Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Towards a Story Now 4e
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 7454736" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p><strong><span style="color: #8b4513">Skills & Proficiencies</span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="color: #8b4513"></span></strong></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513">All characters are good at certain things. These are things that the character is said to be proficient at. There are a number of skills which a character may have proficiency with, as well as weapons and other tools. In addition characters may have knowledge in various areas which could be useful.</span></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513"></span></p><p><strong> <table style='width: 100%'><tr><th><span style="color: #000000">Skill</span><span style="color: #8b4513"><br /> </span></th><th><span style="color: #000000">Primary Ability</span><br /> </th></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Acrobatics</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">DEX</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Arcana</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">INT</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Athletics</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">STR</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Bluff</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">CHA</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Diplomacy</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">CHA</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Engineering</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">INT</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Heal</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">WIS</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">History</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">INT</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Insight</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">WIS</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Intimidation</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">CHA</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Leadership<br /> </span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">CHA</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Nature</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">WIS</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Perception</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">WIS</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Religion</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">INT</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Stealth</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">DEX<br /> </span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Streetwise</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">CHA<br /> </span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Survival</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">CON</span></td></tr><tr><td><p style="text-align: right"><span style="color: #8b4513">Thievery</span></p> </td><td><span style="color: #8b4513">DEX</span></td></tr></table><p><span style="color: #8b4513"></span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="color: #8b4513"> </span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="color: #8b4513"> Skills </span></strong></p><p><strong><span style="color: #8b4513"></span></strong></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513">A skill represents an area of endeavor or proficiency. Many skills are 'knacks', for instance a character proficient in the Athletics skill is particularly good at athletic feats and will probably naturally prefer to use them to solve problems.</span></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513">Others might best be seen as talents a character possesses and associated knowledge and expertise. Again, these are things a character might naturally prefer to use in problem solving. </span></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513"></span></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513">Having a skill may also imply a certain amount of general knowledge which goes with it. For instance a character with proficiency in the Streetwise skill knows facts about towns and their back streets and is at home navigating them.</span></p><p><strong><span style="color: #8b4513">Proficiency</span></strong></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513">If a character is trained in a skill then the character has proficiency with this skill and gets the +5 proficiency bonus to all checks using this skill. Any character may attempt to use any skill, but some have natural aptitude, training, or experience which gives them an edge. Some powers may require proficiency with a given skill. The character must have proficiency in the relevant skill to attempt that check. </span></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513">Proficiency is also an indication of the types of activities which a character is familiar with and will achieve good results with. When characters are outside of conflict situations they may use their skills and will generally be successful at the things they are good at. Thus a Wizard might research a new type of ritual he wishes to develop. His knowledge of Arcana is likely to allow him to succeed.</span></p><p><strong><span style="color: #8b4513">Skill Powers</span></strong></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513">Some skills also have basic powers associated with them. These are basic powers which any character may attempt to use. Naturally, being proficient with the skill will make these easier to use effectively.</span></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513"></span></p><p><strong><span style="color: #8b4513">Descriptions</span></strong></p><p></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513">All of the above skills are described here. The situations in which proficiency in this skill may typically be applied to checks are discussed, along with typical DVs associated with those checks and additional situations which may modify them. Powers associated with the skill are then described.