I want my actions to matter

[tetrasodium]

The problem with seeking verisimilitude with character skills in TTRPGs, in my experience, is that you could have thousands of skills, yet anyone with even a bit of expertise and experience in an area are going to be able to poke holes in it. There is always going to need to be a great deal of abstraction.

Personally, I find more abstract rule systems better for immersion. I can imagine the details rather than game making me break them down.

Yet, at the same time, I also find it mechanically fun to have a bunch of widgets to play with. Currently, I'm really liking all the character-building options in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4e. But it is more mechanically fun for me after years of DnD 5e. I wouldn't say it is any more immersive for me and it certainly isn't more "realistic" to me in any meaningful way.

There are a couple serious foundational logic problems with all of this strawmanning...

Verisimilitude is only being thrown around by people defending the 5e skills... In that light it's weird to talk about anyone "seeking" it rather than any of the reasons actually given for moving away from 5e's excessively condensed skill selection.

The 2014 skill system has 18 highly condensed generalist catchall skills. Why would you present a case warning of pitfalls that assumes the next logical step is "thousands" of skills as if there were no middle ground between minimum 1/3 dozen from 1.5 dozen generalist catchall skillsand "thousands"?

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Bring back "use rope!"

(No, please don't.)

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

There are a couple serious foundational logic problems with all of this strawmanning...

Verisimilitude is only being thrown around by people defending the 5e skills... In that light it's weird to talk about anyone "seeking" it rather than any of the reasons actually given for moving away from 5e's excessively condensed skill selection.

The 2014 skill system has 18 highly condensed generalist catchall skills. Why would you present a case warning of pitfalls that assumes the next logical step is "thousands" of skills as if there were no middle ground between minimum 1/3 dozen from 1.5 dozen generalist catchall skillsand "thousands"?

I'll continue this thought experiment: what is the optimal skill list that lies between current and "thousands"? More specifically, what's the list of skills that stops the full set of problems that exist today with, for example, climbing vs. swimming?

I agree that "thousands" was a bit hyperbolic, but I think the intent of that statement was what I'm about to suggest: the optimal list, though under that number, is unwieldy enough to make the current system just easier to use. But let's see if you've got a list of skills that proves me wrong!

 

[pemerton]

I like and play games with different sorts of skill systems. They produce different sorts of play.

4e D&D has 17 skills: Athletics, Endurance, Acrobatics, Stealth, and Thievery are the physical skills; Arcana, History and Religion are the principal knowledge skills; Dungeoneering, Healing and Nature have both intellectual and applied components; then Insight, Perception, Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidation and Streetwise round out the list.

Marvel Heroic RP has 13 "specialties" which function somewhat like skills: Acrobatics, Business, Combat, Cosmic, Covert, Criminal, Medical, Menace, Mystic, Psych, Science, Tech, Vehicle. (Of course characters also have their various super powers.)

By way of contrast, Burning Wheel has dozens of skills - well over two-hundred, in fact. Some of these overlap - eg rather than Herbalism skill, Elves use the Song of Soothing; and in addition to Oratory, religious characters may learn Religious Diatribe - and some are very detailed - eg around a quarter of the skills on the list are various sorts of crafting, with (say) Blacksmithing distinguished from White-(=silver-)smithing distinguished from skill as a Jeweller.

The 4e skill list creates broadly competent characters, with skill challenges resolved in terms of broad approach and evoking core D&D fantasy tropes. MHRP is similarly colourful, albeit with differently-themed colour.

The BW list, on the other hand, sits within a broader framework that easily handles similar skills, one skill augmenting another (via easily-calculated bonus dice), a standard system for unskilled use ("Beginner's Luck"); and it produces gritty and "focused" play experiences that are completely different from 4e or MHRP. Neither of those latter systems makes (say) repairing a dent in one's armour, or (as a necromancer) performing taxidermy on a corpse a big deal at the table; BW can, if one wants.

I don't accept that there is some "ideal" number of skills that optimises verisimilitude and playability. Science fiction films include Star Wars and Gravity (and Blade Runner, and 2001, and The Martian, and . . . ). We don't need to posit some sort of "ideal" of tropes or "realism" to measure all these against. RPGs are no different, in my view: there is room in the world for many of them, with different sorts of systems and character descriptors and so on aimed at producing different sorts of play.

 

[mamba]

You can have your novel approach to simulation. I’m quite happy for you to have it (and that you have had it). But don’t safeguard D&D from framing and play that disagrees with your mental model and don’t try to compel folks like me to buy into it or compel my dissent into silence (like when new iterations and playtests are either on the horizon or in full-go) to protect your conception of the brand from my influence.

how would anyone even go about this? There is a poll, people vote and that is it. On top of that WotC even admits to not always listening to the poll results.

So if what you want is not what D&D is, then what you want is simply not all that popular (or you need to communicate it better, I have no idea what changes you actually are advocating for)

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

I'd say a big problem with a lot of people is that they think reality is what they see on TV/the movies.

I don't know if I've run across that frankly; that would be pretty delusional. Maybe what you're talking about is players who get interested in gaming because they were inspired by a movie or TV series they've seen? If that's the case, I would think that is a seed you'd want to foster and see thrive.

I think a bigger problem is DMs who think reality is their own personal understanding (always flawed to some degree) of physics, biology, social interaction, etc. and who then override game rules based on this understanding (the level of overriding proportional to the level of the Dunning-Kruger effect at play in that particular circumstance), much to the confusion of the rest of the table and to the detriment of the game they are running.

 

[tetrasodium]

I'll continue this thought experiment: what is the optimal skill list that lies between current and "thousands"? More specifically, what's the list of skills that stops the full set of problems that exist today with, for example, climbing vs. swimming?

