New WotC Article - The Role of Skills

[Paraxis]

I am intrigued by the effect die concept, and love the tier system how about combine them so that gear is not the thing that determines effect die size but skill tier.

Example Diplomacy check d20+ability modifier vs DC if successful roll tier effect die and and ability modifier as well.

Untrained = effect is ability modifier only
Novice= d4+ability modifier
Journeyman= d6+ability modifier
Expert= d8+ability modifier
Master= d10+ability modifier
Grand Master= d12+ability modifier

You could make only three tiers at d4, d8, and d12 to simplify things.

Keep the idea of higher tiers open up new uses of the skill, that those not at that ability can not even try.

Have the right tool for the right job like masterwork thieves tools give advantage (+2 to the d20 ability roll).

This way the tier does not change the ability modifier check but the how effective a success is.

Not sure if this is a good idea, but think it is worth contemplating.

 

[SkidAce]

I like the Novice/Journeyman/Expert/Master ideas.

One thing no one has mentioned (I think) is how soon you can progress.

One rank per level, five skill slots per rank, etc etc.?

In one WotC discussion it may have been lined up with tiers, which is sensible.

But then my players will want to know why they can't be a Master Blacksmith at 1st level like the 0 level NPC is....hmmmmm.

 

[Frostmarrow]

I am intrigued by the effect die concept, and love the tier system how about combine them so that gear is not the thing that determines effect die size but skill tier.

Example Diplomacy check d20+ability modifier vs DC if successful roll tier effect die and and ability modifier as well.

Untrained = effect is ability modifier only
Novice= d4+ability modifier
Journeyman= d6+ability modifier
Expert= d8+ability modifier
Master= d10+ability modifier
Grand Master= d12+ability modifier

You could make only three tiers at d4, d8, and d12 to simplify things.

Keep the idea of higher tiers open up new uses of the skill, that those not at that ability can not even try.

Have the right tool for the right job like masterwork thieves tools give advantage (+2 to the d20 ability roll).

This way the tier does not change the ability modifier check but the how effective a success is.

Not sure if this is a good idea, but think it is worth contemplating.

A human can pick up a club and do 1d6 damage. Unarmed a human (lacking natural weapons) will do 1d3 damage. I think it's a function of being medium-sized. However, with martial weapon proficiency a human can do 1d8 damage, or even as much as 1d12 damage by being proficient and sacrificing defense (not carrying a shield).

The skill effect die used should follow a similar pattern. If you are untrained your die depends on your race or size. Proficiency allows you to make good use of a suitable tool which will give you a higher die. Aggressiveness might double up on the bad stuff numerals but in return give you an even higher die.

So we have simple, martial, and exotic weapon proficiencies. By the same token we could have simple, trade, and exotic tool proficiencies. Dwarves for instance could have an innate smithing trade tools proficiency giving them access to 1d8-smithing tools. Rogues, naturally, would have trade thieves' picks and tools.

Some skills have no suitable tools for the tech level. Binoculars, a trade tool for spotting, simply haven't been invented yet. Some skills are more about what you wear and those should mimic armor proficiencies. –Diplomacy and tumbling comes to mind.

We could also have magical implements and musical instruments following suit.

On top of this we add magic as is tradition in D&D. It means a low level professional, while highly skilled, can't hold a candle to a dwarf equipped with The Hammer of Kharas.

I do like the idea of novices through grand masters but I find that idea too far removed from the D&D, quirky as it is, I've come to appreciate.

Skill | simple tool | trade tool | exotic tool
Acrobatics | light armor | no armor | cat suit
Arcana | na | spell book | laboratory
Athletics | medium armor | light armor | girdle
Bluff | na | na | na
Diplomacy | na | fancy clothes | heavy armor
Dungeoneering | adventuring gear | 10' pole | canary
Endurance | na | light armor | no armor
Heal | band aid | healing kit | drugs
History | stories | books | artefacts
Insight | na | na | na
Intimidate | na | spikes | skull mask
Nature | na | na | na
Perception | na | binoculars | magnifying glass
Religion | scriptures | holy symbol | ritual paraphernalia
Stealth | na | soft boots | ninja stealth suit
Streetwise | cp | sp | gp
Thievery | na | thieves' picks and tools | skeleton key

 

[tlantl]

I don't think tools should give more than a single bonus unless they are going to be enchanted to increase proficiency. As a carpenter I can use an old hammer just as well as I can a brand new one.

