Why I Hate Skills

[TwoSix]

Yes, in other games (e.g. Shadowdark) I don't call for checks unless there's a consequence.

But sometimes it's just hard to think of one. Do they notice the footprints? Can they read the inscription?

Also, when the adventure is designed such that these sorts of rolls are meant to be passive, even if I could think of a consequence I'm not sure I would impose one for a roll the player didn't initiate with the knowledge that there would be consequences if they fail.

I mean, I have a lot more sympathy for the argument of “passive noticing skills are bad” than “all skills are bad”.

 

[kigmatzomat]

...which is why I prefer to not require rolls if there are no consequences. Auto-success (and occasionally auto-failure) FTW.

The middle-ground I use for what should be passive rolls in d20 games are to have every player give me 20x d20 rolls as well as all the "passive" skill modifiers. And to avoid NPC die rolls for stealth or whatever alerting players to events (and to avoid anyone being incentivized to fudge dice, which admittedly hasn't happened since college), I also use their d20 rolls for NPCs. (PC rolls are left to right down their "lane", NPCs go top to bottom across lanes and then diagonal to the next vertical)

So any d20 roll could be for a PC or an NPC. And since I have never needed every PC to make 20 passive checks in a session, it carries over 2-4 sessions.

It means I don't pre-roll events, so they are as much a surprise to me as them, and the events just flow as I describe events and what the PCs notice and recall.

For a game like this, though, where die rolls trigger advancement, it means you have to name drop the skills that earn a success and list everyone who met the advancement threshold, which is more work for the DM.

 

[Bill Zebub]

I mean, I have a lot more sympathy for the argument of “passive noticing skills are bad” than “all skills are bad”.

Well, I'm not quite at the point that I think all skills are bad, but I do think the sort that work...for the way I like to play...is a pretty narrow definition.

 

[Fenris-77]

I mean, I have a lot more sympathy for the argument of “passive noticing skills are bad” than “all skills are bad”.

This is where I'm at. I do not like passive skills rolls at all, and like even less adventures written specifically to accommodate them.

I'm also not a huge fan of skill systems generally, but they are needed in some genres, and also for some desired play styles. I don't hate skills, I just don't love them. I do hate sprawling skill lists with great swathes of skills that will hardly ever be rolled (I'm looking at you CoC).

 

[dbm]

Maybe check out some of the Gumshoe games? In that system skills are split into ‘investigative skills’ and ‘general skills’. Investigative skills tend to cover all knowledge, perception, and social skills. General skills do everything else.

With investigative skills, if a player describes their character doing something that relates to a skill they have then they automatically succeed at a base level of success, and can potentially spend points for extra info / effect. So, a character who is perceptive will always find the hidden thing when they describe searching in the right place. It’s more nuanced than that, of course, and is based on a gamist / narrative model of moderating ‘spotlight time’ through resource depletion.

But it does illustrate a quite different way of modelling skills than a system like Dragonbane, BRP, GURPS and so on.

 

[MichaelSomething]

Well, I'm not quite at the point that I think all skills are bad, but I think that sort that work...for the way I like to play...is a pretty narrow definition.

I think this is a topic about Procedure of Play. You want procedures that have no (or little) dice rolling and all about communication.

Thread 'Let's talk Procedure of Play'

Feb 25, 2026

Let's talk procedure(s) of play! What procedures do you like to use??? Which ones do you hate???

• MichaelSomething
• Replies: 17
• Forum: *TTRPGs General

• 

 

[Fenris-77]

Maybe check out some of the Gumshoe games? In that system skills are split into ‘investigative skills’ and ‘general skills’. Investigative skills tend to cover all knowledge, perception, and social skills. General skills do everything else.

With investigative skills, if a player describes their character doing something that relates to a skill they have then they automatically succeed at a base level of success, and can potentially spend points for extra info / effect. So, a character who is perceptive will always find the hidden thing when they describe searching in the right place. It’s more nuanced than that, of course, and is based on a gamist / narrative model of moderating ‘spotlight time’ through resource depletion.

But it does illustrate a quite different way of modelling skills than a system like Dragonbane, BRP, GURPS and so on.

Of the Gumshoe games Swords of the Serpentine is the one that does 'fantasy' the best. Plus the setting is one of the best I've ever read.

 

[Jahydin]

Great post! I can certainly sympathize. My simple thoughts (especially on using skills in general):

First, there's all this "me-tooism" going on, where EVERYBODY wants to roll to see if they can read the inscription. I know some GMs solve this by saying that only one person gets to roll, calling that the best attempt, and in a lot of games whoever has the highest skill becomes the point person. But in games where rolling is a chance to advance, everybody wants to be that person.

My first thought is I would rather have this problem then a bunch of board players on their phones not paying attention, haha. Back to the problem though:

No matter the system, when I use skills, I:
First, decide if it's worth a roll. Is success or failure important to the session? If it's not, just make a ruling on success/failure. This usually means the task wasn't a challenge though, so no improvement possible. Maybe next time.

Second, decide who could reasonable help. Maybe there's a few characters that have no chance. Tell them no and let a few players feel special for a moment.

