

Quote from: Crusader X;986817I like this.  Simple is good.   But with this method, do your Thieves get better with their thief skills as they increase in level?

Depends on the rest of the system. One of the early Gamma Worlds was roughly B/X, but as you went up in level you rolled to see what benefit you got, and one of them was +1 stat (roll randomly). I've long thought about creating a OSR-style game (for my group, no publishing interest), where the tactical value of stats was roughly oD&D-esque, but you gained attributes slowly as you levelled, and used those to fuel a polymath skill system.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;986589If player say "I'm going to use my DIPLOMACY skill" and just roll the dice...

one night have them all play DIPLOMACY, the game.

I always liked Kingmaker as well, with four or five players, ...very interesting!

Quote from: RPGPundit;986317As a whole I think skills are often done badly, even in OSR games.  But I do like having things that make characters diverse from one another.

I think if any of our OSR-non-fans said this, there would be a deafening chorus of "that's what roleplaying is for!" So in fairness, I'll ask, what do you think skill diversification w/c/should do that rp wouldn't?

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;986589If player say "I'm going to use my DIPLOMACY skill" and just roll the dice...

one night have them all play DIPLOMACY, the game.

Or they want to play a campaign as a character that is better than they are at diplomacy. As far I am concerned when this is a factor what I am looking for is the plan and the intent. The diplomacy roll comes after the fact to see how it was executed.

For example in one campaign I had a kid who out of game had a bad stutter. By doing things this way, his character's charisma helped just as it would a players who is a smooth talker out of game. However isn't a good roll in the world that will fix an idiotic idea or plan something that kid (and others) quickly learned when they tried to rely on skill rolls in my campaigns.

For me this approach fixes a who lot of issues when players have characters that are better or worse they are out of game.

Quote from: estar;987302Or they want to play a campaign as a character that is better than they are at diplomacy. As far I am concerned when this is a factor what I am looking for is the plan and the intent. The diplomacy roll comes after the fact to see how it was executed.

For example in one campaign I had a kid who out of game had a bad stutter. By doing things this way, his character's charisma helped just as it would a players who is a smooth talker out of game. However isn't a good roll in the world that will fix an idiotic idea or plan something that kid (and others) quickly learned when they tried to rely on skill rolls in my campaigns.

For me this approach fixes a who lot of issues when players have characters that are better or worse they are out of game.

If you want players to have characters who are more socially adept than themselves without them using their Diplomacy skills as a crutch give them social skills that give the more information or other side advantages about the people they're interacting with. Removing the fog of war in social interaction is enormously helpful. Skills like:
-Detect lies.
-Smell fear.
-Etiquette (you get to have the DM warn you if you're about to do something that'd piss people off).
-Genealogy (knowing the baron's family history is very helpful).

So the guy with no social skills sees a noble.

The guy with social skills sees the Baron Alard of North Haven who loves hunting and who lost his wife in a fire last year who lies whenever he's talking about her.

The second guy is going to have a big advantage but what he's getting is information not the ability to say "I use diplomacy on the guy."

I've grown to hate "comprehensive skill lists".

Quote from: RPGPundit;988586I've grown to hate "comprehensive skill lists".

I knew eventually you'd come to my position!

All skill like activities should be resolved as rolls vs. stats, perhaps with some modifier for class/level. First of all, what the hell are stats for if you don't use them for some quantitative purpose? And second, detailed skill systems are total wankery.

Every skill system out there strikes a perfect balance between laughably too few, just right, and ridiculously over the top...just not for everyone.

Find the one you like.
Profit.

If you don't make a list, but still have skills, it means the GM gets to decide what skills there can be.

Another thing I like about skill in Beyond the Wall, there is no formal, collected skills list. I did go through all the playbooks and compile a list of skills given for my own use as GM, but the game itself doesn't provide one.  Even better the skills given are not defined beyond their name.

So different characters within the group might have the skills "Dark Secrets", "Forbidden Knowledge", and "Occult Lore". Any or all of which might apply to a roll to discover the true Name of the demon that has been tormenting the village.  I would still require the players to tell me how they were applying the skill and what they were doing to discover the name. "Occult Lore" would be of no help in discovering the identity of the Queen's lover, but either "Dark Secrets" or "Forbidden Knowledge" might if properly applied.

