Out of combat balance - skills trained and known

[Garthanos]

Eh, I'm not really in a tizzy about the one class having 6 skills, and I see some point to it.

The rogue has literally twice as many skills as the raw fighter and raw barbarian...

I think that is bad

And no I do not see the point to it - ASIDE from raw tradition.

 

[Garthanos]

What if attribute advancement was an allotment of points so that there was some encouragement for the character who wanted to get better in something other than purely primary and secondary attributes?

How bad would this mess with combat numbers if generalization had more encouragement? (would it be building a trap for those who like it?)

 

[Garthanos]

Plus there's always practices (which are in HoML ways to substitute a different skill by suggesting an alternate narrative) and Inspiration, which lets you leverage a trait to introduce some narrative element in your favor. Between the two its not likely any given player will be forced to actually eat some crummy check very often. Instead they'll simply be pushed to create some different narrative that works for them. Since practices and Inspiration cost resources, that means you are really just controlling the stakes vs risk using the skill system. Great improvement over 4e's take on it, with really rather modest changes in game design. 4e was 90% baked.

I will say we arent massively shifting practices in having them enable alternate methodology its kind of what rituals and practices always have done ... provide a different way forward ... in a particular context but it does take embracing practices strongly as they are appropriately situational (avoiding the problematic over powered cantrip trick)

 

[darkbard]

What I find helps with this (which I'm not meaning to imply you haven't tried at your table - I'm just setting out my own approach) is a "fail forward" style resolution of the Burning Wheel or DitV sort: if the check fails, then the PC (and player) don't get what they wanted, but I narrate an outcome in which stuff keeps happening (ie it's not just "Sorry, didn't work). So the anti-social fighter trying and failing to persuade a NPC (ie player fails a low-bonus Diplomacy check) might lead thinks down a less happy path for the party, but it doesn't stall the action at the table.

I wonder if this might not make an interesting thread: a discussion with specific gameplay examples of how to implement fail forward principles as a way of opening up creative play.... (I know many of your "actual gameplay" posts contain such elements, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION], but perhaps not with quite this specificity of purpose.)

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=1282]darkbard[/MENTION] - if we had constructive threads about useful techniques, then where would we find the time to argue that metagaming is not really RPGing!
[MENTION=82504]Garthanos[/MENTION] - I don't think it would break the game to identify ways for fighters to have strong INT- or CHA-based skills. But I don't hae any suggestions on how to change the system to allow this.

But as the game is currently structured, here is my take: recognising the heraldry of the local realm, or making friends with a town mayor, is Heroic tier or perhaps low Paragon tier activity, and a fighter (especially with training) can be as effective at this as a bard, warlord or wizard.

But once we get into upper Paragon or Epic tier, we're talking about feats comparable to Luthien's charming of Morgoth. These are things a fighter is not likely to succed at (though the upper Epic tier fighter in my game did succeed in an Intimate check in a skill challenge involving Yan-C-Bin - naturally Yan-C-Bin wasn't scared of him, but the threat was effective against the djinn in Yan-C-Bin's court).

In other words, the fighter's mechanical weakness should (in my view) be narrated in terms of the potency and drama of the situation, not any in-fiction ineptitude.

 

[Garthanos]

@darkbard - if we had constructive threads about useful techniques, then where would we find the time to argue that metagaming is not really RPGing!

@Garthanos - I don't think it would break the game to identify ways for fighters to have strong INT- or CHA-based skills. But I don't hae any suggestions on how to change the system to allow this.

But as the game is currently structured, here is my take: recognising the heraldry of the local realm, or making friends with a town mayor, is Heroic tier or perhaps low Paragon tier activity, and a fighter (especially with training) can be as effective at this as a bard, warlord or wizard.

