so what do you want out of a skill system?

Spaghetti Western · Post by **Spaghetti Western** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:07 pm

Lot's of discussion about the failings or success of skill systems employed by RPG's.

From what I gather the main complaint is that they do not lend themselves very well to group play. Basically for most challenge you have one player attempting it and the other's being mostly passive either watching or aiding.

additionally I've read lots of comments about a lack of degree in either success or failure.

so my question, forget about what is or had been done. put simply what do want out of a skill system?

I want something that is as diverse in challenge as combat (some are very easy where success is assured, some are moderately tough and some are very difficult) that combines risk with an appropriate amount of reward. I want something that involves the entire group and incorporates the various different roles characters already occupy. Additionally I would like some structure and direction and how to incorporate skills into adventures (the same way various monsters are) that makes them fun to do and seek out. I keep coming back to combat but for me and the people I play with, we enjoy combat and in general it's a part of the game we look forward to. skill challenges on the other are mostly a non event, boring, or worse a pinch point for the adventure.

additionally I would like see encounters in which skills and combat are incorporated together in way that matters. This is hard to explain but I guess what I'm saying is I want skills to feel like they are adding color to the story.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:23 pm

I would like skills to be a very simple set of opposed interactions, and a small subset of things that are "open to everyone" that can be bought with skill ranks, like craft or handle animal or climb or swim.

I think I would like an entirely separate knowledge system which might work like speak language, you either know about planar portals or you don't. But with a separate knowledge only pool of things you know about.

The skill system should be a very basic system such that no level X Wizard or Shadow Warrior or Masterful Accountant can do anything using skills that a level X Commoner couldn't do as well, but they might do different things, because of different interests or priorities. Obviously this would mean no class skills.

A separate question of what out of combat time should be like involves basically abilities ala black forest. Your abilities might be out of combat or combat, and you would use some of them at different points.

You might have a class ability: "Can walk through walls" or "Knows a guy" or "Can fly" or something like that, and the skills are just a baseline thing, but abilities are your primary powerful means of interacting with the world.

That's assuming we are talking about a fantasy game style involving world spanning events and shit. For a tactical combat simulator, skills would be different.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:23 pm

I think the question is asked in the TNE thread over skills. I think skills should represent a success rate. People who don't have the relevant skills should be able to make an attempt but have a lower success rate because of this. I also think that natural talent (attribute scores) should influence this success rate.

Otherwise I agree with what Kaelik has presented:

I would like skills to be a very simple set of opposed interactions, and a small subset of things that are "open to everyone" that can be bought with skill ranks, like craft or handle animal or climb or swim.

I think I would like an entirely separate knowledge system which might work like speak language, you either know about planar portals or you don't. But with a separate knowledge only pool of things you know about.

The skill system should be a very basic system such that no level X Wizard or Shadow Warrior or Masterful Accountant can do anything using skills that a level X Commoner couldn't do as well, but they might do different things, because of different interests or priorities. Obviously this would mean no class skills.

I can't find the words but this is a good example of what I'm thinking.

ludomastro · Post by **ludomastro** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 12:07 am

you could always go back to the past and use a percentile based skill success chance like AD&D.

TarkisFlux · Post by **TarkisFlux** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 12:48 am

I want a skill system that boils down to a simple task resolution system, where a single roll decides whether an individual character succeeds or fails at a task. I want task defined as a very small thing, like hitting someone with a sword once or shooting a target once or hiding from a guard for a round or treading water for a round or piloting a fighter through an asteroid belt for a round. Some degree of success or failure would be nice as well, but I can get by without it.

Corollary A: I want any event that reduces to exactly two states to be decided by a single roll, regardless of how complicated it is. If, because the writer/DM is an idiot or whatever, you can use a skill to either 1) convince the king to let you marry his daughter, or 2) be executed by the king for asking for his daughter's hand, and there are no other options, I don't want that determination to take to take any more than one roll.

