[5E] Advancement, layout, multiclassing.

RobbyPants · Post by **RobbyPants** » Tue Oct 05, 2010 11:34 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:[*] Skills: Honestly, I have no idea how to do that. 3E's system where after a certain point you kept dumping your same skill points into the same skills and never got a chance to use a new one was unsatisfying. However I also found 4E's system where skills advanced universally unsatisfying too. Suggestions?

This is still just a working idea, but one idea I like is purchasing skill "tiers" rather than ranks, mostly for purposes of speeding up character generation. I'd use 4E's idea of giving a flat +1/2 character level bonus to all of your skill rolls. In addition, you get extra effects based on your tier:

Untrained
Minimum level: 1
Either you can't use the skill (if it's trained-only), or you can use it with just the basic functionality.

Proficient
Minimum level: 1
You gain a +4 competence bonus in your skill, and you have access to all the basic gimmicks of your skill.

Expert
Minimum level: 3
Any skill that takes more than one round takes half as long. You gain access to expert tricks for your skill. These are the things that you would expect from a "badass normal" type. They're still within line with what you'd expect from a "real" person, but they're definitely beyond ordinary. Extra long jumps, climbing difficult surfaces at increased speed, spotting something at an extreme distance, or hiding in plain sight with minimal distraction.

Master
Minimum level: 6
You can roll skill checks twice and take the better result. You can do really awesome stuff with your skills, such as: run up walls, balance on stuff like smoke, jump over buildings, see invisible stuff, hide in plain sight, sense magical auras, and whatever else seems cool.

The numbers here can totally be reworked, at what level you get them, and how many tiers there are. I just wrote this up assuming 10 levels. You might want one or two more tiers (paragon and virtuoso?) for a 20 level game. I haven't thought up a good advancement method. Obviously, skill points as they exist would have to be changed. What I like about this approach is it's relatively fast, it keeps people on the RNG, and you can do cool stuff with the skills based on your skill and not some stupid crazy high DC that you might hit at low level by cheesing magic items.

Sashi · Post by **Sashi** » Wed Oct 06, 2010 12:03 am

Before you decide on a skill system, you have to decide on what a skill does.

3E decided to focus on simulation, which works fairly well for things like Balance and Swim, but utterly fails for opposed checks because training and stat mods can push a skill bonus right off the RNG which breaks opposed checks without stupid-high circumstance bonuses and penalties to compensate for a rogue with a +20 hide skill sniping a fighter with a -1 spot check. Some of the mechanics (Diplomacy) are just stupid-strange because of this indecision of how skills work.

4E decided to focus on opposed rolls and arbitrary level-dependent DC's (in 3E you decide you want a DC 18 surface and start adding circumstance modifiers until you get it, in 4E you want a surface that a trained 8th level character with no stat modifier will have a 50% chance of passing and see that it's DC 18), so characters are given a default bonus to all skills based on level so they have a default reasonable chance vs the level-appropriate skill DC's and opposed checks, but it breaks simulation by letting high level wizards jump really far for no discernible reason. It also fails because skill training is fucking expensive, getting 25% better at a single skill you might not use in a given game session costs the same as getting 5% better at all your attack rolls forever.

Forced to choose, I'd side on the 4E method because letting the difference between an expert and a novice at the same level get bigger than the RNG requires one of 3 things:
1) Keep the novice relevant and let the expert cockslap the game
2) Get into an arms race with the expert, at which point you erect a giant "FUCK YOU" sign on the character sheet of any non-skillmonkey. Ironically this arms race discourages the skillmonkey from investing heavily in taking their skills past the status quo. There's no point in having skill focus: hide if everything you try to sneak past suddenly has skill focus: spot.
3) Make skills irrelevant. Nobody cares if they auto-win/fail on things that don't matter. And even if they do for some reason, nobody else does.

Also the Red Queen Effect is a fascinating evolutionary hypothesis but bullshit as an RPG effect. There's no point in giving someone a resource they have a choice on spending if doing so is actually a choice between fucking themselves over or maintaining the status quo.

So there are a few things to consider:
1) What is the maximum allowable difference between a novice and an expert of the same level? It's more important that you not have to remember or kludge together arbitrary circumstance bonuses ("Use your BAB+WIS or Insight skill to counter Feints") than it is to have a high level character be lolfail at skills they haven't invested anything into until it suddenly becomes important that they not get ganked for being shit at that skill.

