Skills: let the players choose to succeed?

[Whatever]

First, a quick explanation of what I'm considering "skills" for this discussion. If something is a defined action (like casting a spell, making an attack roll, moving 30') then I'm not worried about it here. Likewise if you're reacting to something (rolling a saving throw, taking damage, or similar). I'm pretty sure I need to fold my social system in with the combat rules, so this won't cover social interactions either.

But sometimes you want to interact with the world outside of combat actions. Maybe you want to unlock a door, follow some tracks, or make a boat. What then?

Well, in D&D, the answer right now (5E) is "make an ability check". In earlier editions, you might make a Skill Check, or see if you had the relevant NWP, or play Mother May I with the DM.

And honestly? All of those suck. None of those systems were good, and I don't want to use them.

Thankfully, I'm giving up on ability scores for my personal heartbreaker (for reasons that I'm happy to get into elsewhere), so I have to come up with a new way to measure mundane competence anyway. I figure I should start with an explanation for my design goals:

I've played plenty of games where the characters were (intentionally or unintentionally) bad at things that their flavor says they should be good at. When that's intentional, it can be pretty funny. When it's unintentional, it's supremely frustrating. Why is my character a secret agent when every die roll I make has "slapstick comedy" as one of the common outputs? I shouldn't have to roll a die to see if I get to play the character concept I brought to the table or if I'm stuck with a parody. If I'm playing a spy, my character should be good at spy stuff. Yes, even at first level. In my game, classes have their concept come online at level 1, because waiting is stupid.

This is a fantasy game, and my fantasy is that characters succeed at the things we expect them to succeed at. Every time. Because sometimes you only do one check for "following tracks" in a session, or in an entire campaign. And that could be your only chance to show off a key piece of your character's identity--a comical failure here undercuts the character in a way that cannot be fixed.

But whose expectations matter here? I think it should be the person who brought the character to the table. As a GM, I don't know if it's important to you that your character be good at tracking orcs. But for you, that's an easy question. Are they a good singer? Can they make a poultice? You tell me. The story goes on either way, but only one answer satisfies you.

DESIGN GOALS FOR MY SKILL SYSTEM
1) Players should succeed at skills their characters are Good At.
2) Players should be the arbiters of what skills their characters are Good At.

As far as I can see, the easiest way to meet these two goals is to let the players decide whether their characters succeed or fail.

As I said before, this won't apply to combat actions. If you want to hide in the middle of a fight, you can take a Hide action, there'll be rules for that. If you want to ambush someone so that you can start a fight with an advantage, there'll be rules for that too. But if you just want to sneak past a guard without them noticing you? Be my guest.

As a player, this makes sure my character always succeeds at the things I expect, preserving their heroic competence. I lose the illusion of risk, but honestly there's no great way to have that illusion without introducing way more actual risk than I want.

As a GM, this lets me very easily highlight character competencies, particularly if someone has been out of the spotlight. Just give them a situation that's easily addressed by that character's skills and suddenly they're the hero of the hour. And I know they'll be able to find the clue, or cross the chasm, or that if they fail it's because they feel it's right. No worrying about who rolls high or low, no "continue the adventure y/n?" checks, no unwanted slapstick.

I realize that this is very close to not having rules at all, but I think putting things in the hands of the players is a radical enough shift to warrant asking for feedback.

[Foxwarrior]

What if a player wants their character to: reprogram a portal they found to let them sneak straight into the BBEG's treasure room? Find the ancient mega-spirit of the forest and tame it into being their pet at level 1? Craft a ring of power by melting down the first gold coin they're paid? I think it's probably fine to let characters auto-succeed at lots of level-appropriate tasks, it's the level-inappropriate ones that I'm skeptical about.

[PhoneLobster]

The idea that these sorts of checks/interactions should (sometimes) resolve (and successfully) without rolls is not in any way bad. In fact even a skill system that incorporated rolls is significantly improved with an acknowledgement of auto successes as a possible and maybe even regular/desirable outcome.