I want to take those little things, and string them together to create nuanced events with a wide continuum of results, ranging form absolute failure to complete success. I want any event with a wide range of outcomes, like combat, attempting to get sensitive information out of a secured network, or convincing a king to go to war, to benefit from multiple people contributing in different ways or with different skills. The asteroid field could be accomplished by a character piloting round by round, a character plotting a course round by round, and several characters shooting down errant objects round by round. Successes mean the ship gets through intact; failures increase the damage the ship takes, and increase the distance they have to make up to catch whoever they are chasing through the field. While there may be a maximum number of allowed failures, there are several ways to contribute to the overall success, and characters would be expected to do it concurrently. Like they already do in combat.

I am ok with people being unable to contribute equally to all aspects of every mini-game, as long as they can contribute to most mini-games equally. If any one mini-game is expected more than 50% of the time, it is not included in the above statement and everyone should be able to contribute to it decently.

I want skills to be semi-well defined, because I don't like playing "justify using this skill" with a GM, but they should also be usable in a wide variety of circumstances. Combat and non-combat uses for skills would be an improvement.

In a level based game with overlap between abilities and skills, I want skills to be an alternate but largely equal path to abilities. In level based games with no overlap between abilities and skills, I don't care how they are broken up, as long as they do it in a way that makes sense.

I want all skills bought with the same points, in a level based system, to be largely equal in power. I care much less about it in a skill based system, because there is no indicator upon which to assume equivalence.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 12:52 am

Dividing up characters' abilities is a necessary element in making an ensemble cast function. Of which these come in two different main types: abilities that allow everyone to go on the same mission; and abilities that allow each character to have their niche. A good thing to consider would be something like Stargate Atlantis or Star Trek.

So consider Rodney McKay and John Sheppard. Both of them can sneak around and shoot assault rifles. This allows them to go on missions and fight Wraith and shit. John is an expert pilot, a seducer of women, and a hard core sniper and shit. Rodney is into super science and so on and so forth. This allows them to have different scenes to shine in.

The system by which you parse up abilities should support everyone being able to go on the mission, and also to allow people to have a little day in the sun.

-Username17

IGTN · Post by **IGTN** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 12:52 am

First we need to define what we mean by "Skills."

If one person wants to use "Skills" to mean "background abilities" and another person wants to use "Skills" to mean "contested abilities," a third wants to use them to mean "AD&D Thief abilities," and a fourth wants to use them to mean "ability categories," then you can't get a skill system that does all three, nor should you even try.

"What should an RPG Skill System look like?" is a meaningless question.

Josh_Kablack · Post by **Josh_Kablack** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 5:19 am

As a DM I want the ability to know which skill applies to the sort of tasks that might come up in game - and in most games I've seen 2 to 5 different skills can reasonably be applied to many such tasks - this is a problem because it adds confusion about the game and causes characters not to have capabilities that match their player's conceptions.

As a DM I also want both the ability to scale between:

High-abstraction and handle simple, boring, or large, but non-group tasks with a single skill check ("you spend several weeks researching the keep, make a history check to see how much background info you get"; "While the wizard researches that, you go to the joust and participate, make a ride check to see how well you perform.")
Less-abstraction tasks where incremental and partial success is possible and collaboration between different PCs is beneficial ("Your history roll tells you that the fourth duke loved secret passages but you can't be sure which of the fortifications were built in his reign - maybe if the dwarf saw some of the stones he could tell you which masonry dates to that duke's reign"; "Today you face Sir Rodney, renowned for his mottled stallion, make an opposed ride check to see who wins each of the three passes." )
In combat dramatic skill use, where success is eventually assured, but the skill checks determine the duration of the task, and consequentially how long the combat lasts. ("The first of the Horde scouts is here, some of you well have to hold them back while the others hunt for the secret passage into the keep. "; "Now that you've unhorsed each other, it's to hand to hand, and he still bears a grudge over Lady Tyndell - you'll either have to kill him or convince the King to halt the match. Make an attack roll or Diplomacy check each round")

And I want to be able to do so without shafting players for unintentional character building choices. Your character class by itself should not prohibit you from either fighting off the Horde or searching for secret doors. If however you were playing Zatoichi the Blind Swordsman or Prince Phil the Pacifist, that's the sort of choice that implies the player has made up their mind about which choice their character would make in advance.

