Big Skills

[spongeknight]

So the trend among Dungeons and Dragons editions has been consolidating skills into larger, more meaningful chunks and giving less skill points to spend around. I'm pretty on board with these changes for the most part. Generally, a person wants a character they are playing to be good at a broad list of things that are similar- any kind of fighter is going to want to be able to climb, jump, and swim interchangeably, so moving that all into athletics makes sense. Similarly, any kind of wizard or "wise old person" or whatever is going to want to just know stuff, so splitting knowledge into a bunch of different skills is just annoying. Basically what I'm getting as is we should split skills into archetypes instead of the arbitrary groupings they are in now.

So the skill list might look something like this:

Physical Prowess- all current physical skills rolled together (except larceny stuff)
Scholastic- All knowledge skills, appraise
Magician- all magic/psionic/incarnum/whatever bullshit
Survival- all perception, wilderness survival, morced march checks and shit
Socializing- all social skills rolled together, perform
Larceny- all the rogue specific stuff. Sneaking, forgery, disable device, sleight of hand, disguise

That way, when someone wants to have all the rogue skills they just put points into Larceny and get all the rogue skills. It's way less bookkeeping, and I don't think people are going to be super upset that they become better at disable device and sleight of hand at the same time. Of course you should probably include freely customizable background skills in case people want super selective shit, but that's easy.

[hogarth]

The idea of using ability checks instead of a long list of skills is not a new one.

Of course you should probably include freely customizable background skills in case people want super selective shit, but that's easy.

Wait -- so after arguing in favour of extremely broad skills, you're now saying "LOL, just kidding, let's have selective skills after all"? Or am I not getting that last sentence?

[Lurky Lurkpants]

The problem I have with big skills is the same one I have with big feats. I end up getting stuck with a bunch of crap I don't want to get to what I do, and people are proportionally more screwed when they insist on suboptimal choices.

For example, given the above list, I'd think you'd want 1 each of most and then everyone to grab Survival because Perception is important. Meanwhile the Barbarian that wanted to intimidate and sing drinking songs still isn't a great Face but had to lose either Athletics or Survival to do it.

I think if one wants to go after skill bookkeeping, one should go after the 1 point increments. It isn't a substantial change in a character's ability and requires constantly checking to make sure all 84 skill points are accounted for. If instead when you leveled you just got to decide whether to buy "Basic Survival" or upgrade to "Advanced Stealth" it would seem to be much easier to track and adjust every level, without having to group all the skills so much.

[rasmuswagner]

The problem with Perception is an issue all of its own.

IMO, "Detect Ambush" should be a real character ability to which you can devote (or not) real resources. And "Detect Clues" should use some combination of "skill relevant to the clue at hand" and "automatic success".

[Username17]

So the trend among Dungeons and Dragons editions has been consolidating skills into larger, more meaningful chunks and giving less skill points to spend around.

I don't think this is true at all. In 1st edition, only Thieves got skills separate from their attribute checks, and they could count them on their fingers. In 2nd edition they introduced Non-Weapon Proficiencies alongside the Thief Skills, and as 2nd edition got extra semi-editions more content was simply added with more things you could spend your NWPs on (and even give you alternate things you could take for your Thief skills, implicitly making every skill smaller and more specific). I mean, for fuck's sake: here is a fansite with [url=over a hundred[/url] bonus NWPs, and I have absolutely no idea how many of them were from actual 2nd edition books that got printed and how many are from the feverish imaginations of the grognards who maintain the site.

3rd edition ditched a lot of the weird bonus non-weapon proficiencies, but represented rather more skills in core. Consider: even the basic Thief skill set of Open Locks, Pick Pockets, Find/Remove Traps, Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, Climb Walls, Hear Noise, and Read Languages became Open Locks, Pick Pockets, Search, Disable Device, Move Silently, Hide, Climb, and Decipher Script. That's 7 skills going to 8 with the edition change.

Yes, 2nd edition has sixty NWPs, and that's superficially more than the skill list in 3rd edition, but there honestly isn't much change once you remember that Seamstress and Stonemasonry still exist as Craft (Mason) and Craft (Tailor), and that Heraldry and Local History became Knowledge Nobility and Knowledge Local. The only actual reduction that took place is that they stopped dividing Languages into Ancient and Normal; Singing, Juggling, and Play Instrument got merged into Perform; and Running and Blindfighting became feats. 3rd edition literally and specifically converted every single proficiency from the 2nd edition core book. Even Ride Airborne and Read/Write exist, they've just been made harder to find by not listing them in the core book.