Because yeah, "everyone jump over the relatively easy to jump but deadly to fall down chasm" is... not a check we really want failed, not fully failed anyway, we could do a cliff hanger for a minute or two but you don't really want anyone falling down. Hell "notice the clue that only makes the story cooler" is probably also a check we don't want failed.

But I'm not sure what you are doing. Are you just saying "Players just have the auto success skills they want decided at the spur of the moment" or do they decide in advance?

A finite selection of auto success skills in advance seems fine, but a blurry shifting mass of unspecified auto success skills, probably should be represented by something else.

Now, I generally don't like "action points" style systems... but they have their place and something like this is probably it. Give players a cheap renewable but finite resource of points that either buys them their autosuccess from what would otherwise be an autofail or roll. If you like give the GM a counter resource of "no you don't" points.

Alternatively you could just work it as the permanently selected finite selection... only you do the permanent selection "on the fly" until people run out of selections to make.

However though, as a side thing. Sneak past the guard? I suspect extending this to sneaking... well, at the very least I hope you don't have stealth attacks...

[jt]

Auto-succeeding at things your character is Good At is underrated. Too many games set expected success rates close to 50%, which makes characters feel cartoonishly incompetent and slows the game down by inserting a significant chance that nothing happens. Plus resolving auto-succeed abilities is so quick that the GM can just throw those obstacles in as set dressing to make people feel good about their characters (and the GM's advice should mention this).

Obviously you need some caps on what a skill can do. You can't have a character be Good At Climbing and then decide that means they'll climb the air itself to fly (I assume, maybe it's that sort of setting). But D&D is full of based rules blocks based on auto-success with restriction, in the form of spell descriptions. Those generally work fine, so I don't think it's impossible to use that format instead.

It's a lot trickier to handle things characters are Kind Of Good At. You can't just use a judgement call because players are never quite on the same page about how competent protagonists are in this story. And worse, only the GM knows how many of a given type of challenge an adventure will have and the dramatic pacing of the story, so there's a ton of guesswork on the player side if they want to do something simple like fail at a skill until they succeed at the most critical moment.

One option for Kind Of Good At would be to use a more typical skill check system. Another would be to have a resource-based success rate like succeed at picking locks 3/day.

[Whatever]

What if a player wants their character to: reprogram a portal they found to let them sneak straight into the BBEG's treasure room? Find the ancient mega-spirit of the forest and tame it into being their pet at level 1? Craft a ring of power by melting down the first gold coin they're paid? I think it's probably fine to let characters auto-succeed at lots of level-appropriate tasks, it's the level-inappropriate ones that I'm skeptical about.

-not sold on the idea of portals to wherever-you-want being a thing in my setting. There will be major sources of magic power for players to go find, with specific rules for what you can do with them (basically, destroy them to unlock level ups, claim them for your side in the kingdom minigame, or bind yourself to that location for a BBEG-style power up). A good point that i'll need more discipline with magic stuff if players have more agency.

-that would get into social interaction rules, and the dice rolls needed could be set to impossible for 1st level players/high power creatures. But I do want characters to ultimately tame gryphons and dragons, so I'll have to make sure the social numbers work.

-making magic items over time requires claiming a magic power source, but there's also a chance to get one if you destroy the power source to level up. Won't be something you can auto-succeed on via declaration.

Because yeah, "everyone jump over the relatively easy to jump but deadly to fall down chasm" is... not a check we really want failed, not fully failed anyway, we could do a cliff hanger for a minute or two but you don't really want anyone falling down.

I've been reading old skill threads and I saw that discussion. Everything about it made me want to jump down the deadly chasm myself. Serious failure has to be off the table.

But I'm not sure what you are doing. Are you just saying "Players just have the auto success skills they want decided at the spur of the moment" or do they decide in advance?

At the spur of the moment. Players will have Backgrounds and other character details on their sheet, but they can announce automatic success regardless of what they have written down. I'm assuming players will have some reasonable understanding of what their character is and isn't good at, but if you have a bunch of literal children at the table and they want their characters to be good at everything, I figure that's fine too.