</span></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513"></span></p><p><span style="color: #8b4513"></span>4e's skill system is pretty much fine. I did note that there were a couple of rather obvious things missing. Leadership and Engineering being the obvious additions. I got rid of 'dungeoneering' as being rather D&D-specific. In any case we often used it to stand in for an Engineering skill, so that seemed like a decent tweak.</p><p></p><p>In any case, as I've propounded in discussions of 4e skills, these are meant to be something a bit more like Fate Accelerated's approaches, but in a more concrete form. Between a character's ability scores and skill check bonuses it becomes fairly easy to determine what their characteristic approaches to problem-solving are. </p><p></p><p>Note however that in the context of HoML all sorts of checks, which are going to be mostly skill checks in all likelihood, take on a slightly different aspect than in 4e. All 'scenes' are either challenges in-and-of-themselves, or they form some element of an ongoing challenge. There is no such thing as a simple check unassociated with any challenge, unless the situation is an action sequence (combat mostly) where the detailed action rules govern the progress of the scene.</p><p></p><p>All checks are part of the success/failure tally system of the general challenge mechanics. While there is a success and failure associated with each individual check, the really significant strategic success/fail determinations will be for overall challenges (IE 3 fails and you take the 'failed' branch of the story). This means that skill checks themselves are more involved in steering the immediate narrative within a scene. For this reason they partake of the general 4 levels of result check mechanism, critical failure, failure, success, and complete success. This gives the GM some pretty strong support in terms of deciding what happens and how it drives the story forward.</p><p></p><p>Another thing to note with HoML is the role of Practices. Practices are not fundamentally a set of almost skill-like things. Instead they server two purposes within this structure. First they are little mini-narratives which players can invoke in order to take control of which skills are going to be engaged. For example: the wizard comes to a locked door. Not desiring to engage in a bout of lock-picking for which he's ill-suited, he chooses to alter the narrative into a story of how he uses his Undo ritual to make an arcana check to open the lock. This illustrates the 'substitute a different skill' effect of practices. The other aspect is their 'bypass a check' function, which can be engaged by paying any 'boost' price. In that case the wizard simply expends a Vitality Point (some life force) and the door AUTOMATICALLY opens, presumably leading to a success being tallied in the current ongoing challenge.</p><p></p><p>The boost aspect of practices illustrates the 'up the ante' mechanism of HoML in action. When it REALLY matters to a character to pass a skill check, then she will! It will just come with a price. Players will have to pick and choose what 'really matters' in a given situation, since they won't have limitless VPs to burn. A player could also leverage a character trait and Inspiration to invoke a "the door is simply not locked" scenario (this might work for a character with the trait 'lucky' for example), or some other equivalent narrative that would relate to some other trait. Other character attributes may be called out as well, such as an unusually high ability score, a background element, or a boon. </p><p></p><p>Inspiration and boost overlap to a certain extent, but they serve slightly different purposes. One aligns play to the character's traits, the other to its skills or 'knacks'. To the extent that these are all part of a holistic character design concept they will all contribute to the narrative realization of that concept in play.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 7454736, member: 82106"] [B][COLOR=#8b4513]Skills & Proficiencies [/COLOR][/B] [COLOR=#8b4513]All characters are good at certain things. These are things that the character is said to be proficient at. There are a number of skills which a character may have proficiency with, as well as weapons and other tools. In addition characters may have knowledge in various areas which could be useful. [/COLOR] [B][TABLE="width: 50%"] [TR] [TH="width: 93, bgcolor: #944794"][COLOR=#000000]Skill[/COLOR][COLOR=#8b4513] [/COLOR][/TH] [TH="width: 147, bgcolor: #944794"][COLOR=#000000]Primary Ability[/COLOR] [/TH] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Acrobatics[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]DEX[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Arcana[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]INT[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Athletics[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]STR[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Bluff[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]CHA[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Diplomacy[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]CHA[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Engineering[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]INT[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Heal[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]WIS[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]History[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]INT[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Insight[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]WIS[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Intimidation[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]CHA[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Leadership [/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]CHA[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Nature[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]WIS[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Perception[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]WIS[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Religion[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]INT[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Stealth[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]DEX [/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Streetwise[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]CHA [/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Survival[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]CON[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [TR] [TD="width: 93, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][RIGHT][COLOR=#8b4513]Thievery[/COLOR][/RIGHT] [/TD] [TD="width: 147, bgcolor: #cfe7f5"][COLOR=#8b4513]DEX[/COLOR][/TD] [/TR] [/TABLE] [COLOR=#8b4513] [/COLOR] [COLOR=#8b4513] Skills [/COLOR][/B] [COLOR=#8b4513]A skill represents an area of endeavor or proficiency. Many skills are 'knacks', for instance a character proficient in the Athletics skill is particularly good at athletic feats and will probably naturally prefer to use them to solve problems.