2) What is the minimum required difference between an expert at first level and an expert at max level? I think this is actually pretty small, auto succeeding vs NPC's you wouldn't get XP for killing through sheer force of numbers isn't something to shoot for.

3) Stat modifiers need to have a smaller effect than training. Currently the difference in stat modifiers can be about 10, which ends up meaning that you set skill DC's so that stat mods cockslap the system or are required to be relevant. "Nice, but not required" is the name of the game.

I think this comes down to:
- Give level based bonus to all skills. Maxing out around 5, maybe 10.
- Give a minor resource that feats don't compete for. "Skill Point" is sufficient as a name but probably overly restrictive for something that could reasonably be invested in learning a language or getting the Scent ability, "talent" possibly.
- Take advantage of the fact that re-rolls and "roll twice, take higher" abilities increase competency in passing checks in a nonlinear yet completely understandable way that quickly makes characters extremely good at passing easy checks while only moderately improving their chance of passing crazy-hard checks. Rolling 4 d20's and taking the highest is within a first-order approximation of rolling a single dice with a RNG of 8-20.
- Instead of adding stat modifiers directly to skills, make a talent that gives something to the skill and has a minimum stat requirement.

Ganbare Gincun · Post by **Ganbare Gincun** » Wed Oct 06, 2010 1:03 am

What other D20 based skill systems are floating around out there? There are many, many issues in the 3.X ruleset, but their skill system is probably one of the most visible deficiencies. I don't believe that this was addressed in the Tomes, was it?

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Oct 12, 2010 1:47 am

Mine. Throw out take-10, take-20, and opposed rolls. You get +5 when not opposed or pressured for time, but there are no retries, ever.

DCs for ordinary folk start at 5, household budgeting and shit, 10 is for complex double integrals, 15 is proving relativity from first principles, and 20 is finding the theory of everything.

So, your rogue hides in a shadow, DC 15. Congratulations, you're invisible and can't be targeted. Perception checks can counter surprise from an invisible foe, or allow you to pinpoint him for an area effect if he's not also silent.

High level PCs, AKA demigods, can do legendary shit mid-combat without even rolling, if that's their shtick. The Rogue can hide behind you, and follow you around as you look for him, stealing your shit, without rolling. The Wizard knows this dragon is a sucker for yellow diamonds and just happens to have a really big one that was stolen from him 200 years ago. The Monk can walk on a fine mist, jump up to the clouds, and climb the last rays of daylight into the ethereal plane. The Cleric can cure the recently dead and dismembered with a quick poultice, some CPR, and an Orison for the spark.

Magic items? +5 1/day at low level, +5 all day at high level, not stacking with +5 for taking your time. Masterwork items? Don't randomly break.

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Tue Oct 12, 2010 5:03 am

Wait, so in a group of 20 level 1 commoners with no skill points allocated anywhere except mud farming and all mods at +0, one of them would find the theory to everything...

There's something wrong with that scenario.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Tue Oct 12, 2010 12:31 pm

Untrained penalties if you care to ban laymen doing anything interesting. -5 works.

But 10 first level math-Wizards with +5? Nearly a sure thing. If there's some reason you want it to not happen, the quickest route is to require 3 consecutive successes, each taking 3 months of study (or a year each without time pressure). Then in 9 months your 10 Wizards have a 24% chance of getting it, and they can never try again*.

Which is pathetic, because a mid-level Cleric can just ask his god what it is tomorrow, for far less cost than paying the young Wizards to do a year's work for him.

The key here is that it's not DC 80 to balance on a cloud, because the Wizard can do that and more 100% of the time at 3rd level (if only a couple times a day), and there's falling damage for failure with the skill. DC 20 is already hugely unfair, by mid levels the Wizard can plane shift and the Monk still can't reliably cloud-walk.

Skills should do things, if they are to be on the character sheet, and get screen time in the game.

*Of course you /can/ try again, retries just need some new information, gained through adventure and treasure maps and shit.

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Wed Oct 13, 2010 5:30 am

I think that is a no...

I mean, if the theory of everything were DC 20, someone like Neils Bohr would have figured it out by now. We've had AT LEAST 20 people over the course of the Earth's history with about +5 in whatever the hell that skill is.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 3:25 am

Valor; you seem to desire a model of "exceptional human" level PCs, say level 3 or so, that limits them to doing nothing obviously fantastic, ever, not even with a very small chance of success. This in a fantasy game, operating alongside perfect all-day magical invisibility, and men who can wrestle lions and bears.