I was suggesting that Training is certain reasonable for Fighters given that the class who fights was the basis of medieval Nobility and yes history was considered of vital importance to those who relied on an aspect of it for wealth and social power. As the game stands yes mechanically you need to have sufficient class support for an attribute for it to be central enough to support doing those other more grandiose things. A Warlord is entirely a different kettle for that exact reason and there is the assertion if one wants to play a smart fighter... there is always the Warlord. (Although that defender combat style with its damned if you do and damned if you dont bite, may sync up better with a players fighter ideas)

Another smart fighter uses the extraordinary perception route. This is even Sherlock holmes like detective levels of awesome achievable. It does need knowledge backing it of course but its core is perception and insight. Which ought to be on the fighters schtick list too. This as I have said before is the class who guards for crying out loud. But no he doesnt get perception or insight.

Actually quite a few of the martial practices I have been creating are based on those

In other words, the fighter's mechanical weakness should (in my view) be narrated in terms of the potency and drama of the situation, not any in-fiction ineptitude.

Well not seeing how that works out and doesn't actually excuse making fighters effectively arbitrarily under-skilled even from the beginning when there are very reasonable in story reasons they wouldn't be. At some level starting closer to balanced reduces the eventual divergence. Even if the class attribute focus makes some divergence inevitable.


To be clear I have no problem with a player narrating mechanical success and competence as heroic luck or similar non-character driven competence effects .... I will even grant failure mechanically can quite often be painted in-fiction as something other than character incompetence but think the general case we are talking about of from the players level actual mechanical incompetence doesnt really leave itself open for that.

 

[Garthanos]

One thought I had was to have those with a racial bonus to a skill or a background bonus to a skill provide it as a Feat ie you have the feat skill focus (even if untrained) . What would this do it would mean these things do not stack. And divergence of skills would be more under control at least in the beginning.

 

[Garthanos]

I wonder if this might not make an interesting thread: a discussion with specific gameplay examples of how to implement fail forward principles as a way of opening up creative play.... (I know many of your "actual gameplay" posts contain such elements, @pemerton, but perhaps not with quite this specificity of purpose.)

It is not a bad idea 4e certainly is intended many of us felt to roll in that direction - argggh that sentence sucks but I am letting it stand out of guilt for slaughtering English

 

[Garthanos]

What if attribute advancement was an allotment of points so that there was some encouragement for the character who wanted to get better in something other than purely primary and secondary attributes?

How bad would this mess with combat numbers if generalization had more encouragement? (would it be building a trap for those who like it?)

perhaps you gain 2 character points per level or some such (using the point based system )

The spending could be restricted so only half of all your points could ever be spent on one attribute...

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yup
With the main attribute focus of classes and similar even being trained in a skill doesnt any where near catch you up in a lot of things it just narrows the gap giving my fighter training in diplomacy to represent him being of noble background wont outstrip the bard and it wont outstrip the Mage when I give him history for the Heraldry and history of war he learned either. It just narrows the gap.

Which I think is why I think for many you will reasonably see what the Human Target mentioned ie an " I might as well not try. " attitude.

I do agree that employing a fall/fail forward attitude to the over all game helps with some of that but I also see it somewhat as a generalized thing we use to keep stories going and not a method for making characters who have been mechanically jipped (Which a 3 skill fighter is) acceptable.

I think the problem is you'd have to start getting into some real complexity to fix it. I mean, History is something that can be benefited to some extent by high INT, but to what degree? REALISTICALLY a guy with a 180 IQ is unlikely to be a signficantly better historian than one with a 120 IQ (20 INT vs 13 INT lets say). 4e simply doesn't have that level of granularity. One guy will be +1 and other +5, and the gap will grow as the INT primary guy adds ABIs and the other one doesn't. Now, you could add whole layers of tables and whatnot into the game to make skill bonus calculations highly complex, but in the end my question is always "how does it FEEL to the players?" Can they easily and quickly see how their character 'works'? I also think that some complex set of rules might fix this particular issue, but it would probably generate as many others as it fixed.

I would thus say "If you want a fighter with a high History bonus, then give him a high INT!" I mean, sure its not 'optimized' for a fighter, but it isn't exactly crippling to give your fighter a 15 INT and spend a few ABI on it to bring it up to, say 18 later on, or even 20. You might have to spend a feat on the extra +3 skill bonus at some point if you REALLY want, but I'm sure the higher INT can be useful in other ways too (IE maybe you can wear light armor, which can be a nice variation for a fighter).