I'm not interested in having any cap to the number of things players can autosucceed at, because that punishes someone for saying they're good at dressmaking in Week 1 if they then don't have a slot to be good at etiquette in Week 8. People (and characters) can genuinely just be good at lots of things, even all the things.

I'll address action points below.

However though, as a side thing. Sneak past the guard? I suspect extending this to sneaking... well, at the very least I hope you don't have stealth attacks...

"sneaking up on" and "sneaking past" will be entirely different things. The former uses the ambush rules because you're setting up a combat, while the latter players can just automatically succeed at if they want to avoid combat. There probably does need to be some kind of cost to sneaking around so that the players don't do it all the time, though. Maybe those action points? Again, see below.

Auto-succeeding at things your character is Good At is underrated. Too many games set expected success rates close to 50%, which makes characters feel cartoonishly incompetent and slows the game down by inserting a significant chance that nothing happens. Plus resolving auto-succeed abilities is so quick that the GM can just throw those obstacles in as set dressing to make people feel good about their characters (and the GM's advice should mention this).

50% is awful, agreed. I touched on this advice for the GM in my first post, and yes, it'll definitely be spelled out.

Obviously you need some caps on what a skill can do. You can't have a character be Good At Climbing and then decide that means they'll climb the air itself to fly (I assume, maybe it's that sort of setting). But D&D is full of based rules blocks based on auto-success with restriction, in the form of spell descriptions. Those generally work fine, so I don't think it's impossible to use that format instead.

Climb will be covered under the movement rules, same with swim and jump. Players will have a climb speed, not a climb score. In general, though, there will have to be limits--tracking down some Orcs doesn't mean you can also track your way along the Eightfold Path to enlightenment. Maybe I'll just include a robust definition of mundane actions. The main idea here is to have a system to resolve the kinds of low level "I have thumbs and a brain" activities that would normally be a Dex check or a Survival roll or whatever.

It's a lot trickier to handle things characters are Kind Of Good At. You can't just use a judgement call because players are never quite on the same page about how competent protagonists are in this story. And worse, only the GM knows how many of a given type of challenge an adventure will have and the dramatic pacing of the story, so there's a ton of guesswork on the player side if they want to do something simple like fail at a skill until they succeed at the most critical moment.

One option for Kind Of Good At would be to use a more typical skill check system. Another would be to have a resource-based success rate like succeed at picking locks 3/day.

For dramatic pacing, I hope players and GMs can talk it out a bit. Even literally say "I succeed at the last moment" and find out when that is. I really want the players to have some narrative control here.

An action point system might be good for this, too, because it gives players an incentive to let others step in, or even to choose to fail. but I'm worried that it will shift the focus from what's important for the character to what's important for the player and the party.

I'm not sure how much actual failure we need to establish that players are Kind Of Good At. Might be better to have players declare degrees of success (or failure, if they want) and then work out what that means.

[Foxwarrior]

Oh, a problem that does pop up with this sort of approach is that when the player is making decisions about "what should my character be good or bad at" during the session, they're no longer really able to approach the situation from the character's perspective. Of course the character would like to pass their Etiquette check, the player making them fail is having fun at their own character's expense.

Although the bigness of the attention you call to the distinction between combat and non-combat actions makes me suspicious that maybe you just don't really care about giving the players interesting challenges to overcome in between battles, so your system idea of letting players choose whether to succeed or fail is just a way of throwing up your hands and going "I don't care, do whatever". No pun intended.

[Kaelik]

Also there's the backgrounds problem, where people will choose background "Is Batman" at character creation so they can justify succeeding at all out of combat tactics instead of just some.

[Foxwarrior]

I think that's "working as intended" this time, Kaelik.

[Kaelik]

I think that's "working as intended" this time, Kaelik.

Probably not if all the players choose backgrounds that let them all choose to be good at all non combat things, because then you can't showcase overshadowed characters by giving them the stuff they are good at and other benefits of the system.

[Whatever]

I think that's "working as intended" this time, Kaelik.