I'm quite happy for sub-heroic types to /rarely/ do super-human things, so that the heroic ones have a fair chance, and the old masters do it whenever they want, and the little walking gods can improvise a quick solution to the same awesome things mid-battle without any trouble at all, maybe even covering some situational penalties.

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Thu Oct 14, 2010 4:45 am

I'm sorry... I thought we were talking about the theory of everything.

That would be known as the theory. Of. Everything. The one that ALL OF EARTH'S LEVEL THREE HUMANS HAVE NOT FOUND OUT.

You seem to equate "all day invisibility" and "wrestling lions" to knowing the theory of everything.

I would happen to think that's total bullshit, since the theory of everything is more... how do we say it? Oh, that's it: Deific. In a 20-level system, that's a 17th-level wizard at minimum. So with 30 Int (+10 Mod), 20 skill points, and a +17 magic item... I'd say the DC is somewhere around 55-65.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Oct 15, 2010 3:56 am

I do equate "all day invisibility" and "wrestling lions" to discovering the TOE. Things which human beings have wished to do for millenia, but have never been able to achieve, even standing on the shoulders of giants.

In a 20-level system, that's a 17th-level wizard at minimum.

Again, a mid level cleric can just ask his god what it is. To a 17th level Wizard, all the reality encompassed by a TOE is just a blank canvas for his spells to make Giant Frog with.

... I'd say the DC is somewhere around 55-65.

And thus the PCs can never do anything awesome with skills, except very rarely when they're all but gods empowered by the ultimate in magic buffs. Is it because us plebs in the real world are having trouble with it? Oh no, wait, you don't do that at all, because your PCs can jump a 30' gap regularly enough at lower levels, despite the world record being just a bit short of that for us real folk (most of whom find 10' impossible). DC 60 indeed.

I mean, at first level a Barbarian with a feat can break the world record at 100m, all the way through to 400m without stopping, and a Wizard can damn near half them all the way to a half mile. So first level characters can be routinely better than all humankind, can blow us away with a 1st level spell, but you need near-epic everything to think just a little better than real people do?

No wonder fighters can't have nice things. People want high level characters to suck.

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Fri Oct 15, 2010 4:40 am

Oh, wow, I love your delicious hyperboles. I say "DC is 55-65", which is totally reasonable for a theory of everything (The theory of everything, let me reiterate, is the THEORY OF EVERYTHING. It will let you predict EVERYTHING and know EVERYTHING about EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN THING IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING UNIVERSE).

So addressing your bullshit in order:

1) Um, humans have dreamed of running the mile in 4 minutes. Humans have also dreamed of running the mile in 2 minutes. Humans have also dreamed of running the mile backwards with their eyes closed in 30 seconds. That doesn't mean they're all the same tier. There's no tier called "superhuman" which encompasses everything we can't do, because what we can't do ranges from a 3 meter high jump to destroying planet earth (and beyond).

So this argument fails.

2) Um, a Cleric... can ask his God one question... that the God can answer upon its whim. Oh, yeah, definitely the same. Oh, and waitaminute. This is a MID LEVEL CLERIC. So your example doesn't even support your goddamn point!

Well jesus christ, it looks like you're still wrong...

3) Um, yeah, look at all those fucking buffs. Everywhere. All over every part of the wizard. He must be using like 900 items right there. Jeez, what's wrong with me?

I took the standard wizard, assumed he had full skill points in whatever the hell he's studying (hint, no buffs so far) and gave him an item that enhances such a skill (hint, not a buff either. And making a basic magic item like that is something most wizards pull off in their sleep by level 17. He really didn't have to do any fucking work, aside from those skill points)

4) Oooooh, and if a barbarian can run really fast, 20 level 3 characters sitting in a room should be able to figure out the theory of everything easily!

... yeah, go suck a dick.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Fri Oct 15, 2010 1:57 pm

WTF?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything

fully explains and links together all known physical phenomena, and, ideally, has predictive power for the outcome of any experiment that could be carried out in principle.

You'd have to know everything already to have a ToE let you know everything later, but uncertainty says you can't know everything about anything, let alone everything.

