Yoink from RCFG...

Primitive Screwhead · Jan 31, 2009

I noticed a thread by Raven Crowking where he is developing a homebrew ruleset, modestly called Raven Crowking's Fantasy Game, and knowing the quality of his work I had to take a peek.

I found two things that I love and want to incorperate in my 4e game, both involve the use of skills in combat. Follow the link above or jump on the ENWorld thread for more details.

I like that these rules encourage the use of skills in the game, basically 'standardized' skill stunts {a rule my players tend to always forget}
Without further ado, here is my first draft of the two rules I want to port over.

Skill Advantage
Action: Move or Minor action*
Requires: Spend an action point. This does not count against your number of APs spent this encounter
Attack: Skill vs DC 15
Hit: Gain a +1 Skill bonus, +1 for every 10 points the DC is exceeded
Based on the action taken, you may apply this bonus to either one attack roll, one damage roll, or to all Defenses. If you apply it to a damage roll, and that damage roll affected multiple targets, the bonus damage from this ability applies to only one of those targets (your choice). If you apply it to a defense, the bonus expires at the start of your next turn.

* Skill uses that are part of a Move, such as Jump, require a Minor Action before the Move action.

Getting the Drop
Action: Move
Opposed Skill check
Success: Make an immediate basic attack against the opponent. You gain +2 to Hit and deal an additional 1D6 die of damage per tier. If you have a feat like 'Lethal Hunter' or its ilk, use D8's.
Failure: You grant the opponent combat advantage until the start of your next turn and the opponent may make an immediate basic attack against you.

Any concerns with these as written, before I try to implement at my table?

CapnZapp · Feb 1, 2009

I must have missed something, because as I read it Skill Advantage makes hitting with your Dailies a given, which is off-the-scale unbalanced...?

Primitive Screwhead · Feb 1, 2009

.. possibly.. it depends on how much of a bonus ou can reliably gain and whether that bonus would be significant enough compared to the 'cost' of spending an action to gain it.

I want to find the line right between 'so good we want to use it every turn' and 'why would I bother', the point where there is mechanical motivation to be inventive with skills in combat.

Do you think a higher base DC would move Skill Advantage towards this point?

Alex319 · Feb 2, 2009

Well, first of all, it is a good idea to reword the benefit to:

Based on the action taken, you may apply this bonus to either one attack roll, one damage roll, or one Defense. If you apply it to a damage roll, and that damage roll affected multiple targets, the bonus damage from this ability applies to only one of those targets (your choice). If you apply it to a defense, the bonus expires at the start of your next turn.

This stops it from being used to gain an extremely large benefit by applying a damage bonus against lots of targets, and also makes it a little more clear.

And the size of the benefit itself doesn't seem that bad. At heroic tier levels players will likely have a +10 to +15 to their best skills, so they will be getting +1-4 with each use of this skill. At epic tier players will have about a +30 to +35, so they will be getting +5-8 with each use of this skill.

Now, let's think about how to make this, as you said, "right between 'so good we want to use it every turn' and 'why would I bother'." Increasing the base DC will not affect this, because the way it is now, it costs nothing to use if you wouldn't have used your move or minor action for something else that round, so people will still use it every round that happens. One way to achieve the effect you want would be to make it an encounter power, so that people don't use it every round they have an action to spare. But even then, it's still power creep (players will use it when they have an extra action to spare so it won't cost them anything) and it probably is going to be difficult to come up with an innovative, creative new skill use every encounter, so it might end up turning into a routine bonus like any other.

One idea I have is the following: make it a free action that costs an action point to use, but that does not count toward the limit of one action point per encounter. This has the following advantages:

- Gives people an incentive to use the ability, by giving them an advantage: the ability to ignore the one action point per encounter limit. (If you didn't allow this, then people would rarely use this ability since the normal use of an AP is usually more powerful.)
- However, also provides a cost to using the ability: you have to spend an AP.
- People will tend to use Skill Advantage in big fights, like boss fights, when they've used up their AP use but still want an extra boost. Since boss fights tend to be more unique than regular fights, this will lead to more unique uses of Skill Advantage.

Alex319 · Feb 2, 2009

Oh, and a couple more design considerations: The way you have it set up, increasing attack rolls is likely to be the way this power is used a significant majority of the time. It will likely be used mainly to boost dailies, where ensuring you hit is more important than adding a little extra damage, and increasing a defense is going to be a very rare use because monsters could always attack someone else or target a different defense that turn. (It is probably a good idea to make the bonus apply to all defenses for a turn, not just one defense, just to make it more likely that it will actually be used that way.)

And also, this might be a good time, if you want to, to apply the "DM's Best Friend" and add +2 or so to the bonus if players use Skill Advantage with a particularly creative or dramatic skill use.

Primitive Screwhead · Feb 4, 2009

I like those ideas.. and have incorperated them up in post #1.

I was also talking to one of my players about this, and the math sticks pretty tight all the way up to level 30, meaning a +3 is a great addition to any attack or defence. I am meeting with him again tonight, but edited the above to lower the rate of bonus advancement to a 10 point spread. This will mean it would be normal for characters to gain basically a +1 per tier.. I think this would be enough as the +1 is almost quarenteed.

Or does that cut the benefit down too far?
Hmm.. things to think about!