SW Saga Style Skills for D&D

Here's my preliminary list of D&D skills as translated into SW Saga style groups. I'd like help with Craft, Profession and Perform especially.

• Acrobatics (Dex)
• Athletics (Str)
• Craft (Int)
  • Alchemy
  • Architecture & Engineering
  • Armor
  • Graphics
  • Mechanics
  • Tailor?
  • Tanner / Taxidermy?
  • Sculpture
  • Weapons
• Concentration (Con)
• Deception (Cha)
• Heal (Wis)
• Initiative (Dex)
• Knowledge (Int) [...]
• Larceny (Int)
• Perception (Wis)
• Perform (Cha)
  • Act
  • Dance
  • Keyboard instruments
  • Oratory
  • Percussion instruments
  • String instruments
  • Vocal
  • Wind instruments
• Persuasion (Cha)
• Profession (Wis)
  • ... anything relevant to adventurers?
• Ride (Dex)
• Stealth (Dex)
• Survival (Wis)
• Use Magic (Cha)

Changes: Spellcraft rolled into Knowledge (Arcana); Knowledge (Nature) rolled into Survival.

Larceny would cover Sleight of Hand & Forgery; Craft (Mechanics) would be used for Open Locks and Disable Device.

Thoughts?
Thanks, -- N

I like.

I did a similar thing recently for this newly started Age of Worms campaign.

I wish I would have thought of Larceny - I called it Thievery in mine. I also changed Heal (Wis) to Knowledge (Medicine), and Ride (Dex) moved into Animal Handling (Cha or Dex, can't remember).

I didn't do an Initiative skill - should have.

So far, it's been working well. The players didn't understand it all at first, but it makes keeping track of skills a breeze.

I've seen PC's take profession(sailor) and (siege engineer), but the others were entirely flavour. That being said, I have no idea what to do with the skill. Axing it makes me uncomfortable, and combining several (or all) professions would yield a bloated skill without much focus, which would in turn be difficult to adjudicate. I'm not sure what I'd do here.

You could keep the skills separate, which would make them suboptimal for PC's, but help the DM adjudicate weird actions, such as cooking.

By the way, I'd try to get Use Rope in there somewhere.

I'm curious how you're handling multiclassing if you're importing the Saga skill system. Directly importing Saga multiclassing seems tenuous: I'd be worried about all non-spellcasters starting off with one level of rogue.

-Elemmakil

Edit: You could probably break perform into several groups (musical and physical? My names need work). I'm not sure where I'd stick oratory, or if I'd put it in persuasion. Also, acrobatics could be either in perform or athletics.

Elemmakil said:

I'm curious how you're handling multiclassing if you're importing the Saga skill system. Directly importing Saga multiclassing seems tenuous: I'd be worried about all non-spellcasters starting off with one level of rogue.

Click to expand...

I've done two things:

1/ Skill Training can be used to buy ANY one skill, even if it's not a class skill for any of your classes; and

2/ A new Talent tree available to the high-skill classes (so far just Scout and Rogue) which gives you training in THREE class skills from the class you took that level. Should make multi-classing less painful.

The fact that at 1st level you're literally trading HP for class skills makes it balanced IMHO. One level of Rogue for 6 skills & 18 hp, or one level of Warrior for 3 skills and 30 hp?

Elemmakil said:

Edit: You could probably break perform into several groups (musical and physical? My names need work). I'm not sure where I'd stick oratory, or if I'd put it in persuasion. Also, acrobatics could be either in perform or athletics.

Click to expand...

I really like using Persuasion for Perform (oratory).

Not sure about dance vs. acrobatics -- are all forms of dance acrobatic? I see a strong correlation, in that training in both gives you a reroll on your Perform (dance) checks, but I'm not sure if I want a Perform skill that's not Charisma based. :\

- - -

Another thing I'm doing is creating skill checks which could be made using one of many skills. An Escape Bindings attempt, for example, could be made with Larceny (Int) or Acrobatics (Dex).

Similarly, I'd allow rude fortifications to be made using either Knowledge (military tactics) or Craft (architecture & engineering).

Thanks! -- N

When I did this, I kept Sleight of Hand, but rolled Use Rope into it. I also rolled Forgery and Decipher Script into one skill called Cryptography, and I added the skill "Endurance."