On the other hand, if the tool I use is dull or otherwise broken I can still use it, but I'll be hampered by it's condition.

Perhaps condition modifiers be should include minuses to skill checks when using damaged or improvised tools.

something along the lines of;

damaged -1
serviceable +0
masterwork +1
magical +2

With the assumption of flatter numbers this could be significant. Tool condition could be tracked by number of uses before degrading.

This might be more work than people want, though.

 

[Crazy Jerome]

I'm intrigued by this idea, mainly because I like the idea of a spectrum of success and failure rather than a binary you succeed/you fail, which constantly drives me crazy.

Most of the problems with 3E/4E skills can be traced back to this lack. Having mods to the roll be the only way to affect what you can do and how well you can do it and how fast and so on--is simply too much to tack onto a single d20 roll. Either the mods are overwhelming due to stacking (making the check trivial or impossible) or the mods largely cancel out (leading to some rather goofy results). Trying to get clever with stacking rules is rearranging deck chairs on the Titantic.

Of course, having levels of mastery, and restricting certain activities to those levels, is another way of getting around that problem. I'm not at all sure that having both levels of mastery and rolling for effects wouldn't be overkill. I am sure that having both would handle the vast majority of skill issues and remove the need for all kinds of fiddly nonsense elsewhere.

It would also leave a lot of room for fun details (for those that wanted them), while keeping a flatter range of DCs. It's easier to make optional modules on three axes than one. For example, if your DCs are relatively set, and your quality of equipment can change the effect you generate on success--if you don't want to deal with the equipment effects, you can always simply say everyone has standard equipment. However, if you balance your DCs around people improving their equipment, then those that can't get it suddenly can't do the skills very well. Classic power creep, and its disadvantaged sibling. Likewise with tiers of training.

 

[Starfox]

My problem with a skill system that is basically attribute rolls with small bonuses tied in is with all the skills/stunts that could reasonably use more than one stat, depending on how you do it. Some examples:

Climbing: Str or Dex
Nature: Into or Wis
Poison use: Wis or Con or Dex

For this reason, I'd like to have some kind of feats, points that let you change what stat a particular stunt/skill is based on. Basically, the skill list could list two stats for each skill, and you can choose which one to use (possibly at the cost of a feat or equivalent).

This goes along very well with another idea that I like, feats as enablers. Say you want to be able to do something not everyone can do, like brew poison. This is an example of using the Medicine ability (which can be a skill or an attribute roll depending on your system) and adding a new ability to it trough a feat.

For an example of the opposite way to do things, I want to cite Earthdawn 1E (not read the later ones). It is a very intriguing system, but has a LOT of skill. Basically, each combat maneuver is a separate skill, with its own skill rank, xp cost, and so on. A much simpler way to do this would have been to have a limited selection of root skills, and then feats acting as enablers for what you can actually do.

((Sorry of this is very similar to my recent post in the "Classes based on the six ability scores" thread - I wrote that one first but the same idea applied here so I elaborated on it))

 

[Leatherhead]

My biggest problem with skills: Leveling up ability scores.

In 3.x you had huge numbers of modifiers from magic gear and other things. It was customization out of control.

In 4e you had scaling ability scores, which meant if you wanted to be great at something it had better be tied to your ability scores or it would get comparatively worse over time, limiting customization too much.

Skill systems tied into ability scores work the best at low level, where everyone's bonuses are closer together. the higher up you go, the more they fall apart.

 

[KesselZero]

Breaking something down creates a lot of noise. So, that is why you bother picking locks at all.

Every round a challenge is not beaten something bad happens. In case of the door the bad thing is "stays shut for one more minute" or it could be "25% chance of trap being sprung".

I like this, though I think that it may not be applicable in all situations. Sometimes a "bad thing happens" would be appropriate, as in the examples you gave, and sometimes I think more of a "moving away from overall success" would be more appropriate, as in a diplomatic encounter. (Although adding points back on to the difficulty of the check could certainly be defined as a "bad thing.")