And yes, 3.5 and Pathfinder did consolidate some skills. But they also added a few. I think there's a bit more combining of Gather Information into Diplomancy than adding of Flight in Pathfinder. But 3.5's removal of Innuendo in no way approaches the number of skills they added by chopping Perform back up into twenty different skills.

4th edition has a much shorter skill list than 3e or 2e. But it's also a shit game that no one likes.

5th edition has a skill list that is distributed all over the books. So it's hard to count it all. But honestly it subscribes to the "whatever skill name you can think of" school. When you add up all the tool proficiencies, the skill list is intractably large. Way bigger than 2nd edition was in anything other than the most decadent "all books and fan supplements allowed" games of the late 90s. And of course, no one likes that fucking game either.

Looking at things, I honestly couldn't tell you that there's any overall arc at all. Shit just gets added and subtracted from the skill list entropically, with no real plan or direction.

-Username17

[Antariuk]

I think if one wants to go after skill bookkeeping, one should go after the 1 point increments. It isn't a substantial change in a character's ability and requires constantly checking to make sure all 84 skill points are accounted for. If instead when you leveled you just got to decide whether to buy "Basic Survival" or upgrade to "Advanced Stealth" it would seem to be much easier to track and adjust every level, without having to group all the skills so much.

I quite like this idea, but you'd have to change how skill DCs are calculated, and probably other DCs as well since quite a few options build upon skills or modify them. But how many stages would a progression like this have, ideally? I've played a bit of Numenera/Cypher System where you can be untrained (normal difficulty), trained (-1 difficulty) or specialized (-2 difficulty), and I think that's sufficient for a D&D game.

[ishy]

3rd edition ditched a lot of the weird bonus non-weapon proficiencies, but represented rather more skills in core. Consider: even the basic Thief skill set of Open Locks, Pick Pockets, Find/Remove Traps, Move Silently, Hide in Shadows, Climb Walls, Hear Noise, and Read Languages became Open Locks, Pick Pockets, Search, Disable Device, Move Silently, Hide, Climb, and Decipher Script. That's 7 skills going to 8 with the edition change.
-Username17

Either I lost the ability to count or they are both sets of 8.
But you probably forgot to add listen to the 2nd set.
Also, this designer note seems relevant.

OPEN A LOCK, OR DISABLE IT?
If you have the skill to disable traps of every imaginable variety, including magic traps, why can’t you understand how to disable a simple mechanical lock?
The answer, of course, is legacy. The 2nd Edition of the game distinguished between the skills, and so 3rd Edition did as well. One possible solution is to ignore this and make Disable Device work on locks. An average lock is DC 25 to open. That means you have to invest a lot in the Open Lock skill to be effective. However, the investment is likely to be moot when the barbarian bashes open all the locked doors. Just to rub salt in the wound, the wizard has a 2nd-level spell that opens locks regardless of the difficulty of picking them. When you can reliably open locks without taking 20, the party likely no longer needs you to do so. Have more fun by putting your skill points elsewhere, such as in Tumble. That way you can get out of the scrapes you’ll inevitably get into when the barbarian breaks open all those doors.

[Lurky Lurkpants]

I quite like this idea, but you'd have to change how skill DCs are calculated, and probably other DCs as well since quite a few options build upon skills or modify them. But how many stages would a progression like this have, ideally? I've played a bit of Numenera/Cypher System where you can be untrained (normal difficulty), trained (-1 difficulty) or specialized (-2 difficulty), and I think that's sufficient for a D&D game.

Really spitballing here, and probably re-complicating what was supposed to be less complicated, but I think it could depend on the skill.

"Speak Language" gets away with being a yes/no proposition and nobody seems to care. I remember in another thread someone mentioning that many professions could be the same way, you either speak Courtesan or not and after that it becomes the domain of skills like Diplomacy, Perform (Dance), Wear (Fancy Pants), and so on. Heck, I'm not sure weapon proficiency shouldn't be in here.