Probably not if all the players choose backgrounds that let them all choose to be good at all non combat things, because then you can't showcase overshadowed characters by giving them the stuff they are good at and other benefits of the system.

This is a good point. People might end up writing 10 page backgrounds about how the character worked as an apprentice for 17 different artisans before stowing away on a sailing ship and then learning about ancient civilizations or whatever.

But since you can choose to succeed at things without having it written all that down beforehand, I'm hopeful that people won't bother to powergame their backstory. And I do like that you can actually show up as a professional adventurer if you want, since there is a specific role for such people in my setting. But I will need a way to reconcile that with giving spotlight time to more limited characters.

Oh, a problem that does pop up with this sort of approach is that when the player is making decisions about "what should my character be good or bad at" during the session, they're no longer really able to approach the situation from the character's perspective. Of course the character would like to pass their Etiquette check, the player making them fail is having fun at their own character's expense.

...and worse, fun at the potential expense of other players' characters. That's a fair point.

People may also be reluctant to claim unlikely successes without the fig leaf of a high die roll.

Although the bigness of the attention you call to the distinction between combat and non-combat actions makes me suspicious that maybe you just don't really care about giving the players interesting challenges to overcome in between battles, so your system idea of letting players choose whether to succeed or fail is just a way of throwing up your hands and going "I don't care, do whatever". No pun intended.

I mean, does any elfgame have "interesting challenges to overcome in between battles"? If so, what do those challenges look like?

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

What's wrong with just tossing around more "take 10/15/20" sort of arrangements around? Unless you just want to get rid of randomness entirely, which... is an idea. If I just have a skill that says "you always take 10 on your Jump checks", then I usually have a solid idea of what my character is capable of unless I want to take a risk.

[PhoneLobster]

An element of an action points style system I think might be particularly useful here would be.

Spend points for successes.

Failures earn you points.

A little tweaking in starting/free over time points total, maximum possible, and the rate they are given out by failures (and how many success/failure events happen) lets you decide how much success vs failure the system will hand out, but then the players will ultimately allocate where those successes and failures happen.

Basically I'm pretty sure this is where action point style mechanics really belong, basically as a semi formal currency to mitigate fairy tea party aspects of play. Every time fairy tea party goes against you you get credit to make it go your way some other time.

[Ice9]

I mean, does any elfgame have "interesting challenges to overcome in between battles"? If so, what do those challenges look like?

Usually "here is some situation", players brainstorm a bit and come up with a plan (not necessarily complex), and then they execute it (probably just some die rolls).

The execution obviously doesn't require failing any of those rolls, but it might require the possibility of them, as a limit of what approaches are plausibly successful. For example, if I can auto-stealth past people, why wouldn't I just auto-stealth past everyone when applicable? "I could easily succeed this way, but that wouldn't make for a good story so I'll pretend like I can't" is a bit more meta/author-stance than I usually want from an RPG.

[Whatever]

Unless you just want to get rid of randomness entirely, which... is an idea.

That's the idea, yes.

An element of an action points style system I think might be particularly useful here would be.

Spend points for successes.

Failures earn you points.

A little tweaking in starting/free over time points total, maximum possible, and the rate they are given out by failures (and how many success/failure events happen) lets you decide how much success vs failure the system will hand out, but then the players will ultimately allocate where those successes and failures happen.

Basically I'm pretty sure this is where action point style mechanics really belong, basically as a semi formal currency to mitigate fairy tea party aspects of play. Every time fairy tea party goes against you you get credit to make it go your way some other time.

That's a good idea, but only if failures earn points for everyone. I don't want players to have a personal incentive to fail in a way that feels bad for everyone else, and I don't want to have to figure out who the spotlight is on when there's a general failure.

I'll think about what this would look like.

I mean, does any elfgame have "interesting challenges to overcome in between battles"? If so, what do those challenges look like?

Usually "here is some situation", players brainstorm a bit and come up with a plan (not necessarily complex), and then they execute it (probably just some die rolls).