So, yea, this conversation is obviously a bit over your head. Sorry for using science terms in front of the children and all, eh. Perhaps if look up what words mean before you go getting your cock out next time, sweet as it is.

Also, try reading what I wrote again, the DCs are part of a change to the skill system. Or whatever chokes your chicken, dude. Not important.

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Fri Oct 15, 2010 5:40 pm

Wonderful straw everywhere here. so you're saying "the theory of everything isn't super exact because quantum physics! That makes you stupid"..... so either you're conceding that this isn't actually a theory of everything (backing down in a straw-y fashion), or you're just slinging a definition around and pretending it has something to do with the argument. An then your argument becomes "I wasn't actually talking about 3.5!!!!!", despite the fact that every argument you and I posed has to do with 3.5 base... why so straw?

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sat Oct 16, 2010 11:45 am

It makes you ignorant, and apparently proud of it. Go read the wiki article.

Your problem arose in believing I had suggested that low level types could predict the future of everything all at once forever, when I had suggested no such thing, but had accidentally talked above your level, and then failed to notice you had no idea what we were talking about.

Do keep trying though, you might learn something.

To continue the aside of your education: uncertainty is a very real physical phenomena. The reason you can't measure position and speed for particles too precisely is that real things do not actually have both properties that precisely. It's why light diffracts through a grate and interferes with itself.

Shit, it's the basic premise that allows nuclear fusion to work. You know, like stars. Stars also being real, what with us being made of old exploded stars. Real. Probability functions are what the world really is, not tiny little balls.

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Sat Oct 16, 2010 6:34 pm

ahhh, so 20 level 3 characters could find out the theory of everything.

... But they couldn't figure out anything else...

My friend, you need to understand that if 20 level 3 characters can figure out the theory of everything, they will figure out EVERYTHING of equivalent difficulty and perform EVERY act of equivalent difficulty. They will also figure out and perform EVERYTHING of lesser difficulty.

Which is to say, since the ToE happens to be one of the most difficult concepts to figure out, those same 20 level 3 chars could learn EVERYTHING "and know EVERYTHING about EVERY SINGLE GODDAMN THING IN THE ENTIRE FUCKING UNIVERSE"... as I said before.

So you're still wrong. Because figuring out the ToE won't directly let you figure out everything about the universe. But the situation you give, with the ToE's difficulty, ensures that you WILL figure out every fucking thing in the universe. And in a world where people can stop time and shit... yeah, they'll definitely be able to predict whatever the hell they want.

So please, don't call me ignorant until you figure out how DC's work.

tussock · Post by **tussock** » Sun Oct 17, 2010 7:44 am

My friend, you need to understand

Heh, good one.

that if 20 level 3 characters can figure out the theory of everything, they will figure out EVERYTHING of equivalent difficulty and perform EVERY act of equivalent difficulty. They will also figure out and perform EVERYTHING of lesser difficulty.

Why, all they would need is an infinite amount of time: then they could discover everything about, well, not a lot, because big hot things change over time and aren't fully deterministic. Not to mention the sheer scale of calculations required for large system models to give answers to specific questions and the difficulty in determining all the initial conditions for them.

Chaos theory describes a real property of the world too you know. N-body problems, uncertainty, proteins and combinatorial math, complex systems like climate or intelligent society or the web of life or sunspots or character optimisation or ... say, the decision making process of a single human brain.

So, low level folks could figure out a few of all the fantastic things they try to figure out, which will be a very small proportion of all the things there are. Some of those things they do know will then change, in part because they will go and change them, what with this being an adventure game and all. Then, ooh, they'll have more stuff to figure out, and change, and figure out, .... Yay.

Severian · Post by **Severian** » Tue Nov 09, 2010 5:30 pm

The classes look good. If you start out with all twelve, you'd probably never have to make a new base class again, and can concentrate on prestige paths or whatever. I'd rename the wizard to sorcerer, then the artificier to wizard. And maybe reduce the leveling scheme to just two main classes for simplicity. The skill tier system and the concept of talent points is good too. Like if you have a master-class awareness skill you can spend some talent points to get darkvision or blindsense.

I'm not quite sure how the power system works, could someone link me to the winds of fate system?

For Valor · Post by **For Valor** » Fri Dec 17, 2010 4:33 am

I'm looking at the tables here, and apparently you don't need level 5, 7, and 9 major powers from your dominant class? I think something is wrong there.