I agree that "thousands" was a bit hyperbolic, but I think the intent of that statement was what I'm about to suggest: the optimal list, though under that number, is unwieldy enough to make the current system just easier to use. But let's see if you've got a list of skills that proves me wrong!

That's the wrong question, almost to the point of inviting problems by letter of the answer & encouraging miscommunication. Take GURPS 4th edition as an example making a good discussion point, it apparently* has around 300 skills, that's probably too many & iirc part of why it tends to be shortened to fit the world & campaign style where a gurps game is being played. At a different end of the spectrum fate accelerated has only six skill equivalents called "approaches" which every character has in ways that play out somewhat uniquely after adding an infinite number of aspects & stunts. 4e had only 17, but it avoided the chorus 5e creates with 18 by having more limits on what skills a given PC could choose during chargen before adding things with an opportunity cost like feats/power selections/etc.depending on how you split knowledge skills and such 3.x did it with ten or fifteen extra skills and varying opportunity cost to expand your niche beyond skills thematically fitting your class into A & S tier skills.

The over-consolidation of skills in 5e extends well beyond just climbing & swimming. Literally all three of the pillars (exploration/social/combat) along with pretty much any type of challenge that requires the use of skills is negatively impacted by the "oh I'm proficient too" chorus that 5e's skill system creates until you add gm fiat to exclude a proficient player from applying their proficiency after the chorus. That chorus shouldn't happen in a game of specialist classes working together to cover each other's weaknesses with their strengths because it results in gameplay where the players never need to seek out an expert or obtain components needed for working around gaps in the party's skillset before even adding the possibility of creative(or explicitly intended) alternatives granted by their respective classes. That remains true right up until you hit the smallest groups & larger groups do not have an alternative variant the GM can simply point to without making a mess as (sub)classes sometimes gain proficiency in more or specific skills as they level & MC.

*someone seems to have counted here, I'm sure as heck not going to.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

That's the wrong question, almost to the point of inviting problems by letter of the answer & encouraging miscommunication. Take GURPS 4th edition as an example making a good discussion point, it apparently* has around 300 skills, that's probably too many & iirc part of why it tends to be shortened to fit the world & campaign style where a gurps game is being played. At a different end of the spectrum fate accelerated has only six skill equivalents called "approaches" which every character has in ways that play out somewhat uniquely after adding an infinite number of aspects & stunts. 4e had only 17, but it avoided the chorus 5e creates with 18 by having more limits on what skills a given PC could choose during chargen before adding things with an opportunity cost like feats/power selections/etc.depending on how you split knowledge skills and such 3.x did it with ten or fifteen extra skills and varying opportunity cost to expand your niche beyond skills thematically fitting your class into A & S tier skills.

The over-consolidation of skills in 5e extends well beyond just climbing & swimming. Literally all three of the pillars (exploration/social/combat) along with pretty much any type of challenge that requires the use of skills is negatively impacted by the "oh I'm proficient too" chorus that 5e's skill system creates until you add gm fiat to exclude a proficient player from applying their proficiency after the chorus. That chorus shouldn't happen in a game of specialist classes working together to cover each other's weaknesses with their strengths because it results in gameplay where the players never need to seek out an expert or obtain components needed for working around gaps in the party's skillset before even adding the possibility of creative(or explicitly intended) alternatives granted by their respective classes. That remains true right up until you hit the smallest groups & larger groups do not have an alternative variant the GM can simply point to without making a mess as (sub)classes sometimes gain proficiency in more or specific skills as they level & MC.

*someone seems to have counted here, I'm sure as heck not going to.

That was interesting. So which of these systems do you think works best? You listed GURPS, 4E and 3.x.

 

[Maxperson]

Like I said in the skill thread a while a go, I actually find the opposite caused by excessive skill splitting more jarring to verisimilitude: you can be master with a longsword, but when given a katana you're completely helpless. Certain competencies are related, and whilst in real life one can specialise rather narrowly, competency in one area still also increases competency in related stuff.

Yes. The 2e proficiency system was a step in the right direction, but was too limited on that front. 3e's skill system was much better, but suffered from the nonsensical existence of class and cross class skills, and from some classes receiving too few points.

Another thing you can do is make a more robust synergy system, so that skills that are similar don't result in one being very skilled at one thing, but completely unskilled at another similar thing.

 

[Maxperson]

I'll continue this thought experiment: what is the optimal skill list that lies between current and "thousands"? More specifically, what's the list of skills that stops the full set of problems that exist today with, for example, climbing vs. swimming?

I agree that "thousands" was a bit hyperbolic, but I think the intent of that statement was what I'm about to suggest: the optimal list, though under that number, is unwieldy enough to make the current system just easier to use. But let's see if you've got a list of skills that proves me wrong!

I think this is the wrong question. The issue isn't necessarily the number of skills. Let's go with 2000 skills for a moment. If you get 500 skill points a level, 2000 skills isn't going to be so bad from a selection perspective. It's going to be freaking unwieldy and involve a lot of skills that are so highly specialized they probably won't see use, but that's a different problem.

Keeping that in mind, the "optimal" number of skill can in fact be what 3e had, if you get rid of the cross class silliness and give classes more skill points so that they can be reasonably proficient in a good number of skills.

What 5e has done is over condense the skills, and then outside of a few outlier builds, make it so that you can only be proficient in a small number of those skills.

So the question isn't necessarily how many skills(though you can have too few or too many), but rather how do we make it so that a reasonable number of the skills we are using can be chosen. "Optimal" becomes a combination of number of skills and the points/proficiencies you can choose out that number, which means that there won't be a single optimal number of skills.