*****

As a player, I wand a fucking reason to use my skills meaningfully. If my DC 25 Knowledge check just tells me what the critter's name is and where it lives, that's a fucking useless waste of a combat action - heck even as a free/ zero-phase action it's a waste of a die roll and the required 3 seconds of realtime to process it - instead I want benefits on par with the flat-footed/combat advatage + potential sneak attack dice that stealth grants for each and every relevant skill. A successful knowledge skill should add combat maneuvers like grappling to deactivate a crocodile's bite or rolling in a stream to disperse a swarm and so on.

souran · Post by **souran** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:36 pm

Personally,

Skills should be one of the things that lets you abstract a character that is less like you. They need to be there to differentiate characters not just from each other but from the players who play them.

I think skills need to be fairly broad, unless you want to give out lots of acess to them. Making them larger categories instead of smaller ones usually works better. (Alternity anybody?) Broad skills also mean that things that players think that their characters probably know or think is at least tangential to their areas of knowledge end up covered. It means that the gamemaster doesn't have to worry if somebody took "history ancient summaria" The historian is like daniel jackson from stargate. He is all historians.

Talking D&D now, I think that class skills are not a good idea. The problem is that all the skills on the class skill list are ones that characters of that class should probably have. For instance if you spend all day practicing fight techniques you are going to be more atheltic than the guy who reads those histories. Also, even if you are totally imcompotent at most other tasks you are probably going to learn things like streaching and limbering up. Fencers/boxers/martial artists are athletes. Fighters shouldn't have to "take" atheltics to be athletes. They already are.

Class skills should be those skills that the activities of your class give you training or distinct advantage in. Then you should just get to select skills from the complete list. This would actually mean narrowing the class skill lists.

Yes fighters probably ought to know heal but should they get an advantage to it? Probably not.

Starmaker · Post by **Starmaker** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 1:50 pm

souran wrote:Yes fighters probably ought to know heal but should they get an advantage to it? Probably not.

Why? I can totally envision a fighter who knows how to stitch up a guy as well as how to cut him open. Why not have 1) class skills = level-appropriate stuff they have by default and 2) a laundry list for people to pick non-class skills from if you want for characters to be able to learn skills as they go, or 2') backgrounds if you don't want them to.

souran · Post by **souran** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 2:07 pm

Starmaker wrote:
souran wrote:Yes fighters probably ought to know heal but should they get an advantage to it? Probably not.
Why? I can totally envision a fighter who knows how to stitch up a guy as well as how to cut him open. Why not have 1) class skills = level-appropriate stuff they have by default and 2) a laundry list for people to pick non-class skills from if you want for characters to be able to learn skills as they go, or 2') backgrounds if you don't want them to.

I am not saying that fighers shouldn't be able to take heal as a class skill. Or even learn to be a doctor. What I am saying is that being a figher and practicing at being a figher doesn't make you a better doctor than being say a wizard.

However, the figher IS going to be a better athelete than the wizard because to keep his skills up is going to turn him into a bit of an athelete.

See the differance?

Instead of picking your class skills from a small list, you should be picking from the whole list. However, your class should provide you additional benefit in a couple of areas.

Or take arcana/spellcraft/whatever skill represents training in magic. The wizard as D&D has defined them is a person who has studdied to be good at magic. Simply by being a wizard he should get a bonus to arcana.

However, anybody should be able to take arcana as a skill.

Because people can come from diverse backgrounds players should be able to pick from the complete skill list when choosing what their characters know.

However, your selected class should give you modifiers to the ones that are core for your class.

