The Shaman
First Post
Whereas I like systems that get away from this sort of fiddliness. It creates these fiddly little niches that add nothing to the game for me.
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New Mearls Article - Skills in D&D
- Thread starter Markn
- Start date
LostSoul
Adventurer
When you climb, you move 10' + 5' per point of STR [bonus]. Difficult or challenging climbs require a check; if you fail, the DM selects a bad result. On a failure of 10+, the DM selects two. Some common bad results are:
* you make no progress
* you fall
* you drop something
* you make a lot of noise
* you put your hand on something dangerous
Thieves: Thieves gain a +2 bonus to climb checks. This bonus increases by +1 every 3 levels. At level 3, the thief can guide others, granting them a +2 bonus to climb checks as long as the thief is able to give instructions. At level 6, the thief moves an extra 5'. At level 9, the thief cannot fall. At level 12, the thief can move across horizontal surfaces at 1/2 climb speed.
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Then you might have some "Optional: Skills" thing that allows characters to train in climb and pick some talents, if you want to go that way.
* you make no progress
* you fall
* you drop something
* you make a lot of noise
* you put your hand on something dangerous
Thieves: Thieves gain a +2 bonus to climb checks. This bonus increases by +1 every 3 levels. At level 3, the thief can guide others, granting them a +2 bonus to climb checks as long as the thief is able to give instructions. At level 6, the thief moves an extra 5'. At level 9, the thief cannot fall. At level 12, the thief can move across horizontal surfaces at 1/2 climb speed.
*
Then you might have some "Optional: Skills" thing that allows characters to train in climb and pick some talents, if you want to go that way.
Yesway Jose
First Post
IMO these might be moving towards the more 'optional' side of things. It's similar to previously mentioned quibbles with Strength being the arbitrary bonus modifier (excluding flexibility/Dex), except in this case, it's the arbitrary wushu-ness of the thief. As usual, no right or wrongs here, just a difficulty of balancing for different preferences.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
I think it would be better to not modify climb speed by strength at all.
Just match it to ground speed (so if your ground speed is reduced by armour or by encumbrance (for those that use it) your climb speed is reduced too).
But basically if someone has a move of 6 squares or 30ft, they should just have a climb speed of 2 squares or 10ft or whatever is a genre-appropriate figure. End of story.
Plane Sailing
Astral Admin - Mwahahaha!
I have a strong preference for skills to be based upon a combination of ability scores rather than single ability scores (or the 'use your best score for everything' which can sometimes be engineered in 4e!)
Thus climb might be Str + Dex, Swim might be Str + Con, Bluff might be Int + Cha, Diplomacy might be Wis + Cha and so forth.
It helps encourage a spread of abilities rather than the laser-like focus on key abilities which is often the mathematically most advantageous route to take in D&D
Cheers
Thus climb might be Str + Dex, Swim might be Str + Con, Bluff might be Int + Cha, Diplomacy might be Wis + Cha and so forth.
It helps encourage a spread of abilities rather than the laser-like focus on key abilities which is often the mathematically most advantageous route to take in D&D
Cheers
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
Well, with the way the skill was written there, there would only ever BE a check if there was some chance of failure. If your character is reasonably good at climbing, he can climb pretty much any cave wall or tree, no sweat, as written.
And removing that chance of failure when it should be there is futzing with the drama.
On Dailies, it's a good thing. On every attack roll, it would get goofy, IMO. "Why am I even rolling an attack roll?"
The potential for failure, even in the best-laid plans, is part of any game. The issue with a "you cannot fail" ability is that it removes that element of gameplay, that element of drama. I don't mind it on limited-use abilities so much, but on something you can do whenever...yeah, it's a bit of an issue.
But Mearls continues on to say that a climber with a point in Climb could in fact climb a horizontal surface. See his spider climb. He's saying that a skilled climber can do things an unskilled climber cannot.
Presumably, there would also be a 1-handed climb option as well. Personally, I don't see anything wrong with saying that you cannot climb 1-handed unless you put skill points into Climb.
EvilDwarf
Explorer
Just a few things.
I really, really like to hear Mearls think out loud, but was very disappointed by the indication that these musings weren't going somewhere. For a while, I was excited by the thought of a modular, dial-in complexity as desired, and was hoping 5e was being kicked around, design-wise.
Second, following from the above, I was hoping for a basic, underlying truly D&D system for 5e. That said, did anyone else notice the complexity that Mearls seems to assume or take for granted?
"When you are climbing, all attacks against you gain combat advantage. If you cannot take standard actions while climbing, you immediately fall. You also fall if any effect forces you to move against your will or if you are knocked prone."