As for doors and locks, I should have been clearer-- I just meant "Why would you make Break Down Doors check when you could just attack it?" Although it raises an interesting idea (that would drive the simulationists nuts)-- what if a door, for example, were a DC 10 door that could be opened either by 10 Pick Locks points or 10 Break Down points? Obviously these wouldn't both take from the same pool, but it would be a quick way to set equivalent DCs for every approach. This is just a random thought; I'm not convinced by it, since you could certainly put a cheap lock on a tough door or vice versa.

 

[KesselZero]

The way I envision it, having skill effect rolls would make levels of mastery more or less unnecessary, or at least baked in. I've always been a little wary of putting hard caps on when someone simply can't even attempt to do something. Obviously in some examples given, like speaking Illithid, I agree, but in many cases I'd like to see a less-trained PC at least be able to make an attempt-- think, for example, of a young musician who writes a classic song without any formal training. In addition, in skill checks, I'm much less interested in a roll for "are you successful or not," and much more interested in determining degrees of success.

So we'd have a system where the levels of mastery are set: DC 8 Simple, DC 13 Difficult, DC 20 Incredible, DC 25 Legendary (or something like that). Then we'd have a much flatter progression of skill ranks, maybe maxing out at +12 for a Grand Master type character, with each higher rank taking more skill points to achieve so you can't just blast through the levels (and to encourage stretching out to new skills). Finally, each skill rank or two gives new effect dice, from +0/d4 to +12/2d12 or something like that.

The "tier" effect is maintained in that a top-ranked PC wouldn't have to roll for Simple or Difficult tasks, could perform Incredible tasks somewhat reliably, and could achieve Legendary tasks a decent amount of the time. (Obviously all these exact numbers would be tweaked.) Meanwhile, a non-master PC would still have an incentive to at least attempt checks for most of these tasks.

Regarding effect dice, then, it would have two effects. One, a high-ranked PC could get jobs done much quicker. For example, I could write a chorale but it would require sitting down with all my old music theory books from college (bonus from tool use!) and really thinking about everything, whereas Mozart could poop that stuff out in his sleep. Second, it would be a way to differentiate quick tasks from long-term ones (as in many of [MENTION=1122]Frostmarrow[/MENTION]'s examples) so a complex lock could be represented as either DC 15, 2 HP (a skilled rogue could pop it quickly but an unskilled rogue might not be able to open it at all) OR as DC 8, 12 HP (a skilled rogue could still open it easily, and an unskilled rogue could open it eventually, but it would take longer). This gives the DM more tools to use for adventure design based on how he wants to simulate a part of the world and what in-game effect he wants to have (a door that probably can't be opened without getting the captain's key versus a door that can be opened but with a high chance of getting wandering monsters while you do). A more complex system, most definitely, but with the benefit of more flexibility for the DM and more usefulness for less-skilled players.

As a side note, I do agree with a basic trained/untrained split, and in this fledgling system, if you had any ranks you would count as trained. So even a +1 in Speak High Illithid would let you attempt to convince your new overlords not to eat your brains, though it wouldn't be very fluent speech. A +0 would be the only case in which you couldn't make an attempt at all, and that would only be for special skills like languages, Rocket Science, etc. Anybody could make an Athletics check.

Whew!

 

[Thaumaturge]

Every round a challenge is not beaten something bad happens. In case of the door the bad thing is "stays shut for one more minute" or it could be "25% chance of trap being sprung".

I am intrigued by the idea of this resolution mechanic, but I do not like the idea of 'bad things' by default happening if the situation is not overcome each given round. The system doesn't need to further disincintivise failure most times. Failure is just bad.

I think the problem you're trying to solve is poorly skilled PCs 'spamming' complex issues (eg convince the duke, 100 hp, and the Chr 8 barbarian decides he's just going to wear the duke down). For those, I suggest you just put in a deadline or urgency rating, which tells how many rounds the task needs to be resolved in.

The duke is a busy guy, he's impatient, and he's stubborn to boot, so convincing him is 100 convince points, with an urgency of 10. He'll give you a minute of his time, no more. If he thinks you've wasted his time at the end of the minute, he might be wroth with you, however.

Very interesting. Perhaps we should start another thread, flesh this out, and put out an EnWorld skills module when the play test releases.

Thaumaturge.