D&D General Weekly Wrecana : a six parter - unbloodied heroes.

[Garthanos]

Great ideas. Love the twin-stat skills. So coherent with the defenses logic.

That is my thought....

By itself, though, it feels wrong to have so little skills, but... I think it shines when you take all your ideas together:

Wrecan was pretty big picture with his ideas and they fit together rather well. I am with Weekly Wrecana performing rescue work to keep some of that wonderful thinking, a part of the play base.

I love it.

I had an idea where people picked areas of interest for their characters or even obsessions ... A scene could then be looked at in terms of how the task at hand conformed to one of their interests and whether an interest was in scene but distracting from the task at hand.

I think perception is too broad of skill and having reasons for your perception is even better indeed.

 

[Rolenet]

Sad about Wrecan. Now I understand the In Memoriam heading.

I think perception is too broad of skill and having reasons for your perception is even better indeed.

THAT is a great topic for another thread. I'll start this one tomorrow!

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

That is my thought....


Wrecan was pretty big picture with his ideas and they fit together rather well. I am with Weekly Wrecana performing rescue work to keep some of that wonderful thinking, a part of the play base.



I had an idea where people picked areas of interest for their characters or even obsessions ... A scene could then be looked at in terms of how the task at hand conformed to one of their interests and whether an interest was in scene but distracting from the task at hand.

I think perception is too broad of skill and having reasons for your perception is even better indeed.

Read the sidebar on Background Elements in PHB2, it flat out states that you can use them like this. The suggestion is a +2 untyped bonus to checks that relate to something in a character's background. So if he's a Farmer and he needs to milk the the magic cow, well, guess what? Or likewise if he needs to examine the cow, or explain something about cow care, etc.

 

[Garthanos]

Read the sidebar on Background Elements in PHB2, it flat out states that you can use them like this. The suggestion is a +2 untyped bonus to checks that relate to something in a character's background. So if he's a Farmer and he needs to milk the the magic cow, well, guess what? Or likewise if he needs to examine the cow, or explain something about cow care, etc.

Yes enabling a skill that is just described in the background is how I implement every mundane craft skill (which is why the lack of awesome on some MP annoy me )

Does that background include the fact that I love Obsidian LOL My brain is shooting at a more personality quirk level in this case, not a skilled field, which is probably a bit silly

 

[Garthanos]

Yes enabling a skill that is just described in the background is how I implement every mundane craft skill (which is why the lack of awesome on some MP annoy me )

Does that background include the fact that I love Obsidian LOL My brain is shooting at a more personality quirk level in this case, not a skilled field, which is probably a bit silly

So my love of obsidian distracts me from milking the cow right...and I mess up the princes boots.

 

[Garthanos]

Sad about Wrecan. Now I understand the In Memoriam heading.

Mark was also a man of more than considerable patience in a time of extreme edition warring

THAT is a great topic for another thread. I'll start this one tomorrow!

Love to see it....

 

[Garthanos]

I like the idea of Lessons as Noncombat Feats to separate advancements that affect combat and those which do not. I am also very happy with the idea of double attribute skills and how it could be used to keep the skill spread lower. I am like Abdul fine with the core games larger skill list and larger number of trained skills but I would like that to be balanced out for all classes.

I would like the cantrips that essentials brought in for skill swapping turned in to something else not sure what

maybe even situational effects of known rituals ie because you know "speak with the dead" you can apply Arcana for discovering information from a crime scene with a dead body (or for the other branch martial practices. )

Perhaps a group of rituals or martial practices would be purchased using a Lesson.

 

[Garthanos]

In other words some of the thoughts from another Wrecan Recovery thread ...
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?530288-Weekly-Wrecana-Improving-Rituals

and also the one about improving Martial Practices...
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-Practices-how-can-we-fix-them-systematically

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

[h1]Skills Reimagined[/h1]
...

Interesting, I'm sure I read this back in 2009-ish when it was written, but I don't recall really.

HoML does some similar things. Backgrounds are 'minor boons', that means they are acquired through purely narrative means, and not related to character advancement (directly at least). You can't 'retrain' them, but you can get more. Each one offers a standard training bonus (+5) in situations specific to that background, but HoML also has a 'no checks without conflict' rule, so in essence what Wrecan calls 'Point of View' exists in the sense that if your character is simply moving between scenes and exploring/receiving exposition then no checks will happen. Any necessary information will be obtained, some characters may receive some information preferentially, or may receive additional facts, or be able to adduce additional things. This can work like the DW 'Discern Realities or Spout Lore' as well.

Also because in HoML you get new abilities purely in reference to what happened in the story, there's no need to 'balance' combat and non-combat particularly. So, something like 'lessons' in Wrecan's parlance are not really needed.

I consider the simplicity of one ability per skill to be fine. Instead I simply limited spreads in other ways, by reducing the game to 20 levels, largely getting rid of ability score increases, and limiting enhancement bonuses to +3 maximum, and then making all other bonuses into one category, so they rarely stack (and untyped don't exist!). This means there's only about a 20 point maximum variation, and most skills stay within a 15 point band.

Because skills and weapons all get the same training/proficiency rule, they all track one another (and thus defenses) perfectly. The only difference is, you may actually use a poor skill, you'd simply never use a poor weapon/attack!

I kept the 4e skill list, there seems little reason to really change it, the advantages are small at best.

I do have trained skill powers, and as a general rule you need training in a skill to master rituals, which are a rather bigger deal in HoML now.

I think it achieves a lot of what the intent is here. There are a few areas that aren't perfect (some abilities like CON still have few skills).

 

[Garthanos]

Also because in HoML you get new abilities purely in reference to what happened in the story, there's no need to 'balance' combat and non-combat particularly.

Not sure I entirely see it that way, in story driven learning still amounts to weighing the cost of acquiring the one or the other only so much time to be had you know , most cases we generally assume off screen learning for the majority of rpgs...

But I do like the context for onscreen learning like GMTs and similar, but requiring it all to be that way might feel heavy handed in a way, not sure, cut down to 20 levels like you do and other things interact with it.

That lesser boons not being artificially limited, with plenty of non-combat being lesser boons to encourage them might indeed be the element that gets the job done.