It is about asking the question "do I have a skill that might make it easier for me to do the thing?" Too many games and gamers seem to take skills as being "do I have the skill the will allow me to attempt the thing?"

Quote from: estar;986562Agreed, even in the most wargamish of RPGs (like D&D 4e) I was able to make it work by insisting players describe first, roll second. And if they didn't do that I would negate the roll, have them pick it up then  give me a description afterward they can now roll. They learn quickly after losing a critical result.

I had to train one of my players to tell me what she was doing for "diplomacy". Once she understood some sort of rough explanation was needed, and that cool plans would increase her chances of success, she got into it a lot more, and approached it more in terms of role-playing for the explanation.

Quote from: DavetheLost;989186Too many games and gamers seem to take skills as being "do I have the skill the will allow me to attempt the thing?"

#1 reason why I dislike games with dozens upon dozens of skills that have tiny differentiations between them.

Quote from: Dumarest;989239#1 reason why I dislike games with dozens upon dozens of skills that have tiny differentiations between them.

Yeah - most games should keep it to about a dozen.  Maybe two dozen if it's a skill-based game.  (no other significant states to track)

Now - there are exceptions where it still follows KISS.  Shinobigami has 72 different skills (as the only stats) - but it's a semi-narrative game with a 6x12 table, and mechanically their biggest differences are how far away an attack is on the table from your skills affects your defences.  

Note: I'm on the Kickstarter for Shinobigami and have read some of the rules - but I haven't actually played it yet as the full thing isn't fully translated yet.  For all I know it's terrible - but it seems pretty interesting for a one-shot.

I'm thinking of the relatively sane skill list that was in 2nd edition Champions, then a little expansion in the Champions II book, then I think it was about right in 3rd edition, and then suddenly with 4th/BBB martial arts and languages turned into a huge detailed mess, and then by the time 5th came around instead of just Acrobatics, you'd have to buy Acrobatics, Breakfall, Tumbling, etc. all as separate skills...I was quite happy with Acrobatics or Gymnastics or whatever you want to call it covering that whole gamut of acrobatic-gymnastic type activities...

...but I get the feeling I'm in the minority as  lot of gamers seem to think "more rules is better." Well, particularly in the Hero Games subset. I can't see playing Champions again unless we're going back to maybe 2nd or 3rd edition.

This topic was interesting enough to me that I decided to branch off and create another thread specifically about whether people prefer defined skill lists or no defined skill lists.

Quote from: DavetheLost;989186
It is about asking the question "do I have a skill that might make it easier for me to do the thing?" Too many games and gamers seem to take skills as being "do I have the skill the will allow me to attempt the thing?"

One of the differences in my group between playing a Traveller-like game or even DwD Studios' Barebones Fantasy and the game I wrote for my players, is that in my game, my plays say "I do X", while in the other games, they usually asked "Can I do X". Other than a few "needs training" skills, anybody can try anything. If one of your two careers applies, you get to use your full skill ability. If no career applies (and we allow careers to be pretty broad), the skill roll falls back to a minimal but doable chance.

Quote from: estar;987302Or they want to play a campaign as a character that is better than they are at diplomacy. As far I am concerned when this is a factor what I am looking for is the plan and the intent. The diplomacy roll comes after the fact to see how it was executed.

For example in one campaign I had a kid who out of game had a bad stutter. By doing things this way, his character's charisma helped just as it would a players who is a smooth talker out of game. However isn't a good roll in the world that will fix an idiotic idea or plan something that kid (and others) quickly learned when they tried to rely on skill rolls in my campaigns.

For me this approach fixes a who lot of issues when players have characters that are better or worse they are out of game.

Someone with a disability is a special case.

In the general case, a "diplomacy" roll is like a "tactical genius" roll in a wargame.  You want to be tactically brilliant, learn tactics.  You want to be a good negotiator, learn to negotiate.  It's not some arcane black art open to only a few, any more than learning what "refusing the center" means is an arcane black art open only to a few.

