Why I Hate Skills

[Bill Zebub]

I think I get it. One skill check is no bueno- there have to be competing or mutually exclusive checks . . . Then skills are more acceptable.

Somehow missed this.

That's still not quite what I'm talking about. In the approach I'm describing checks need to have risk. There needs to be a downside to trying, either because it costs you something to try (such as using your turn in combat) or because failing has a cost (of which falling to your death is an extreme but illustrative example). In other words, the decision should be a non-obvious choice.

"Can I roll to see if I can read the runes?" is an example of an obvious choice. Why wouldn't you try? (Which is why we end up having to make rulings like, "Um...no, you can't...because, um, well because the Wizard couldn't and he has more skills and higher intelligence, so if he can't then you can't.")

Now, I agree that it becomes even more interesting if there are multiple ways of overcoming a challenge, and each of them has a different risk:reward profile. Then the players have to weigh the likelihoods of succeeding vs. the cost of failing not just to each other, but to all the other options.

But as long as the one option under consideration makes the players pause and ask, "Hmm...is it worth it?" then I think the minimum threshold has been met.

EDIT: And note that I'm not really talking about skills here, I'm talking about dice rolls, checks. Clearly skills can be compatible with this approach. My beef with skills is that they tend to undermine this gameplay, because instead of going through all the trouble of defining a goal and an approach, and having the GM come up with risks/consequences, that skill on your character sheet....Lockpicking, Stealth, Arcana, Hunting, whatever...becomes a tempting shortcut to avoid the whole thing. "Can I roll Arcana?" "Um, sure." "Seventeen." "Ok, you succeed."* And adventure writers, without even realizing (I think) fall into the same trap. "If the characters succeed at a DC 15 Perception check...." etc.

*Or, alternately, "Eight". "No, you fail." And all that cool backstory/history the GM spent time inventing doesn't get appreciated by the players.

 

[bsss]

EDIT: And note that I'm not really talking about skills here, I'm talking about dice rolls, checks. Clearly skills can be compatible with this approach. My beef with skills is that they tend to undermine this gameplay, because instead of going through all the trouble of defining a goal and an approach, and having the GM come up with risks/consequences, that skill on your character sheet....Lockpicking, Stealth, Arcana, Hunting, whatever...becomes a tempting shortcut to avoid the whole thing. "Can I roll Arcana?" "Um, sure." "Seventeen." "Ok, you succeed."* And adventure writers, without even realizing (I think) fall into the same trap. "If the characters succeed at a DC 15 Perception check...." etc.

*Or, alternately, "Eight". "No, you fail." And all that cool backstory/history the GM spent time inventing doesn't get appreciated by the players.

This Perception check example isn't a "trap". It's a difference in play style. The author/GM wants to have some scenario defined or resolved partially by the nature of the character, via in this case a skill. I think it's as simple as that.

 

[Bill Zebub]

This Perception check example isn't a "trap". It's a difference in play style. The author/GM wants to have some scenario defined or resolved partially by the nature of the character, via in this case a skill. I think it's as simple as that.

Definitely a difference in playstyle, but I also think an incompatible difference. Not intrinsically incompatible, but in practice that's what happens because the "just roll your skill" playstyle is corrosive to the "goal/approach/risk" one, simply because it is so much easier and faster.

If I saw more adventures written such that there are some Perception and Knowledge type checks interspersed with the kind of challenges I'm talking about I might feel differently, but it has seemed pretty rare.

 

[bsss]

The styles may be somewhat incompatible, I guess, yeah, but I think "just roll your skill" is an oversimplification that you're worrying too much about. I can't tell you literally no one runs games that way, because I of course don't know, but every GM I have observed just simply replies to "can I roll X?" with "sure, but what are you doing?". It wastes, like, a second, and after no time the players learn, and go "can I do X?" and the GM decides if they want a check or not to determine success.