The execution obviously doesn't require failing any of those rolls, but it might require the possibility of them, as a limit of what approaches are plausibly successful. For example, if I can auto-stealth past people, why wouldn't I just auto-stealth past everyone when applicable? "I could easily succeed this way, but that wouldn't make for a good story so I'll pretend like I can't" is a bit more meta/author-stance than I usually want from an RPG.

I'd like this setup to incentivize that kind of heist-style planning if possible, since that's the fun part of the heist. Then you can roll out the execution quickly. But it's true that we need some limits, and authorial ones may not be enough.

The whole "sneaky character sneaks ahead and then reports back" is easy to do this way, instead of being both (1) a time waster for everyone else and (2) likely death for the sneak. Just say that you do it, everyone listens to the scouting report, and then you make your plan.

I'd like people to sneak past the sleeping giant in the woods, but not sneak their way past the entire dungeon. I can force no sneaking because of how dungeons are going to work in this game, but that's not very elegant.

[jt]

Fate-style compel mechanics could work for intentional failures. Particularly the sort of bartering aspect, where the GM might bribe you with more points because they have a really good idea where the failure goes, or refuse to give up points for a boring failure.

I really like your idea of failures giving the whole party points.

[Krusk]

If you don't want randomness factoring in, what if you take the take 1/10/20 idea but make it a resource people invest in.

Have a list of your 15 skills, and tell people that first level characters get 10 dots to spend. Every time they level up, they get 5 more dots.

So a character sheet will say
Crafting*
Driving***
Other skill*

Then the DM lists an amount of dots required to do a task. To do basic functions is 0 dots. Doing anything challenging takes 1, up through maybe 3 dots at max. Modifiers can come into play to add or remove threshold requirements. So the DM will say something like "You want to outrun the cops in your car. Great, thats really hard, you'll need at least 2 dots" to which the player says "cool, I've got 3" and narrates how badass they blow past these cops. The DM can also throw in modifiers to standard requirements. "Your car took a bunch of damage, so normally this is a 2 dot, but I'm upping it to 3" or "you slashed one of their tires before driving off, so this is easier than normal, its only 1 dot, allowing a different player to drive while you shoot back" or whatever.

If they don't have enough dots, have them roll a flat d20. If shy by 1 dot, they need a 5, if shy by 2, they need a 10, and if shy by 3, they need a 15. Now you've got some granularity that isn't just auto win/fail, which I imagine people will balk at.

[Whatever]

Fate-style compel mechanics could work for intentional failures. Particularly the sort of bartering aspect, where the GM might bribe you with more points because they have a really good idea where the failure goes, or refuse to give up points for a boring failure.

Well, I'm not trying to tie the failures to Aspects or anything. Functionally, this would be a bit more like the Intrusions from Numenera. I'm not sure if I'd want bargaining every time, though it would solve one problem:

I really like your idea of failures giving the whole party points.

Doing it that way does create the opportunity for a character optimized as comic relief, which could be a problem. Instead of skills where failure derails the adventure (lockpicking, tracking, etc), you specialize in stuff that's low consequences for failure then make a big show of trying and failing ("I juggle to impress the ferrywoman as we cross, but I drop all the apples in the river. Whoops!"). You get attention, everyone gets points, and then their characters succeed all the time.

Maybe I should explicitly allow that, though? It might be good to give those players a healthy outlet.

[Whatever]

Have a list of your 15 skills

I want this to cover all the mundane stuff characters can do, like "use thumbs" or "know things" and I have yet to find a satisfying skill list for that.

[pragma]

1) This sounds a _lot_ like FATE, which has a narrow enough RNG that success or failure is determined either by the skill ranking you pick or by your willingness to spend a FATE point.

2) Speaking of which, I like the default FATE skill list. If you're trying to pick 15 skills, you could do worse: https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/default-skill-list

3) The issues I see here are role protection (some asshole just chooses to succeed on everything, or the plate-mail guy is railroaded into succeeding at swimming because everyone else is doing it) and that no planning that you do matters: who cares if you have a fun heist plan if you can auto-succeed regardless of how silly it is?