So I say, for D&D, smaller skill lists by class but each gets a +2 or +4-5 bonus or whatever. Then you pick skills from all the ones in the game. You pick to be trained in something that your class excels in anyway then you are going to be really good. If you take athletics for your fighter it turns out your fighter is mohammed ali or patyon manning. But anybody can be trained in atheletics.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 2:41 pm

souran wrote:
Starmaker wrote:
souran wrote:Yes fighters probably ought to know heal but should they get an advantage to it? Probably not.
Why? I can totally envision a fighter who knows how to stitch up a guy as well as how to cut him open. Why not have 1) class skills = level-appropriate stuff they have by default and 2) a laundry list for people to pick non-class skills from if you want for characters to be able to learn skills as they go, or 2') backgrounds if you don't want them to.
I am not saying that fighers shouldn't be able to take heal as a class skill. Or even learn to be a doctor. What I am saying is that being a figher and practicing at being a figher doesn't make you a better doctor than being say a wizard.

However, the figher IS going to be a better athelete than the wizard because to keep his skills up is going to turn him into a bit of an athelete.

See the differance?

Instead of picking your class skills from a small list, you should be picking from the whole list. However, your class should provide you additional benefit in a couple of areas.

Or take arcana/spellcraft/whatever skill represents training in magic. The wizard as D&D has defined them is a person who has studdied to be good at magic. Simply by being a wizard he should get a bonus to arcana.

However, anybody should be able to take arcana as a skill.

Because people can come from diverse backgrounds players should be able to pick from the complete skill list when choosing what their characters know.

However, your selected class should give you modifiers to the ones that are core for your class.

So I say, for D&D, smaller skill lists by class but each gets a +2 or +4-5 bonus or whatever. Then you pick skills from all the ones in the game. You pick to be trained in something that your class excels in anyway then you are going to be really good. If you take athletics for your fighter it turns out your fighter is mohammed ali or patyon manning. But anybody can be trained in atheletics.

If you actually put that in a game, congratulations, you just fucked over dozens of characters concepts while breaking your game in the process. The premise is already bad. You want a wizard to be better at arcana, which is a skill available to both of them, presumably because the whole point of skills is because everyone should be able to pick some things his character is good at. It is already linked to intelligence, an attribute the wizard has more of. Now you propose to give the wzard an added bonus. So you end up with the wizard having a bonus of, say, +8 over the fighter. Now lets see what happens in game. The DM sets a DC which is pretty challenging to the wizard (he succeeds half the time, when rolling an 11 or higher). The fighter however only succeeds on a 19+, or 10% of the time. Conversely, anything the fighter has an even chance for is an automatic success for the wizard.

In other words, the whole point of being able to select skills for your fighter just went away. And yet you propose to have all skills available for everyone, with class bonuses for everyone. That is called "fucking over newbies".

Amusingly the wizard 1 / fighter 10 is just as good at arcana as the wizard 11. So even your flavor text does not work - after all a charater with more than 90% fighting classes does not get any bonus over a 100% arcane class. But it gets better. Unless you want sorcerers, beguilers and cloistered clerics to be worse at arcana than a wizard, not only will a sorcerer/wizard be better, but an even more multiclassed character will jump right off the RNG. So if any of your skills actually do anything you want to reserve for higher levels you are fucked - you just handed epic power to a level 5 character.

In short:
Your proposal fucks over newbies, multiclassing breaks it, the flavor text does not fit and it potentially breaks your game.

souran · Post by **souran** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 2:48 pm

Look,

I can do the math. It would be game breaking as the skill rules work right now.

No I have not used it. I don't have house rules written up for this, I don't have playtest solutions for the combinations that break from this work.

The point of the thread is how should skills work. I am just offering an opinion on what the skill system should do. Basically 2 points

1) Your class shouldn't limit your skill selection. You should be able to select skills that you like
2) Your class should still have some effect on your ability at certain skills. A wizard and Rogue with equal stats in intellegence and equal points in arcana should not be equal magicians.

I wouldn't say either concept is really new. Lots of percentile based games give you a bonus to certian skills for selecting a class.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 2:57 pm

souran wrote:1) Your class shouldn't limit your skill selection. You should be able to select skills that you like

I can agree with that. I'm not sure it's needed, but I don't necessarily disagree.

souran wrote:2) Your class should still have some effect on your ability at certain skills. A wizard and Rogue with equal stats in intellegence and equal points in arcana should not be equal magicians.