Mundane skills that aren't allowed to become fantastic would be stuck at maybe two levels. Swim DCs seem to cap at around 20 anyway, so I think we could just have "Basic Swimming" where you are only in danger in very rough water and "Advanced Swimming" where you are pretty much fine regardless. Appraise, Climb, Handle Animal... there are a lot of things where the DCs tend to cap out (or could cap out) anyway, and could just be a couple of levels. For example Survival technically caps out at tracking an ant that passed three weeks ago with snow in between, but since it isn't allowed to track flight or teleport I think that could be cut down.

Hopefully this would push people to eventually move into adventuring relevant abilities that could progress much higher, maybe 3-5 levels for things like Knowledge, Disable Device, or Use Magic Device. You'd probably run into issues like people wanting 5 levels of Craft (Weapons) to represent Masamune which would unfortunately come along with the option of 5 levels of Craft (basketweaving) as well, but it could all be worked out. Or just let the basketweavers crank out baskets of holding and call it a day.

You'd have to figure it all out based around what the natural cutoff of what you are allowing for that skill is. So you could have Climb 5 if that allowed you to walk on ceilings with no penalty, but not if it means subdividing it so much you have to start at "climb wobbly bar stool" so you can end at "climb city wall." Again though, spitballing, I'm guessing this has mostly been done before (I feel like the more I think about it, the more it becomes 2e AD&D...).

[K]

The problem I have with DnD skills is that they are either huge or meaningless with nothing in between.

For example, if you write an adventure where the players need to find a secret door, the Search check is everything. If they either fail that check or don't have it high enough, the adventure fails.

If you make an adventure where Search checks are not critical to adventure success, then Search checks will always be for little extra areas that are not critical to the adventure like little loot bins. (Even then, I think there is a strong argument that keeping treasure away from players behind a skill challenge fucks adventure design.)

If you have a sandbox, then it doesn't matter what your skills are at all. The adventure is always going to need your Knowledge: Religion regardless of the presented parameters for the adventure because the GM is required to make the game fun for you and tailor it to what you have.

[Dogbert]

The problem I have with DnD skills is that they are either huge or meaningless with nothing in between.

This board needs "likes", so I could like this post.

While customization is a basic necessity for many (myself included), themed games shouldn't offer players the option to screw themselves over.

If I had my druthers, classes would get a +1 on all class skills per level, and then they'd also have some skill points to distribute each level on non-vital skills, because the idea of a cleric who doesn't know about their own fucking deity is stupid on too many levels to even consider.

[Mechalich]

If I had my druthers, classes would get a +1 on all class skills per level, and then they'd also have some skill points to distribute each level on non-vital skills, because the idea of a cleric who doesn't know about their own fucking deity is stupid on too many levels to even consider.

Star Wars Saga Edition has lots of problems, but it has a skill system that incorporates this, with everyone gaining 1 point to all skills every 2 levels. It has the advantage that high level characters are automatically at least marginally competent at everything they might reasonably be expected to do, compared to 3.Xs problem where 20th level Clerics are likely to be unable to ride a horse or know what the country three countries to the east is called.

[Username17]

If you have a sandbox, then it doesn't matter what your skills are at all. The adventure is always going to need your Knowledge: Religion regardless of the presented parameters for the adventure because the GM is required to make the game fun for you and tailor it to what you have.

I look at it the other way. If you have a sandbox, it always matters what your skills are, because Mr. Cavern has to tailor the adventure to what you have. If the party invests in sneaking, you get stories about solving problems with sneaking. If the party invests in business acumen, you get stories about industrialization. And so on and so forth. It's like how tagging different skills in Fallout gives you a different play experience. And that's good.

The problem I have is that the D&D skill list is pretty lame and interacts poorly with the other characters. An ability like Sneaking fails if anyone on your team doesn't have it, while an ability like Knowledge: Engineering succeeds if anyone on your team does have it. Further, some tasks that skills interact with are very D&Dish (sneaking, talking, making swords, disabling traps), while other things interact with the as-yet unsatisfactory kingdom management mini-game if they do something D&D-related at all (agriculture, pottery, lip reading).

And then there's the class imbalance issue, where for example Fighters only get two fucking skill points and don't really get to play the game at all.

