I think it's a bummer they can't get skills to work for both people who want them and people who don't.
...
Still though, does that mean two different character sheets? One with skills, one without?
I don't know why they aren't mentioning the following anymore, but weren't they previously thinking of giving Basic PCs the choice of
one ability (ie Strength, Intelligence...) and apply the skill bonus to all checks with that, if not using skills? It would seem so easy to do something like that to allow PCs using skills and PCs not using skills at the same table.
And a character sheet doesn't need much more for skills, if they increase all by the same rate. You can just put the keywords "Climb, Knowledge Arcana, Stealth, ..." somewhere in an "open" section of your character sheet, just where you can put your feats, your class special abilities, and other add-ons. A more complete character sheet would be different only in having the section split up with titles for each subsection.
The last answer bugs me: "We want to give these out where it’s appropriate, and are not limiting them to coming from a single source."
Overlapping might be an occasional problem, but IMHO it is more important to have the possibility of getting a proficiency from a "pool" that is available to everyone (that is, unless you
want something to be exclusive).
The solution is probably
feats, since these are open to everyone, and since from the next packet feats will be always an option at every table (not in Basic, but it makes sense that in a Basic game you can't customize PCs fully - but if you want so, the DM can always take proficiency feats from Standard and let you have one in place of an ability stat boost).
The only problem is that now feats are supposedly getting bigger, and one single proficiency alone might not make for a feat strong enough to stand against the others.
Then getting the same prof from a race, a class, a background is a different issue. What is more important in the game, that someone wanting to play a Fighter+Thief or Wizard+Thief will get enough from the Thief background to be indeed a "thief", or that someone wanting to play a Rogue+Thief doesn't have any overlapping of features so that it doesn't feel she's not treated fairly? I don't have an answer to this, but I have the feeling that fixing the second case with house rules (or guidelines in the book) is easier that fixing the first case.
Now, if I want a more complex skill system, a module replaces the skill bonus with skills and ranks. Even better, if I want a complex weapon system, it replaces the attack bonus with weapon skills and ranks. Everybody wins.
Basically 3e skills... I think this could be done fairly easily as an Advance module.
Also an equivalent weapon rank system is easy, but then it would work very differently at the table, because skills give you more flexibility (if you have Climb, Swim and Jump, you're good at climbing, swimming and jumping, so this can open up new tactical opportunities: "hey I can climb over there and enter from the window / how about I swim to the other side of the moat and lower the bridge for you...") while in case of weapons except in occasional emergencies you are almost always going to use the 2 weapons you're best at (one melee, one ranged) and the others don't matter.
Skill Dice: Boo. Get rid of them (if I had my way). Do not like this over a static bonus.
IIRC we
will get a skill static bonus back to everyone.
In addition, Rogues and Bards will have a skill die (similar to previous martial damage dice) that can either be used for an additional boost or "spent" for alternative benefits.
In the current packet Rogues already get an additional bonus dice to a couple of skills (
added to the skill dice everybody gets on their skills) from their Scheme. Basically what they're doing, is allowing Rogues to give up this
extra dice for Skill Tricks effects (as in the second-last packet) rather than the regular skill dice, which in turn is reverted back to a static bonus.
Notice that this works a little bit like the original Expertise Dice idea: if you want to play it simple, you just use the extra dice for additive bonus, if you want to play it more tactical, you use it to activate special effects.