Quote from: DavetheLost;989186It is about asking the question "do I have a skill that might make it easier for me to do the thing?" Too many games and gamers seem to take skills as being "do I have the skill the will allow me to attempt the thing?"

Because for a lot of people, not just gamers, if it's not mentioned/listed it's assumed not possible.  It's how humans are.  We have to train them into thinking otherwise.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;982385Not by this old schooler.

From effort comes results. You can't be good at everything. There's the occasional guy who rolled good stats and multi-classed, but most of us only rolled enough for one character class.

As a dude studying to maybe get my certification for training people I applaud your example - it spoke to me in a language I get.

When people get all into math in their examples my eyes glaze over. No offense to anyone. I'm not the most mathematically inclined fellow into gaming, and I like keeping things easy.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;990062Because for a lot of people, not just gamers, if it's not mentioned/listed it's assumed not possible.  It's how humans are.  We have to train them into thinking otherwise.

Not necessarily. One blog writer called it "the drop-down menu effect." When I was a kid, when the DM said, "what do you do?" the players looked up and around the table at each-other and started talking. Now they look down at their character sheets. 30-40 years of personal computing of one kind or another has taught people to look for the drop-down menu.

So I don't think it's inherently human, it's just the result of too much use of personal computers.

I think there may be some truth to the "drop down menu" effect.  I have noticed that my younger players who grew up on computer games expect clear missions and look for the win buttons in mechanics. My older players expect a sandbox.

When I ran some Metamorphosis Alpha, a game with no skills system, no experience system, etc, old school as they come, one of my players said "This is the best game ever, we can do anything!"  I run all my games like that. Tell me what you want your character to try to do, the mechanics are there to help us figure out if he does it.

Quote from: DavetheLost;990227I think there may be some truth to the "drop down menu" effect.  I have noticed that my younger players who grew up on computer games expect clear missions and look for the win buttons in mechanics. My older players expect a sandbox.

When I ran some Metamorphosis Alpha, a game with no skills system, no experience system, etc, old school as they come, one of my players said "This is the best game ever, we can do anything!"  I run all my games like that. Tell me what you want your character to try to do, the mechanics are there to help us figure out if he does it.

Some background. My players are all women. My oldest player is 32. My youngest is mid-20s. The middle player (my wife) is right in between. I'm almost 50. We've been playing on and off for ~4 years. The youngest and middle have both played MMORPGs. The oldest doesn't play computer RPGs of any type. We recently added a male co-worker who is my age with lots of RPG and computer RPG game time to one game a month. He seems to like DungeonWorld type games the most.

About the "drop down menu" effect, I think this is often related to the system.  (GM stuff aside. I could see some GM tendencies affecting this too.)

The first RPG for my oldest and youngest players was DwD Studios' Barebone Fantasy, that has skills, but anything that doesn't match a skill uses base abilities. So, aside from special stuff like magic, anyone can try anything. I had some "can I" questions in BBF, but not many. We play tested DwD's new sci-fi game, which has a lot more skills and is more detailed (it feels more like Traveller than BBF or D&D), but still has some of the same base abilities fall-back, but I got a lot more "can I" questions.

With the career-based skills (non-career skills doable at minimal levels) in our home brew that I wrote for us, I get "I do X" with almost no "can I" questions. The "can I" is usually more related to "is the monster intelligent enough for me to bluff or talk out of something" rather than "is my character capable of trying this".

From both listening to my male player talk about other sessions and watching him in our games, I don't see the drop down effect from him in play, but while my female players all seem to make their characters unique via moral code and personality quirks, my co-worker seems to like to define and make his characters unique based on skills and/or skill-related physical attributes (like a character with a cybernetic tool arm). The women also make their characters unique from each other based on skills, but they seem to care less about the skills, changing them if someone else's core concept skill is too close to a secondary skill for their character or taking skills more related to their character's personalities and background, rather than taking "useful skills" and making that part of the character's background. The women also take disadvantages (which do not grant any extras or bonuses) that have a lot more negative impact than I've seen other players interested in having.