But in abstract the fact that the skills you put on your character sheet define how sandbox games play out is the best part about skills, and the skill list should really be rewritten with that in mind. In all cases when considering a skill the question should be "What would having or not having this skill change in how a sandbox game played out?" Skills that are too limiting if you don't have them (like sneaking or perception) or too limited in their effect if you do have them (like tailoring) should be radically rethought.

-Username17

[K]

But in abstract the fact that the skills you put on your character sheet define how sandbox games play out is the best part about skills, and the skill list should really be rewritten with that in mind. In all cases when considering a skill the question should be "What would having or not having this skill change in how a sandbox game played out?" Skills that are too limiting if you don't have them (like sneaking or perception) or too limited in their effect if you do have them (like tailoring) should be radically rethought.

-Username17

I think it's obvious that if your sample game has sneaking, fighting, and puzzle-solving as the core activities, then there is no good design where players should be terrible at any of those things by accident or design. Not letting players play part of your game is not good design.

My intuition is that skills need to be content-generating devices rather than challenge-defeating devices. In that model, Search would not be used to find existing secret doors needed to get to content, but would instead be used to generate secret doors in a sand-boxy way in existing designed adventures.

[Blicero]

For example, if you write an adventure where the players need to find a secret door, the Search check is everything. If they either fail that check or don't have it high enough, the adventure fails.

If you make an adventure where Search checks are not critical to adventure success, then Search checks will always be for little extra areas that are not critical to the adventure like little loot bins. (Even then, I think there is a strong argument that keeping treasure away from players behind a skill challenge fucks adventure design.)

Writing or including an adventure where the success or failure of the party is guaranteed to depend on the outcome of a single die roll is bad adventure design in general. The Search-specific part of your argument is unnecessary to that conclusion.

Assuming that an adventure that is not specific about acquiring a particular piece of equipment will end with the group acquiring that specific piece of equipment is bad adventure design in general. The Search-specific part of your argument is unnecessary to that conclusion.

It's still possible to put in secret doors or hidden areas or whatever that are nonessential to the overall success/failure of an adventure but are still interesting:
- If your players care about lore or backstory, you can hide additional information that contextualizes what is going on.
- You can hide things that will affect later events in the campaign. (e.g. hiding a lich's phylactery. If the party does not find it, they can still beat the lich and foil its current plans, but it is going to come back at some point.)
- You can hide things that will make later fights easier. (e.g. destroying the BBEG's hidden item of power makes them go from a CR 10 encounter to a CR 6 encounter)
- Similarly, hidden areas can make later fights unnecessary. (e.g. destroying the elemental summoning item means that the dungeon will no longer be filled with elementals that need to be fought every step of the way.)
- You can hide shortcuts and the like that make traversing a dungeon easier or safer.

You can also allow hidden things to be found by either a high enough Search check or by particular player-described actions. So if the group hears from an NPC that the button to open the secret area is behind some painting, or if they say specifically that they are looking behind the painting, then they can still find the secret door, and it does not matter if none of them has a positive Search check.

[K]

It's still possible to put in secret doors or hidden areas or whatever that are nonessential to the overall success/failure of an adventure but are still interesting:
- If your players care about lore or backstory, you can hide additional information that contextualizes what is going on.
- You can hide things that will affect later events in the campaign. (e.g. hiding a lich's phylactery. If the party does not find it, they can still beat the lich and foil its current plans, but it is going to come back at some point.)
- You can hide things that will make later fights easier. (e.g. destroying the BBEG's hidden item of power makes them go from a CR 10 encounter to a CR 6 encounter)
- Similarly, hidden areas can make later fights unnecessary. (e.g. destroying the elemental summoning item means that the dungeon will no longer be filled with elementals that need to be fought every step of the way.)
- You can hide shortcuts and the like that make traversing a dungeon easier or safer.

You can also allow hidden things to be found by either a high enough Search check or by particular player-described actions. So if the group hears from an NPC that the button to open the secret area is behind some painting, or if they say specifically that they are looking behind the painting, then they can still find the secret door, and it does not matter if none of them has a positive Search check.

Why hide any content? I mean, if you spent time designing areas behind secret doors, any failed Search roll for a secret door hiding content means wasted design.

If dropping the CR of a boss with a magguffin is necessary (or even merely won't ruin the challenge and fun of the fight), then why even allow a situation where it would not happen?