[/COLOR] [COLOR=#8b4513]Others might best be seen as talents a character possesses and associated knowledge and expertise. Again, these are things a character might naturally prefer to use in problem solving. [/COLOR] [COLOR=#8b4513]Having a skill may also imply a certain amount of general knowledge which goes with it. For instance a character with proficiency in the Streetwise skill knows facts about towns and their back streets and is at home navigating them.[/COLOR] [B][COLOR=#8b4513]Proficiency[/COLOR][/B] [COLOR=#8b4513]If a character is trained in a skill then the character has proficiency with this skill and gets the +5 proficiency bonus to all checks using this skill. Any character may attempt to use any skill, but some have natural aptitude, training, or experience which gives them an edge. Some powers may require proficiency with a given skill. The character must have proficiency in the relevant skill to attempt that check. [/COLOR] [COLOR=#8b4513]Proficiency is also an indication of the types of activities which a character is familiar with and will achieve good results with. When characters are outside of conflict situations they may use their skills and will generally be successful at the things they are good at. Thus a Wizard might research a new type of ritual he wishes to develop. His knowledge of Arcana is likely to allow him to succeed.[/COLOR] [B][COLOR=#8b4513]Skill Powers[/COLOR][/B] [COLOR=#8b4513]Some skills also have basic powers associated with them. These are basic powers which any character may attempt to use. Naturally, being proficient with the skill will make these easier to use effectively. [/COLOR] [B][COLOR=#8b4513]Descriptions[/COLOR][/B] [COLOR=#8b4513]All of the above skills are described here. The situations in which proficiency in this skill may typically be applied to checks are discussed, along with typical DVs associated with those checks and additional situations which may modify them. Powers associated with the skill are then described. [/COLOR]4e's skill system is pretty much fine. I did note that there were a couple of rather obvious things missing. Leadership and Engineering being the obvious additions. I got rid of 'dungeoneering' as being rather D&D-specific. In any case we often used it to stand in for an Engineering skill, so that seemed like a decent tweak. In any case, as I've propounded in discussions of 4e skills, these are meant to be something a bit more like Fate Accelerated's approaches, but in a more concrete form. Between a character's ability scores and skill check bonuses it becomes fairly easy to determine what their characteristic approaches to problem-solving are. Note however that in the context of HoML all sorts of checks, which are going to be mostly skill checks in all likelihood, take on a slightly different aspect than in 4e. All 'scenes' are either challenges in-and-of-themselves, or they form some element of an ongoing challenge. There is no such thing as a simple check unassociated with any challenge, unless the situation is an action sequence (combat mostly) where the detailed action rules govern the progress of the scene. All checks are part of the success/failure tally system of the general challenge mechanics. While there is a success and failure associated with each individual check, the really significant strategic success/fail determinations will be for overall challenges (IE 3 fails and you take the 'failed' branch of the story). This means that skill checks themselves are more involved in steering the immediate narrative within a scene. For this reason they partake of the general 4 levels of result check mechanism, critical failure, failure, success, and complete success. This gives the GM some pretty strong support in terms of deciding what happens and how it drives the story forward. Another thing to note with HoML is the role of Practices. Practices are not fundamentally a set of almost skill-like things. Instead they server two purposes within this structure. First they are little mini-narratives which players can invoke in order to take control of which skills are going to be engaged. For example: the wizard comes to a locked door. Not desiring to engage in a bout of lock-picking for which he's ill-suited, he chooses to alter the narrative into a story of how he uses his Undo ritual to make an arcana check to open the lock. This illustrates the 'substitute a different skill' effect of practices. The other aspect is their 'bypass a check' function, which can be engaged by paying any 'boost' price. In that case the wizard simply expends a Vitality Point (some life force) and the door AUTOMATICALLY opens, presumably leading to a success being tallied in the current ongoing challenge. The boost aspect of practices illustrates the 'up the ante' mechanism of HoML in action. When it REALLY matters to a character to pass a skill check, then she will! It will just come with a price. Players will have to pick and choose what 'really matters' in a given situation, since they won't have limitless VPs to burn. A player could also leverage a character trait and Inspiration to invoke a "the door is simply not locked" scenario (this might work for a character with the trait 'lucky' for example), or some other equivalent narrative that would relate to some other trait. Other character attributes may be called out as well, such as an unusually high ability score, a background element, or a boon. Inspiration and boost overlap to a certain extent, but they serve slightly different purposes. One aligns play to the character's traits, the other to its skills or 'knacks'. To the extent that these are all part of a holistic character design concept they will all contribute to the narrative realization of that concept in play. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
D&D Older Editions
Towards a Story Now 4e
Top