The Skill System: Unsalvageable.

[RandomCasualty]

Thinking about Name magic and it tying into the skill system got me thinking about how dumb the D&D skill system really is. Not just for name magic but in general.

Basically there's really no reason to have skill DCs or skill points in almost all cases. Basically skills exist for only a few reasons.

Flavor Basis: Your character is supposed to have some noncombat schtick or knowledge that isn't handled by the combat rules. Maybe he's a bard who sings well and is good at charming the ladies or perhaps he's just a sailor who knows how to navigate by the stars. Either way, you're good at doing something.

Way of handing the PCs knowledge: It's another way for the DM to introduce clues or plot by simply saying that the wizard can identify a set of runes or the fighter knows the heraldric seal of the baron.

And that's it.

Now D&D uses it for a bunch of other bad reasons, listed below. Like combat bonuses or making money, which shouldn't be present in the game at all.

Now, the other issue with skills, which is less talked about is the basic DC and bonus system. I'm not just talking about getting insanely high check bonuses, but rather the basic idea of rolling dice for skills.

If for instance, the idea of knowledge skills is to present the PCs with knowledge, why have them roll? If the DM wants them to know something, then he should just outright tell them, and if he doesn't then he shouldn't tell them. It's a lot easier to plan an adventure when you simply decide the wizard can identify the runes beforehand.

The only reason you ever want a roll is if you're trying to create tension. Can you get the lock open before the trapped ceiling crushes you all? Have your arguments convinced the King sufficiently to overturn the order for your execution? And stuff like that. Though rolls like that are potentially dangerous because they can be saving throws versus a save or die effect for the entire party. Are we even sure we want stuff like that in the game?

In general saving throw effects aren't fun. Just walking along without any choices and being hit with "roll a 6 or better or die" isn't particularly entertaining from a game point of view. Playing a game is about decision making, and ultimately that requires separate minigames, similar to combat. Combat is fun simply because it allows you some degree of failure. You can swing your sword and miss and it's ok, because there are many phases to the minigame. Skill checks are too binary. You don't ever want people to fail those mandatory save or die skill checks. Sure, you want them to feel like they're racing the clock, but in the end you want the rogue to get open that lock before time runs out and the party gets crushed.

Now various effort can be made to try to turn skill checks into a sort of minigame like combat too. In fact, Shadowrun did this with the old Matrix. Basically computer skill checks because a sort of minigame and that was kinda cool in making skill checks fun, however it had the problem that everyone else was sitting around doing nothing. So making a trap disarm or open lock minigame for your rogue isn't a great idea, because it means everyone else is sitting around waiting for him to fail or succeed.

Certain things that apply to the whole group, like stealth, may actually function pretty well as a minigame. And in a context of a minigame, rolling dice makes sense becuase you're making decisions and you can accept a certain margin of failure.

But otherwise, why roll dice at all?

We only need three categories of skill proficiency.

Minor: This is something for somebody who dabbles in a skill. The guy who knows how to use a sextant and raise the sails on a ship, but really isn't going to be doing many heroic feats of sailing. You can hand out minor skills rather readily and without worrying about screwing up your game.

Major: A major schtick to somebody. The rogue who disarms traps, or the wizard's magical lore and so on. This represents a good level of professional skill, but nothing truly over the top. A rogue can open a complex lock with his picks, but he couldn't do so by kicking it.

Epic: A primary focus for a high level character (and these should be very few). This is all the over the top crap that you want myth style heroes to do and how you handle the Hulk's ability to lift really heavy crap, A beautiful goddess' ability to instantly get men to fall in love with her, and a swordsman who can craft a perfect blade in only a few minutes or the guy who swims up waterfalls in full plate.

Now basically Minor and Major skills are the main stuff that the rules should be concerned with. Epic skills should generally be campaign specific, since the DM is going to have to determine if any particular ability is unbalanced for his game or not and if it fits the flavor.

But basically I think if you have a certain level of skill you should almost always succeed, sometimes with variable time frames.