Giving out rewards for successful skill checks, of any kind, means that the challenges of your game and adventure were not properly designed in the first place. If not finding the boss-weakening magguffin means the boss is too hard, you fucked up somewhere. If finding secret shortcuts is desirable, then allowing a failure state where the players get cheated of that means more time at the table traversing parts of the dungeon they don't want to be in and thus having less fun.

Skill checks only work when single rolls are essentially meaningless and success or failure of a task is over dozens of rolls like we see in combat rolls, and thus the rolls themselves are essentially flattened to a static effect by statistics.

Right now, I think I'm in the camp where skill checks themselves just die in a fire.

[Chamomile]

I think it's worth noting that a lot of CRPGs that use skills successfully (I'm thinking of VtM: Bloodlines and the first two Fallout games, I can't think of any others that did it particularly well) require you to have a skill that's >=X rather than using an RNG and adding the skill.

[phlapjackage]

I think it's worth noting that a lot of CRPGs that use skills successfully (I'm thinking of VtM: Bloodlines and the first two Fallout games, I can't think of any others that did it particularly well) require you to have a skill that's >=X rather than using an RNG and adding the skill.

Did you have a problem with how FO:3 did skills? I thought it worked pretty well. Haven't played 4 yet...

[Chamomile]

The Fallout 3 approach to skills was that having higher skills made the minigames for certain activities easier, with the exception of Speech which actually did unlock entirely new options. However, this was often handled in such a way that made NPCs seem about as stupid as Harry Potter in Christian fanfiction reacting with disbelief upon hearing the story of Jesus Christ, apparently for the first time, and immediately renouncing magic. So I really didn't like the Speech results in Fallout 3 is what I'm saying, and thus didn't really pay much attention to exactly how it worked.

The rest of the skills are perfectly serviceable, but it doesn't translate to TTRPGs at all because it's all interaction with realtime minigames. So I guess I should update that while other CRPGs besides the ones I mentioned did skills well, they also did them in such a way as can't be mined for ideas for tabletop.

[Mechalich]

Would switching to a different probability curve help for skill rolls in d20? Like 2d10 or 3d6? It seems to me that making the likely result of hitting a certain DC much easier to predict would make skill challenges and designing around them easier to manage.

I mean, if characters are on the RNG at all in d20, they will fail at challenges they should beat and succeed at challenges they should fail really quite often, which makes planning functional challenges hard.

[Blicero]

Why hide any content? I mean, if you spent time designing areas behind secret doors, any failed Search roll for a secret door hiding content means wasted design.

If you are handcrafting every single element of your campaign, then yeah, that is a lot of wasted time. But you aren't doing that, because you don't have unlimited prep time. Instead, you are cannibalizing published material and consumed media and random shit you find online. And because of that, "wasted design" means "content I can mix-and-match and throw into next week's game". So if you have an efficient prep style, then you don't need to plan out exactly what will happen.

If dropping the CR of a boss with a magguffin is necessary (or even merely won't ruin the challenge and fun of the fight), then why even allow a situation where it would not happen?

Consider two ends to an adventure:
1. The party hears about the BBEG, and they hear that said BBEG is a total badass. Luckily, they are all combat twinks, and they know how to prepare for difficult fights. They go into the final fight expecting it to be really hard, and it is really hard. But they are combat twinks, and difficult fights are what they signed up for. Because the players took actions that had measurable effects on the outcome of the adventure, a good time is had by all.
2. The party hears about the BBEG, and they hear that said BBEG is a total badass. Luckily, they take the time to do the necessary legwork and figure out the BBEG's weaknesses. A fight that could have been a TPK is instead a curb stomp. Because the players took actions that had measurable effects on the outcome of the adventure, a good time is had by all.

Is either of those less valid a play experience than the other? No. As Mister Cavern, are you going to be able to 100% predict which option your group will choose, every single time? No. For the players, will knowing that they determined how the adventure turned out increase their enjoyment of the game? Yes. So you allow for either to happen, and, because you're using a sane prep strategy, allowing for either to happen does not turn your campaign preparations into a black hole of time.

Skill checks only work when single rolls are essentially meaningless and success or failure of a task is over dozens of rolls like we see in combat rolls, and thus the rolls themselves are essentially flattened to a static effect by statistics.