But the arcana skill does not make you a magician and if it does, what point is there to the wizard class? To me the whole point of the skill system is to have a list of abilities that everyone can take. But even if you don't agree with that, giving someone the opportunity to simply waste points is bad. (Note that this is already an issue with DnD).

souran wrote:I wouldn't say either concept is really new. Lots of percentile based games give you a bonus to certian skills for selecting a class.

That doesn't mean it's a good idea, and certainly not that it's a good idea for completely different systems.

souran · Post by **souran** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 3:19 pm

Arcana is training in magic. If we traded Arcana with physics and thief became con-man and wizard became scientist then I don't think you would argue that the scientist should be better at science than his con-man collegue. Even if in all other aspects they are the same.

The wizard player shouldn't get shown up by rogue in the "how magic works deparment"

On the other hand in a game where nobody plays a wizard or sorrceror or warlock or arcane caster at all the idea that nobody has any idea how magic works is also silly.

The math and skill growths have to be made to work. I don't think the idea is faulty though. I do see the difficulties. It may be more trouble than its worth to impilment.

However, I think it would make for a more entertaining skill system.

Spaghetti Western · Post by **Spaghetti Western** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 3:45 pm

Perhaps "class skills" could be skills in which a character does not have to actively put ranks into in order to advance. So in the Arcana example the wizard would automatically gain 1 rank at first level + 1 rank for every level. In addition he would have his standard free ranks at each level which he could put into other non class skills. so the difference between the thief and wizard with Aracana would be that the thief has to actively spend resources to become more adept while the wizard does not ( as he advances with his training as a wizard). The thief could become as knowledgeable as an equal level wizard but it would be more difficult.

This IMO bears out in real life. I work in finance. My knowledge in finance advances as I show up to work each day. There is nothing stopping say the postman form knowing just as much about finance as me but he would have to actively choose to learn it on his own by reading books, going to classes etc.

this would probably require reducing the number of class skills to a core for each class as well as perhaps reduce the number of "free" ranks each gets as it advances levels, so as to avoid skill inflation.

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 3:47 pm

souran wrote:Arcana is training in magic. If we traded Arcana with physics and thief became con-man and wizard became scientist then I don't think you would argue that the scientist should be better at science than his con-man collegue. Even if in all other aspects they are the same.

Actually I think that if two characters put the same resources into a skill they should be equally good at it. I don't mind wizards being able to climb a rope, why should I mind the rogue being able to recognize a spell? Why do you want rogues to be able to learn the laws of magic (all skills available to everyone) but insist on kicking them in the nuts if they do?

souran wrote:The wizard player shouldn't get shown up by rogue in the "how magic works deparment"

Then don't let rogues learn the skill. What are you going to do when the wizard rolls a 1 and the rogue rolls a 20? Force a reroll? Hand out even higher wizard bonuses? What about a level 10 rogue outdoing a level 5 wizard? Is that ok?

souran wrote:The math and skill growths have to be made to work. I don't think the idea is faulty though. I do see the difficulties. It may be more trouble than its worth to impilment.

To be honest, I'm not even sure you know what you want to do, much less how to do it, or what the problems are.

souran wrote:However, I think it would make for a more entertaining skill system.

How so? I haven't seen a single useful argument from you. All I see is:
- I don't think this is how it should work
- I don't think anyone should beat the wizard at magic
- I don't think anyone should beat the wizard at knowing about magic
- I like it this way

Why, damn it, why? What is the reason?

souran · Post by **souran** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 4:00 pm

Actually I think that if two characters put the same resources into a skill they should be equally good at it. I don't mind wizards being able to climb a rope, why should I mind the rogue being able to recognize a spell? Why do you want rogues to be able to learn the laws of magic (all skills available to everyone) but insist on kicking them in the nuts if they do?

How is it kicking them in the nuts to give a bonus by class for the things that classes should be good at? IF not every possible bonus is avaiable at all times to every class is that somehow preventing them from being comptent in an area or even expert? The idea is to not restrict the possible options of players.