The women also do interesting quirks, like one character _thinks_ she is stealthy, but isn't and in fact has a disadvantage in all stealth rolls.

Nobody seems to care about sandbox. The women are more likely to look for extra fun stuff to do though. But everyone jumps on the module hooks with glee.
In B1 Search of the Unknown, I populated the first level of the dungeon with feuding goblins and orcs. Totally separate from the main quest, my players are trying to broker peace and hook up the goblin princess and orc prince. But it is difficult to judge differences as we've played very different modules between the two groups and the women outnumber the single male player 3 to 1.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;990208Not necessarily. One blog writer called it "the drop-down menu effect." When I was a kid, when the DM said, "what do you do?" the players looked up and around the table at each-other and started talking. Now they look down at their character sheets. 30-40 years of personal computing of one kind or another has taught people to look for the drop-down menu.

So I don't think it's inherently human, it's just the result of too much use of personal computers.

Anecdotally, I don't see that.  In the past meager 32 years of gaming and interacting with people and watching the news, the first thing I noticed was that if it does not say you can, then it's assumed you cannot.  Even if the opposite is true.  You have to state that 'just because you don't see it, doesn't mean you can't do it.'

Now, maybe it's not universal, probably isn't, but in my limited experience it's been thus.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;990208Not necessarily. One blog writer called it "the drop-down menu effect." When I was a kid, when the DM said, "what do you do?" the players looked up and around the table at each-other and started talking. Now they look down at their character sheets. 30-40 years of personal computing of one kind or another has taught people to look for the drop-down menu.

So I don't think it's inherently human, it's just the result of too much use of personal computers.

I don't buy that. Players browsing their character sheets, looking at their skills, spells and equipment to figure out what to do next was just as common in 1985 as it is today. If you sit people around a table and hand them menus, they tend to order off them. That was just as true before computers were everywhere.

It depends mostly on system, acutally.  I was running OD&D in 2008-2009 with the same group that I was playing Star Wars d20 with.  In OD&D everyone talked to each other, in SW d20 everybody looked at their character sheets.

It's because SWd20 is designed such that your character sheet is intended to detail everything you can do.

Get rid of character sheets! :D

Quote from: Dumarest;990528Get rid of character sheets! :D

I remember hearing of GMs in the '80s or '90s who held onto all the character sheets themselves to keep players from focusing on them. It always seemed a little ridiculous to me.

Gronan is right that system is a big factor. It's also a matter of GM style as well.

Ah, the days when people looked at their character sheets.  Instead of their phones.

Quote from: Steven Mitchell;990557Ah, the days when people looked at their character sheets.  Instead of their phones.

Next time somebody looks at a phone, referee closes up the books and says "okay, we're done here."

Quote from: Baulderstone;990551I remember hearing of GMs in the '80s or '90s who held onto all the character sheets themselves to keep players from focusing on them. It always seemed a little ridiculous to me.

Gronan is right that system is a big factor. It's also a matter of GM style as well.

I only hold onto a sheet because I have a friend who always, always, always forgets it. And his dice. And a pencil.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;990522It's because SWd20 is designed such that your character sheet is intended to detail everything you can do.

Which was horrifying to those of us who came up on Star Wars D6 (1e) where anyone could try anything at their base attribute level.

If I recall correctly, it was kinda difficult for a Jedi to become an all-around character like Kenobi who could fix things, fly a fighter, etc. because you had to spend Skill Points on Repair that could have gone elsewhere, and Feats on Pilot Starfighter and Starfighter Gunnery that could have gone to Force Feats, etc.

In D6, you just roll your Mechanical to fly and shoot.  No penalties for not having the right "feat".

Quote from: colwebbsfmc;990695Which was horrifying to those of us who came up on Star Wars D6 (1e) where anyone could try anything at their base attribute level.

If I recall correctly, it was kinda difficult for a Jedi to become an all-around character like Kenobi who could fix things, fly a fighter, etc. because you had to spend Skill Points on Repair that could have gone elsewhere, and Feats on Pilot Starfighter and Starfighter Gunnery that could have gone to Force Feats, etc.