[merxa]

auto success sounds a lot like telling players the choices they made don't actually matter.

What about resolving PC vs PC opposed checks? Or really any opposed checks -- this really seems like a variant on MTP mechanics.

Maybe the GM doesn't care about rando guard #7 noticing the party sneak around, but presumably Important NPC #1 doesn't autofail pick pocket checks? Or becomes an instant ally because a player says they successfully entreat them to be a friend.

Since this has become more of an improv game than a dice game, you could use some sort of improv points, you hand them out and players spend them to succeed, GMs hand more out whenever he wants a PC to fail a given task instead, maybe continues to award them for being 'good' players or whatever. But we're playing a MTP Mother May I game now. GMs will also show favoritism, or even if they somehow avoid that, it'll appear as favoritism to some players and not others and there's no way to avoid that perception.

Another pressure is from groups telling one player to 'succeed' when they might think they should 'fail', that alone will make this entire resolution system very boring for many people. Failure is often the most exciting moment in a given game night, and this destroys that possibility, especially when it comes to 'unexpected' failures.

I agree that a simple take 10 system will resolve this issue entirely, assuming the skill system and DC checks are correctly calibrated and the system allows taking 10 in enough situations. And for things that aren't skills, GMs can already tell players they 'succeed' or explain no check is needed -- generally no one makes climb checks when they walk up some stairs.

[PhoneLobster]

auto success sounds a lot like telling players the choices they made don't actually matter.

I was under the impression that the whole idea here was for this to cover the things that already don't matter, or at least that have apparently been decided shouldn't matter.

[Pedantic]

auto success sounds a lot like telling players the choices they made don't actually matter.

I was under the impression that the whole idea here was for this to cover the things that already don't matter, or at least that have apparently been decided shouldn't matter.

It does seem like the real goal here is to cut the size of the game down to some defined actions, and just MTP the rest away. Really, this feels more like we're paring down the actions that are part of the actual game, and making the rest into improv.

[OgreBattle]

Could you give an ideal example of how your game plays out in one session?

I want this to cover all the mundane stuff characters can do, like "use thumbs" or "know things" and I have yet to find a satisfying skill list for that.

One I've made is...

Core Attribute Stuff:
Strength-Athletics: Going powerfully in one direction
Agility-Acrobatics: Changing directions quickly
Endurance-Willpower: Going at something relentlessly

Perception: Spotting stuff
Finesse: Precision stuff like lockpicking, surgery, requires technical knowledge to do surgery.

Knowledge stuff:
Bio (medicine)
Machinery (repair, building)
Code (Programming, languages)
Environment (Survival, Stealth in said environment)

Social Stuff:
Tactics
Strategy
Inspire

---

"Succeed but takes up more time and you're on a time limit" is a way to move forward but not always win effortlessly.

There's also "Succeed but lose something non-fatal" like you jump the chasm but some of the treasure falls out, or the whole pack of treasure falls out, or the hot german chick dies but you can find a new hot german chick.

[infinitederpgeneration]

Mutants and Masterminds has "hero points" you can spend to reroll failed skill checks among other things. The reroll changes the d20 so that it goes from 10-20 (you count the 1-9 sides as having +10). This makes it so that no matter what your character gets at least a 10 on the die and probably more. Expanding a system like that to have many usable rerolls a session seems like it would keep the benefits of establishing competence without all the batman bullshit, since you'd have to have actual skill points still.

[Mask_De_H]

auto success sounds a lot like telling players the choices they made don't actually matter.

What about resolving PC vs PC opposed checks? Or really any opposed checks -- this really seems like a variant on MTP mechanics.

An ante/barter system is the pretty obvious answer to that question: Fate does that with Compels/Hostile Invokes, AS has you roll dice still, but the call and raise system for chasing/stunting is the same idea.

PC/MC opposed checks can either have difficulty levels (pay X to succeed) or use the same barter system as PC vs PC, but the MC has more points per "challenge level" per scene/task/setpiece/arbitrary measure of time