Third, decide how much it helps. Use the appropriate "levers" to figure out how much easier the task is now. Usually, by letting everyone get a chance to roll or making the roll numerically easier via bonuses or lowering target number.

So in this Dragonborn case, if the inscription was sufficiently challenging, I would let everyone who had a shot of reading the inscription a roll; d20 for the main, d8s for the helpers. 1 or 20 or the main gives everyone a mark and chance to progress.

Second, the players aren't doing anything. Why are they rolling to see if they spot the hidden door? Because they happened to walk past it. There's no thoughtfulness, no planning, no risk-taking. Finding the door isn't a reward for good game-play, unless you count "putting points into Awareness" as good game play. Which I don't. Or, at least, if the skill in RPGs comes down to knowing how to build a character, I'm not really interested.

For a lot of players, this is preferred to cut down on the "boring poking around" parts of dungeon crawling. Sounds like you're like me though and enjoy it, so certainly change this aspect up. Make the act of finding hidden objects not automatic, but intentional. Listen to their description, decide how difficult it would be given their description, then award the appropriate Boons/Banes as you see fit.

Third, if nobody succeeds they know they missed something, so then they start poking around really carefully, even looking in exactly the right spot. So...I'm supposed to give them their reward, even though they failed the skill roll, because the roll itself signaled they should stay in that spot searching for something until they click the right pixel?

I would not allow rerolls. Meta wise, yeah, they know they missed something, but their characters sure didn't, haha. Players get a change to explain what they are looking for and how, then one roll is made. If they didn't specify looking at all, then no roll is made at all. Keep in mind auto success and failure depending on the description too.

Oh, and then there's lock-picking and trap-disabling. The dungeon had several instances (at least three) where the key to a lock was hidden in another part of the dungeon. Which is a pretty standard video game trope, but when you have a sleight-of-hand skill, and an incentive to use skills, eventually all the locks get picked. Not only was there no problem solving, planning, or other trade-offs, just dice rolling, but the presumed purpose of the locks and keys...getting them to explore the other parts of the dungeon...wasn't actually achieved.

There is nothing wrong with letting players know that there are two kinds of doors in your games: generic ones that use generic silver keys and specialized ones that use specialized keys. Specialized doors can't be picked, period. If you're feeling generous, it can be attempted, but with Banes.

One final thought specific to Dragonbane:
Let 1 and 20 determine marks as usual, but also as a GM, let them mark their skill in times you feel like they really derserve it too. Like being clever enough in their description to not need one or pulling off a really important task. Heck, I'd even let them do it for an elaborate description that was just flat out disasterous if they still put in the effort (since this is effectively rolling a 1).

 

[Flying Toaster]

Discussions about skill systems often lead to debates about player skill vs. character skill, but they also raise questions about what skilled play consists of anyway.

Skilled play might be creative engagement with the objects the GM has placed in a location, but players might well be justified in their paranoia about touching unknown stuff. Is skilled play dungeon crawling like it’s 1979, poking every square inch of each level with a pointèd stick, I mean, ten foot pole? IIRC Gary Gygax ranted about that sort of thing in the 1E DMG, and invented monsters like Ear Seekers and Mimics in order to punish over-cautious play, but gonzo deathtrap dungeons taught us that too much caution was never enough.

In junior high we “beat” S1 Tomb of Horrors and I6 Ravenloft by treating them as something akin to escape rooms, and the goal was to get out ASAP without touching anything that would get everybody killed. Of course we missed most of the content that way, but since most of the content was trying to kill us, we may well ask why we wanted to play those modules in the first place...

Dwarves and Elves both had passive sensing abilities as far back as the early editions, so did skilled play involve making sure there was at least one of each in your party? Passive perception is not the most exciting game mechanic ever, but it sure came in handy when secret doors might be sprinkled in at random. These would block access to at least one room, or even whole areas of the dungeon, so they had to be found somehow. Sometimes people do just get lucky and notice something others do not, especially because fortune favors the prepared mind.

What might happen if passive perception became less necessary, because secret doors worked the same way traps work in some OSR games? They would mostly appear in logical places the players might expect, so the goal would be to figure them out rather than to find them. In LOTR Gandalf knows for a fact that there is a secret door into Moria, so the challenge is to use his knowledge to guess how they hid it. But interesting challenges like that require a fair amount of prep work for the GM.

I don’t have a perfect solution, but then again I tend to like skill systems anyway, and usually prefer rules over rulings if a particular situation that requires one or the other is going to occur regularly. I like to have codified rules for skills that let the players strategize a bit based on a realistic assessment of the odds, rather than trying to guess what the right answer is based on the psychology and tastes of their GM. But there is always a risk of adding too much crunch that way.

 

[Retros_x]

But sometimes it's just hard to think of one. Do they notice the footprints? Can they read the inscription?

Thats why I ALWAYS use time loss as consequence. So there is always at least some consequence - time passing. Which leads to spells and torches fading, rations getting eaten, random encounter getting rolled etc. Sometimes I have the feeling this is implicated by many games, but rarely explicitly stated as requirement for the systems to work as intented. Some underlying tacit knowledge of how to run an adventure.

In general I share your opinion though. Especially for knowledge and notice I prefer to not use skills or rolls in general.