In terms of motivation, I was irritated by 3.5's disconnect between flavor and crunch on skill boosts. E.g. "After years training in the mountains, you have amazing physical prowess. Add +2 bonus to Climb and Jump checks." Ugh. Fake and a poor benefit for a feat. Similarly, NPC experts tended to be okay but sort of lack luster in their own professions.
I totally agree and almost think that skill advancement should be separated out from Ability/Feat advancement. Maybe some of those skill bonus abilities that contribute to the class’ theme (such as Barbarians and Athletics) could be changed to apply some kind of situational bonus to the skill or allow the skill to be used in a unique way?
I went in a new direction: Skills matter. In part, I wanted to capture some of the flavor of d20 Modern, which presents a mundane world where PCs rely on skills a lot more. I feel that's more in line with the Radiance setting. That barbarian is, in practice, a lot more athletic than his wizard counterpart.
I really agree with making skills matter. My first table top RPG was the old WEG Star Wars D6 system in which every roll was a skill roll. (Want to be a better fighter? Put more points into the appropriate weapon skill) Skills/Attributes really defined who a character was in that system and I kind of missed that when I started playing DnD. My first impression of DnD was that it seemed like a tactical combat game with a half-hearted skill system tacked on the side.
Also, some max designs aren't actually possible. For example, abilities with the same name--such as Skill Focus--don't stack. Some players "don't notice" or "forget" about those limits. It behooves the GM to check PC skill bonuses that look suspicious.
While a PC can boost skills pretty high early in his career, he is likely plateauing early. So if he has +20 at 2nd level, he may be "stuck" with that for the next 10 levels, though frankly that's a nice place to be stuck. And he lost out on other abilities to get that early.
Yes, I did notice that depending on race/class/theme you choose, you might see the same skill ability available under two ability categories. However, I believe I avoided this with my Goliath Barbarian example. But maybe I have overlooked something?
Lvl 0 (Athletics = +15)
+5 – Race: Powerful Build
+5 – Race: 18 in Str +2 for race = 20
+5 – Theme (Hunter): Action Ready
Lvl 1 (Athletics = +20)
+5 – Class: Outdoor Athlete
Lvl 2 (Athletics = +29)
+5 – Race: Athlete
+4 – Race: Mountaineer
Lvl 4 (Athletics = +34)
+ 5 – Class: Leap
Lvl 5 (Athletics = +38)
+4 – Class: One with Nature
Lvl 9 (Athletics = +42)
+4 – Class: Barbarian King
Either way, you are right that even in this example the min/max’d skill plateaus early with several levels before further improvement is possible (and even then it only allows another two upgrades).
With a few exceptions, the fact that one PC is amazing is of little consolation to the party as a whole. So the barbarian has no problem jumping that chasm. That doesn't help the other PCs much except to stimulate more problem solving (like setting up a rope for everyone else to get over the chasm the hard way).
That is a good point. In most situations you only need one character who is good at a given skill to overcome the obstacle.
Townies (at only 2nd level) and alders (at 6th level) tend to quite good at their professions, skill-wise. Smart PCs really want to visit these folks and pay for their services or recruit them as followers!
To sum up these points, here's how I use skill checks in an adventure:
1) Set *important* skill DCs in a standardized way: 15 + 1.5 * level.
2) Assume at least 1 PC in the party can make this roll most of the time.
3) The PCs really should have townies as hirelings or followings, like in 1st Edition. If the PCs bother to think ahead even a little, they'll have an idea of the challenges they face and hire someone who can do whatever they can't. Naturally, they have a vested interest to keep such NPCs alive!
So I *assume* at least one PC can make great checks in each skill, and if none can, they hire someone.
I like that skill DC equation... nice an straight-forward. On the issue of hirelings however, I am a bit reluctant to use them. Being relatively inexperienced as a DM, I already have my hands full keeping track of all the NPCs in combat while trying to keep up a good pace so I’m reluctant to introduce more (which would require more monsters to balance out the addition of hirelings?... or could I use non-combat hirelings?)
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I'd be very interested in a translation of Radiance skill checks into 5E checks. Maybe like this:
Idea: A +1 to +2 bonus translates to +1d4; otherwise, every +3 bonus in Radiance translates to a +1d6 bonus (round down, max +5d6).
The point of the 5d6 cap is to discourage over-inventment in skills, which is really counter-productiv to an effective character build. Thoughts?
If I am understanding correctly, I think that could work. So the conversion would break down as follows?
+1 --> +1d4
+2 --> +1d4
+3 --> +1d6
+4 --> +1d4+1d6
+5 --> +1d4+1d6
+6 --> +2d6
+7 --> +2d6+1d4
...
+17--> +5d6+1d4
If that’s right, I think it could work but we’d need to cut the ability skill bonus amounts in half or else character will max out their favored skills in no time. Additionally, DC levels will need to be cut in half as well to account for the greatly reduced PC skill roll results. Finally, it might be a good thing but, lowering the skill bonus amounts would boost the value of attribute bonuses which can quickly become inconsequential in the current system.
I think the only downside is that a lot of people are turned off by rolling and adding up “handfuls of dice.” The DnD Next mechanic only rolls two dice (d20 + skill dice) which seems to be acceptable by most of the community that has bothered to comment on it.
I came up with the following mechanic which creates 14 tiers of skill level and converts the current +2 bonuses from abilities into “+1 skill level” and the +4 and +5 abilities become “+2 skill levels” The skills levels themselves are as follows.
1 = +1 (average = 1)
2 = +1d3 (average = 2)
3 = +1d4 (average = 2.5)
4 = +1d6 (average = 3.5)
5 = +1d8 (average = 4.5)
6 = +1d4+1d4 (average = 5)
7 = +1d6+1d4 (average = 6)
8 = +1d6+1d6 (average = 7)
9 = +1d8+1d6 (average = 8)
...
14 = +1d12+1d12 (average = 13)
Once again, the DC levels would have to be cut in half and the Attribute Modifiers would be worth more as they would still be a fixed number added to the dice results. This does limit the max number of dice to three but the max skill bonus is now 13 (average 2d12) which still gives the d20 roll a LOT of weight considering how many character resources have been used to get this level of skill bonus.
In other words, a character would invest a lot of his resources to get seven "2 level bonuses" (+5 bonuses in the current system) to max out a skill and get 2d12 added to his d20. But a +13 may not be enough bonus to justify the cost since it doesn't significantly overshadow the d20.
Maybe if I replaced the d20 with 2d10 that would work better since it would introduce more probablilty curve and would make the +13 more valuable since the 2d10 would much more reliably stay in the midrange of results. But, if I did that I'm right back to rolling too many dice and expecting all the players to have access to 4d10.