For instance, instead of writing Open Lock (DC 35). You would just say that the lock requires 3 rounds to pick with a major skill in lockpicking. Or your quest notes could indicate that anyone with major knowledge in magical theory would know a certain fact, and anyone with minor knowledge would know something else, and so on.

And if you wanted for whatever reason to add tension to a not always lethal situation, you can just throw in a direct percentage chance. 15% that you spring the trap while trying to disarm it for instance.

Now some people are going to claim that this somehow makes the game unbalanced or unfair, because it allows DMs to control the difficulty, but seriously, DMs already do. It's just a lot easier and more generic to set a 15% failure for people who have trap disarm (major), as opposed to looking up the party rogue's trap disarming skill check and setting a DC so that he fails on a 3 or less. The DM can set a DC like that, it's just a lot more work and doesn't really achieve much aside from making adventure design tougher.

But really, in most cases we'll probably find that we don't want to do that anyway. If the rogue has made the decision to search for traps, and then disarms the trap, then we might as well just allow him to disarm it every time, assuming it's supposed to be a passable obstacle. There may come times when the story calls for a trap the rogue deliberately can't disarm, and in that case we don't want him disarming it regardless. There really isn't any room for much middle ground most of the time. We like to reward correct decisions, like deciding to search for the trap and punish incorrect ones, like walking into the trap. There generally isn't need to add randomness, unless of course we want to create tension.

[MrWaeseL]

I agree, and instead of getting skill points each level, you should be able to choose a number of skills at character creation which are then considered "major" for you.

[Username17]

In general I agree with you, at least as far as skills like Profession and Disable Device go. But there is also a whole separate set of skills in D&D that are opposed tests.

Sleight of Hand opposes Spot, Craft opposes Search, Move Silently opposes Listen, and Bluff opposes Sense Motive. And game systems exist for the singular purpose of resolving exactly those sorts of disputes.

Remember:

The speed of resolution of a role playing system is only a small component of what makes a game holistically good or not. The fastest resolution system or course, is Cops and Robbers in which characters simply describe their actions and those actions take place. Unfortunately, that game system can become very contentious with the age old action resolution problem where one player insists that a shot hit while another insists that the shot missed.

It's my experience that the C&R system bogs down precisely then, which iswhen any combat crawls to a halt. I've had single sessions, even one combat scene, of C&R last literally all day, or at least until the sun started to go down and one or more players had to go home for dinner.

The expansion, Cowboys and Indians, is not better. C&I allows for a new weapon, namely bows, which addresses the issue of difference between the classes (or lack thereof) that some critics had brought up. However, it does not do anything to make resolution more deterministic and less a matter of personal interpretation and house rules.

The point of having a game at all is to determine whether your character successfully snuck past the guards or you have to run/fight. Both results are an interesting story, and the fact that the narative could plausibly go either way creates tension. The fact that the results of the dice determine in a clear way which result occurs keeps the game from collapsing into narrative confusion.

---

That being said, we know that the current rules for sneaking do not work at all. It's a negative 20 penalty to have people not see you while you're running - and real people can just do that (sometimes without trying) when of course only powerful ninjas with magical cloaks of stealth can make that check in D&D (and they make that check all the time).

But we do want sneaking and spotting to be power level dependent. When Conan sneaks around, the generic guards don't see him. The Evil High Priest's assistant the cruel fencer with a mask obscuring a minor facial scar may or may not spot Conan (but more likely notices evidence of Conan's passing and sounds the alarm after dramatically swirling his cape while turning to chastise his guards for their lax behavior). When Aladdin spews out a line of bull all the townsfolk and guards buy it wholesale and Jafar sees right through the story.

So when you do your C&R matches, power level counts. That was supposed to be the point of the ranks by level system, it just didn't work.

-Username17

[Neeek]

1143141124[/unixtime]]
That being said, we know that the current rules for sneaking do not work at all. It's a negative 20 penalty to have people not see you while you're running - and real people can just do that (sometimes without trying) when of course only powerful ninjas with magical cloaks of stealth can make that check in D&D (and they make that check all the time).

Indeed. Sneaking up on people is really, really easy. I do it all the time on accident.

But we do want sneaking and spotting to be power level dependent.