For instance, if this came from a new edition, I'd be doing the following: looking up what the heck "combat advantage" means and what it does and under what circumstances in particular it happens, and I would hope to the gawds not to find another "simple table"; then I'd have to look at what the standard actions are now, or more likely, what they are not; I'd have to look at the "effect forces" that moved me in the first place to see what they do or don't do, or both; and then I'd have to know what happens when I'm knocked prone and what all that entails. Granted, these aren't rocket science, but my point is that they do tend towards the "system mastery" that was the inherent problem/assumption with 3x.
Second, why not simply use the ability mods and let the player roll? If you're climbing something that requires you to hoist yourself or pull yourself up, use STR. If you're climbing a rope ladder or a twisted tree, use DEX. The DM and player should be able to come to a mutual agreement, or use the odds/evens roll to determine which skill if there's a question. If you want to use DCs, use the ability mod as the roll mod vs. the DC. Done.
Harkening back to the olden days, I recall our DM just saying, Hum, that's pretty tough--you have a 35% chance to climb over that wall, everyone would pretty much think that reasonable, or made a case for adjustment, and play continued, quick and dirty. Even yet, the thief had set percentages and was part of the class.
The latter case alludes to what Mearls was talking about earlier, about layers of complexity that can be stripped out. Climbing, etc. is the province of the class. Breaking down doors is the province of a class. Deciphering runes is the province of a class. If you want such acts available to other classes, then add the skills module.
(Finally, don't even get me started about another "invisible" layer of useless complexity, the ability scores themselves. So, we generate an ability score to determine our ability bonus? That is, we generate a number to determine another number? I would just rather have STR +4, as opposed to STR 18 = bonus of +4. For that matter, just use Fortitude, Reflex, and Will as the abilities, and have them be single digit bonuses. 4e essentially does this anyway by pairing abilities, and wizards get the same high hit bonus with their intelligence as the fighters with their strength, so basically, the to hit bonus with a magic missile vs. a fighter's to hit with a longsword is a wash--except the wizard targets a lower defense number.)
Cheers.
I really, really like to hear Mearls think out loud, but was very disappointed by the indication that these musings weren't going somewhere. For a while, I was excited by the thought of a modular, dial-in complexity as desired, and was hoping 5e was being kicked around, design-wise.
Second, following from the above, I was hoping for a basic, underlying truly D&D system for 5e. That said, did anyone else notice the complexity that Mearls seems to assume or take for granted?
"When you are climbing, all attacks against you gain combat advantage. If you cannot take standard actions while climbing, you immediately fall. You also fall if any effect forces you to move against your will or if you are knocked prone."
For instance, if this came from a new edition, I'd be doing the following: looking up what the heck "combat advantage" means and what it does and under what circumstances in particular it happens, and I would hope to the gawds not to find another "simple table"; then I'd have to look at what the standard actions are now, or more likely, what they are not; I'd have to look at the "effect forces" that moved me in the first place to see what they do or don't do, or both; and then I'd have to know what happens when I'm knocked prone and what all that entails. Granted, these aren't rocket science, but my point is that they do tend towards the "system mastery" that was the inherent problem/assumption with 3x.
Second, why not simply use the ability mods and let the player roll? If you're climbing something that requires you to hoist yourself or pull yourself up, use STR. If you're climbing a rope ladder or a twisted tree, use DEX. The DM and player should be able to come to a mutual agreement, or use the odds/evens roll to determine which skill if there's a question. If you want to use DCs, use the ability mod as the roll mod vs. the DC. Done.
Harkening back to the olden days, I recall our DM just saying, Hum, that's pretty tough--you have a 35% chance to climb over that wall, everyone would pretty much think that reasonable, or made a case for adjustment, and play continued, quick and dirty. Even yet, the thief had set percentages and was part of the class.
The latter case alludes to what Mearls was talking about earlier, about layers of complexity that can be stripped out. Climbing, etc. is the province of the class. Breaking down doors is the province of a class. Deciphering runes is the province of a class. If you want such acts available to other classes, then add the skills module.
(Finally, don't even get me started about another "invisible" layer of useless complexity, the ability scores themselves. So, we generate an ability score to determine our ability bonus? That is, we generate a number to determine another number? I would just rather have STR +4, as opposed to STR 18 = bonus of +4. For that matter, just use Fortitude, Reflex, and Will as the abilities, and have them be single digit bonuses. 4e essentially does this anyway by pairing abilities, and wizards get the same high hit bonus with their intelligence as the fighters with their strength, so basically, the to hit bonus with a magic missile vs. a fighter's to hit with a longsword is a wash--except the wizard targets a lower defense number.)
Cheers.
Crazy Jerome
First Post
Beat me to it. Mongoose Runequest II does this to very great effect. And if it were built into the base math for the game, it would remove some of the need for (relatively) arbitrary scaling modifiers elsewhere.
You could also do it so that each pair of abilities always had one mapped as always applying, while the other could be swapped out with feats. You swing a longsword, Str always matters, but you can make Int matter more than Dex if you want to spend the feat.
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