Alternatively, skill checks work when your adventure design is robust enough to allow for a multitude of outcomes of varying degrees of optimality.

[OgreBattle]

The After Sundown skill is about as compact and versatile as I'd want a skill list to be for murderhobo adventuring.

Something else to keep in mind is if skills are tied to attributes you should be aware of which attributes are sorely lacking (CON) or overburdened (INT).

RIFTS has a terribly convulted skill system but it kind of feels like an engaging puzzle game filling it out, like you're writing an outline of your character's story... as well as squeezing in as many bonus actions and + to attack/dodge rolls you can. It's terrible for actual gameplay, but some folks feel good about having 'backstory' be mechanically represented on their character sheet, no matter how terrible.

A skill check should only be rolled when both success and failure outcomes add something to the collective storytelling experience.

[K]

Why hide any content? I mean, if you spent time designing areas behind secret doors, any failed Search roll for a secret door hiding content means wasted design.

If you are handcrafting every single element of your campaign, then yeah, that is a lot of wasted time. But you aren't doing that, because you don't have unlimited prep time. Instead, you are cannibalizing published material and consumed media and random shit you find online. And because of that, "wasted design" means "content I can mix-and-match and throw into next week's game". So if you have an efficient prep style, then you don't need to plan out exactly what will happen.

If your canned adventure has some cool content behind a secret door, then you are still left with the problem that the PC's missing that check means you are cheating them from cool content for no better reason than to justify the fetishization of skill checks.

I mean, you can remove that secret door and just let them have the cool stuff, but that still means that you've accepted that the skill check was a shit idea in the first place.

If dropping the CR of a boss with a magguffin is necessary (or even merely won't ruin the challenge and fun of the fight), then why even allow a situation where it would not happen?

Consider two ends to an adventure:
1. The party hears about the BBEG, and they hear that said BBEG is a total badass. Luckily, they are all combat twinks, and they know how to prepare for difficult fights. They go into the final fight expecting it to be really hard, and it is really hard. But they are combat twinks, and difficult fights are what they signed up for. Because the players took actions that had measurable effects on the outcome of the adventure, a good time is had by all.
2. The party hears about the BBEG, and they hear that said BBEG is a total badass. Luckily, they take the time to do the necessary legwork and figure out the BBEG's weaknesses. A fight that could have been a TPK is instead a curb stomp. Because the players took actions that had measurable effects on the outcome of the adventure, a good time is had by all.

Is either of those less valid a play experience than the other? No.

Actually, I've never seen a curbstomp be satisfying to a group. In fact, I've literally seen DMs invent a new boss battle occurring immediately after the first one just because the actual boss battle was a curbstomp and people didn't feel like they got to do anything useful.

I have seen the odd curbstomp be fun when it was unexpected and a result of clever PC action. It has to be something like "and then I stole his Ring of Elemental Command off his hand and killed him with his own air elementals" clever and not "and then I used the spell off my list that save-or-died his specific monster type that everyone forgot I had."

[virgil]

My intuition is that skills need to be content-generating devices rather than challenge-defeating devices. In that model, Search would not be used to find existing secret doors needed to get to content, but would instead be used to generate secret doors in a sand-boxy way in existing designed adventures.

So Search becomes Search (for bears)?

[K]

My intuition is that skills need to be content-generating devices rather than challenge-defeating devices. In that model, Search would not be used to find existing secret doors needed to get to content, but would instead be used to generate secret doors in a sand-boxy way in existing designed adventures.

So Search becomes Search (for bears)?

Search would become Search (DM procedurally generates some content). I don't know if it would work, but in the 1st edition days people did not fear a d100 list of random cool shit in their adventure, so there is precedent.

[MGuy]

My intuition is that skills need to be content-generating devices rather than challenge-defeating devices. In that model, Search would not be used to find existing secret doors needed to get to content, but would instead be used to generate secret doors in a sand-boxy way in existing designed adventures.

So Search becomes Search (for bears)?

Search would become Search (DM procedurally generates some content). I don't know if it would work, but in the 1st edition days people did not fear a d100 list of random cool shit in their adventure, so there is precedent.

Ahh ok NOW I get what you've been saying. When you say skills (like search) should generate content you mean it should get you random free shit. Ok, I'm down for that. It'd be like a 'loot' buff I suppose?