The problem here is threefold, as I see it:

First, you have the problem that not everyone gets better at spotting/hearing as they get more powerful, so being more powerful does not equal being better at noticing stuff.

Second, in many cases, even if they were trying to be better at noticing, they might still quickly fall behind the stealthy people if they aren't in a class with Spot and Listen.

Third, the difference can be nearly insurmountable at *1st* level. Your 20 Dex Strongheart Halfling with skill focus in Hide and Stealthy has a +18 to Hide at 1st level. And that's not even an unreasonable thing to be. This guy, compared to a 8 Wis Fighter type who has a -1 total in Spot(also a perfectly okay thing to be), has a 1 in 400 chance of failing.

[Crissa]

My problem with 'Minor' vs 'Major' is that if we're rolling to do something common, say, sail a boat, sometimes we might just fail, for no reason.

That's fun, if you want to say, 'well, this time you fall in the water.' which happens sometimes, but some people don't want their stories to have random laugh moments.

Or the fact that most sailors can sail a boat but can't use a sextant. But not everyone can sail a boat!

If the skills were narrow enough, and everyone got access to some of them - If you don't have Spot or Listen, you just plain suck - maybe instead of being 'class skills' your class just gives you a flat bonus to some skills, and we have a limit to the number of flat numbers in the system?

-Crissa

[Username17]

Indeed. Sneaking up on people is really, really easy. I do it all the time on accident.

Me too. Which is surprising because I'm probably getting circumstance penalties for dressing entirley in bright orange all the time.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1143141124[/unixtime]]
Sleight of Hand opposes Spot, Craft opposes Search, Move Silently opposes Listen, and Bluff opposes Sense Motive. And game systems exist for the singular purpose of resolving exactly those sorts of disputes.

Well, a major/minor system can handle opposed skills. Much like the following.

major skill in sense motive can detect someone with minor skill in bluff, and minor sense motive detects lies from somebody with no skill in bluff. If you've got major skill in bluff, then your lies are effectively undetectable with sense motive (except epic sense motive). Because really that's kinda the way we want the plot to work. Some NPCs are supposed to be good liars. If the jedi could determine that Palpatine was really Sideous, then Star Wars would have been over at the Phantom Menace.

If for whatever reason you wanted sense motive to not work sometimes, you'd just apply an arbitrary chance of failure. So minor sense motive versus no bluff has a 20% failure chance, or 20% to give you a false read or whatever.

But you could still run a quick fix using something like Major stealth allows a level check, minor stealth allows a level check at a -5 penalty, and no stealth is a level check at a -10 penalty. Spot works the same way and so on, assuming you wanted random stuff.

The stealth system needs some major improvements though anyway. I'd actually prefer to see stealth as a sort of minigame in which the sneaker has to take multiple different actions to sneak past someone. Creating distractions, using camouflage and cover and so on. A rogue could be forced to move really slow to avoid tremorsense or have special abilities to beat darkvision and so on. There's a lot of cool things we can do with stealth to make it more than merely a series of random checks and effectively a crapshoot.

My problem with 'Minor' vs 'Major' is that if we're rolling to do something common, say, sail a boat, sometimes we might just fail, for no reason.

Well, that's why I propose we remove rolling for the most part. The idea is that most skills don't require a roll, because really, we don't want our supposedly proficient character failing in stupid moments. So if we say that he's got climb as a major, he should be able to climb most surfaces without a roll. Only if we want a deliberately difficult situation, or he's going to be climbing fast or something where we want to create tension, that's where we'd have a roll.

But ideally this system is going to remove a lot of pointless rolling. If you have blacksmithing you don't ever have to roll a check to make horseshoes, you just do it. Similarly you don't constantly need to make swim checks and so on. Only when we deliberately want a chance of failure do we put one in, and that's generally an exception not a rule. In most situations, we want our rogues to be able to find that secret door every time when they decide to search for it.

[User3]

Haven't we gone over all of this in SAME already?

Some skills make sense as binary abilities, and some make sense as opposed check (bascally, attacks that don't deal damage).