Anyway, I was mostly just saying it's not like these GMs and designers fell into a trap; it's not like designers encounter a style that eschews checks and slap their foreheads and go "ohh, if we'd just not designed our game to include checks, we wouldn't have had to waste all this book and character sheet space on them, how did we miss that!"

 

[Bill Zebub]

The styles may be somewhat incompatible, I guess, yeah, but I think "just roll your skill" is an oversimplification that you're worrying too much about. I can't tell you literally no one runs games that way, because I of course don't know, but every GM I have observed just simply replies to "can I roll X?" with "sure, but what are you doing?". It wastes, like, a second, and after no time the players learn, and go "can I do X?" and the GM decides if they want a check or not to determine success.

That may very well be your experience, but I get a ton of pushback on this topic from people who claim, pretty directly, to be just "rolling skills" and seem to be pretty happy with that.

Anyway, I was mostly just saying it's not like these GMs and designers fell into a trap; it's not like designers encounter a style that eschews checks and slap their foreheads and go "ohh, if we'd just not designed our game to include checks, we wouldn't have had to waste all this book and character sheet space on them, how did we miss that!"

I definitely am not suggesting any such thing.

 

[R_J_K75]

Aside from NWP in 1E & 2E AD&D the first time I recall using skills was Alternity, I liked the concept. It's been in every WotC game from 3E D&D until 5.5 D&D, including d20 Modern and Star Wars. I don't remember it being this way until 5E, it seems players and DM's immediate go to is just use a skill check instead of coming up with thought out clever ideas to a situation. For example, instead of roleplaying to get passed a group of guards, the default has come to using persuasion or intimidation and thus turning what could have been a memorable encounter into a 5 second dice roll. This is why I hate skills.

In the games I've DM'ed in more recent years, if there is no or little chance for failure, I don't even make players roll. If there is a significant chance of failure or if a skill check isn't logical, I'll have the players roleplay or explain how they want to attempt to overcome the scenario before I let them roll.

 

[Fenris-77]

Well, if people want to just 'roll skills' then who are we to say otherwise. They're having fun. What they aren't doing is really playing the game at its full volume, if you'll excuse a clumsy metaphor. An issue that I think applies here is the lack of attention specifically in 5E to the fact that the conversation is the central vehicle for role playing. A lot of people come away from reading 5E with some predictable lacuna in the understanding of how RPGs work, generally speaking.

Again, if those people are having fun, great, good for them. That doesn't mean I care much about their playstyle in terms of any wider discussion of the hobby.

For stuff like the runes example, where the PC has the skill needed to get through the gate to the info, I think I'd prefer something different than a pass-fail read-not read approach. In cases like that, or any other case where there's no actual benefit to gating the information completely, I'd adjudicate the d20 as indexing amount of information rather than the presence/absence of information. So on a fail they might glean a few words or maybe a general sense of what it's about, and on a pass they can read it fully. This is similar (for me anyway) to the common roll to see if you notice that there is someone following you situation. Again, there's no juice in failing that roll, so on a fail they get a sense that someone might be following them, and on a pass they get more specific information.

When the game will be better with the information in the players hands I see no reason to allow the dice to prevent that completely.

 

[R_J_K75]

Well, if people want to just 'roll skills' then who are we to say otherwise.

I agree. In some cases, it's a perfectly viable option to move the game along. Though it's no longer my preference.

An issue that I think applies here is the lack of attention specifically in 5E to the fact that the conversation is the central vehicle for role playing. A lot of people come away from reading 5E with some predictable lacuna in the understanding of how RPGs work, generally speaking.

When I started a regular 5E game, and this was with mostly new players or people who had a passing familiarity with 5E. It was at this time I started noticing the binary pass/fail skill check was becoming the norm, at least with our games. Probably because that's how the players thought that was the only way skills worked.

The one concept I liked about 4E was the skill challenges and wish it had made its way into 5E. Did it and I just missed it? Regardless I thought it was a good idea, but the rules could have been more informative on creating and running skill challenges. If I start a new game in a system that uses skills I'm going to revisit skill challenges.