In D6, you just roll your Mechanical to fly and shoot.  No penalties for not having the right "feat".

All I remember Kenobi doing is a few Force tricks like frightening sand people and bypassing stormtroopers, and having a brief lightsaber fight. When did he fix spaceships and fly like an ace?

Quote from: Dumarest;990699All I remember Kenobi doing is a few Force tricks like frightening sand people and bypassing stormtroopers, and having a brief lightsaber fight. When did he fix spaceships and fly like an ace?

In those films that claim to be prequels to the Star Wars films we know and love.

Or the quite good 3d rendered cartoons that seem to be an awakening from the bad dream of the prequel films.

Quote from: Dumarest;990654I only hold onto a sheet because I have a friend who always, always, always forgets it. And his dice. And a pencil.

That is entirely justified. I had a group where I had a folder for all the character sheets for that very reason. I still let them fondle their character sheets during the session though.

Quote from: Gronan of Simmerya;990591Next time somebody looks at a phone, referee closes up the books and says "okay, we're done here."

Yes because we need to ruin the fun of the rest of the party because of ONE player. Who might be 'On Call' and needs to check their phone.

Overreact much?  Wow.

It's called peer-group pressure. An approach commonly used in stricter schools and the military.

I'm not sure that it's necessary, but it is effective :)

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;991004It's called peer-group pressure. An approach commonly used in stricter schools and the military.

I'm not sure that it's necessary, but it is effective :)

Also, my players are responsible enough to say if they're on call.

Also also... HOW many fucking threads and posts on this site alone complain about people fucking with their phones or tablets instead of paying attention to the game?  Go ahead, search; I'll wait.

* hums Jeopardy theme *

See?  People bitch about that ALL THE TIME.  Brady just couldn't pass up a chance to make his dinkie sad at me.

*shrug* In my group, we use screens all the time -- the GM has PDFs on a tablet, some members keep character sheets on their devices, etc. It's been this way in a number of my game groups over the years.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;991004It's called peer-group pressure. An approach commonly used in stricter schools and the military.

I'm not sure that it's necessary, but it is effective :)

And quite a few gulags.  You know, one person rebels and the entire block gets their food cut or whipped or otherwise punished.

It's an excellent method to psychologically break your enemies, but the gamers at my table are friends.  We're mature, we know how to respect each other.

Maybe you should a get a new table to play with.  One you can trust and respect.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;991051We're mature, we know how to respect each other.

Well, I would say that fucking around on your phone rather than talking to people right in front of you, people who've set aside some hours a week just to sit and talk with you, doesn't demonstrate maturity and respect. But I'm old-fashioned that way.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;990208Not necessarily. One blog writer called it "the drop-down menu effect." When I was a kid, when the DM said, "what do you do?" the players looked up and around the table at each-other and started talking. Now they look down at their character sheets. 30-40 years of personal computing of one kind or another has taught people to look for the drop-down menu.

So I don't think it's inherently human, it's just the result of too much use of personal computers.

There's probably some truth to this.  When I run Lords of Olympus (or Amber), the PCs don't really  have character sheets, or at least they don't really bother looking at them much because they just have to know their ranks in 4 stats and what powers they have. So you see a lot less of that sort of thing, and a lot more of them trying to ask questions about their environment.

Quote from: Kyle Aaron;991115Well, I would say that fucking around on your phone rather than talking to people right in front of you, people who've set aside some hours a week just to sit and talk with you, doesn't demonstrate maturity and respect. But I'm old-fashioned that way.

That's just it, my table doesn't do that.  We focus on the gaming.

I use an iPad to take track various details because I touch type faster than write.  Also it's a great tool to show some images to reinforce what you're talking about.  But luckily, when we play, it doesn't actually distract us.  Again, respect.

In the early days of cellphones doing stuff other than calls and messages, I was pretty strict about people not using them at the table, because there seemed to be a tendency for people to get seriously distracted.

But somewhere along the way, it seems that people (my players, at least) have managed to be able to adjust themselves to be able to fiddle occasionally with their phones without getting lost in terms of gameplay. So I've stopped worrying about it.