Diplomacy should never be a 'must be this tall' ability (as it is in D&D). It is a direct attack on the opposing character's beliefs, and should always be treated as such.
If you have a really good diplomatic ability, you can usually convince your significant other to go to 'the opera' in a 'battle of the sexes' game. The king, on the other hand, will almost always convince you to go to the 'prize fight.'

Bluffing is, of course, being able to convince someone to stay quiet in a 'prisoner's dilemma' while you defect.

But the element of randomness is what makes trying to convince someone to do otherwise than they normally would a decision rather than a certainty.

Knowledge as a check-skill is dumb, because (as far as I can tell) retention of knowledge. One day you can make your Knowledge (arcana) check to know that blue dragons are immune to electricity, and the next day you may not. Even if someone tells you and you write it down, you still have to make the check (perhaps to remember where you wrote it?).

Books provide flat bonuses to knowledge checks. Character A might be able to use the Tome of Mean Devils to learn that Figgltybumpus is vulnerable to acid, while someone with a lower skill check won't.

[RandomCasualty]

1143149029[/unixtime]]
Diplomacy should never be a 'must be this tall' ability (as it is in D&D). It is a direct attack on the opposing character's beliefs, and should always be treated as such.
If you have a really good diplomatic ability, you can usually convince your significant other to go to 'the opera' in a 'battle of the sexes' game. The king, on the other hand, will almost always convince you to go to the 'prize fight.'

Well, really social skills tend to be plot advancers, especially diplomacy.

And social skills really form a sort of minigame anyway with player dialogue, so I don't really even consider them. Except for bluff/ sense motive, which can actually fit into the minigame as opposed to replace it.

But basically if you're not running a social minigame, then things are pure plot. "I try to convince the king to do X". Sometimes X is advancing the plot, so you want it to happen, sometimes X is contrary to the plot, so you don't want it to happen. Sometimes X is outright game destructive, so you really don't want it to happen. And there's really no reason to ever roll dice on that, since it's all flavor and plot.

Now we probably want different social proficiencies to add flavor to our characters. So if you had for instance Seduction (major) for your bard, then you should be able to seduce a lot of characters, but sometimes it doesn't work, and that's basically a plot point.

Eventually when you get down to it, you want certain NPCs who are inviolate to diplomacy. The king shouldn't ever get swindled out of his kingdom or the BBEG talked into converting to good, unless it's part of the plot.

And social stuff makes for good minigames. Granted it isn't concretely defined minigames like combat, but rather a social game, where you have to choose the right things to say and avoid saying wrong things to win. Now some groups like social minigames and some groups don't, just like some like dungeon crawls and others don't, and I'd prefer to make social minigames the default for interaction, and let DMs decide to use or not use them as part of their style.

But either way, skills exist pretty much to advance the plot and reinforce character flavor. You create a lock with a DC low enough to be opened because you want it to get opened. You set a DC for diplomacy low because you want them to convince the king and you set it high when you don't want them to. But seriously, why bother with all that? Why not just have it work when you want it to and not work when you don't?

Basically you just want a system to account for character flavor. A major skill should work all the time except when the plot directly needs it to fail. A minor skill should work all the time for minor tasks and sometimes for major tasks if the plot wants someone to succeed. And someone with no skills should pretty much only be able to succeed at very minor things.

Skills have always been there to serve the plot, it's just that now the DM has to do so in a roundabout way, by setting DCs based on the PCs checks, as opposed to simply saying what he wants the plot to do.

If it's not a minigame, then there's probably not much point rolling for it because there aren't any player decisions to be taken into account, and if you can't make decisions, then it might as well just get resolved by a mix of flavor and plot. We're telling a story here. One that is shaped by the DMs basic plotline and modified by the PC's choices within that framework. If the PCs don't actually get to make choices (by creating a minigame), then there's no need to involve random chance at all.

Because as far as the PCs are concerned, a king that is 50% likely to side with them and 50% to side against them is equivalent to a 100% chance either way depending on what happens. This isn't an adventure the PCs are going to run through multiple times, so worrying about replayability and alternate random plot branches isn't a good idea. It makes more work on the DM for no good reason.