Then don't let rogues learn the skill. What are you going to do when the wizard rolls a 1 and the rogue rolls a 20? Force a reroll? Hand out even higher wizard bonuses? What about a level 10 rogue outdoing a level 5 wizard? Is that ok?

A bad roll or two might make the wizard look like a boob next to a greymouser type rogue. On the other hand if you don't give the mage any other benefit then half the time he gets shown up by the guy for whom magic is a hobby and a parlor trick.

Look we give people +2 to skills all the time for being a certain race. If we open all skills to all classes why can't we give a +2 to 2-3-4 skills that are the classes bread and butter. That way even if your paladin doesn't take diplomacy he is still a little compotent in it. If he takes it he is really good. I guess the other option would be to have 2-3 skills that each class is always trained in and then let them free pick for most of their skills.

To be honest, I'm not even sure you know what you want to do, much less how to do it, or what the problems are.

If you were writting skills from scrach what ideas would you use as design guides? Thats all I am putting forward.

Just another user · Post by **Just another user** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 7:03 pm

Rather than give a plain bonus I think wizards should be able to use the arcana skill in way the other classes can't, and of course other classes with other skills.

for example a wizard could be able to use Arcana to identify exactly a magic item, while other classes could just be able to say it is magical and maybe the kind of magic it contain.

Crissa · Post by **Crissa** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 7:42 pm

I'd like skill rolls to help me default to something when faced with puzzles or 'stupid player syndrome' and the player doesn't actually know/remember/excel as the character does. It's a fall-back point.

But if there's too many rolls, it becomes random you're dead rolls, and I don't like that either.

-Crissa

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 10:11 pm

I think PF took a step in the right direction with skills. Going along with what Souran has put how about this. All skills cost 1 skill point for every class. Every class then has a list of class skills. Every class gets a bonus equal to half their level (rounded down) to their class skills. For cross class issues lets say you have a 3rd level wizard(necromancer)/ 3rd level cleric. You would get a +1 bonus to "knowing magic"(on wiz's list) and a +1 bonus to "knowing scriptures"(on cleric list) and a +3 bonus to "knowing about dead stuff"(on both lists).

Murtak · Post by **Murtak** » Fri Aug 21, 2009 11:36 pm

souran wrote:How is it kicking them in the nuts to give a bonus by class for the things that classes should be good at? IF not every possible bonus is avaiable at all times to every class is that somehow preventing them from being comptent in an area or even expert? The idea is to not restrict the possible options of players.

You want to apply your idea to DnD, correct? Presumably you want people with maxed skills to gain level appropriate abilities from those skills. You already have gaps worth several levels in these skills simply from ability bonuses. If you add more such bonuses you either let the wizard to stuff that is too powerful, or you tell the rogue he is never going to do something useful with the skill.

souran wrote:A bad roll or two might make the wizard look like a boob next to a greymouser type rogue. On the other hand if you don't give the mage any other benefit then half the time he gets shown up by the guy for whom magic is a hobby and a parlor trick.

He payed as much as the wizard - why should he get less?

souran wrote:Look we give people +2 to skills all the time for being a certain race. If we open all skills to all classes why can't we give a +2 to 2-3-4 skills that are the classes bread and butter. That way even if your paladin doesn't take diplomacy he is still a little compotent in it. If he takes it he is really good. I guess the other option would be to have 2-3 skills that each class is always trained in and then let them free pick for most of their skills.

Yeah, and +2 is already bad. +2 for race, +4 for a maxed stat, +4 from your class, +3 from your familiar, +3 from skill focus, 4 skill ranks ... great, we are already at +20. I'm not even sure I want ability scores to add to skills, but everything else is bad for sure.

souran wrote:If you were writting skills from scrach what ideas would you use as design guides? Thats all I am putting forward.

I would either fix what is wrong with the current skills or write a new design from scratch to meet my goals for skills. Both of these require to actually sit down and write out what skills are supposed to do, rather than going with your feelings.