Why I Hate Skills

[Thomas Shey]

There is something to be said for GURPSlike consistency, and I've always wanted to use fate dice in some game more like GURPS or RM.

I'm not sure I ever felt that 4D3 didn't take it a bit too far. I did see 4D6 used as the core resolution system in one middlin' obscure game system, and it seemed to work okay.

 

[Faolyn]

How would you prefer to model a character that's supposed to know more than other characters? Just give them more information directly as the GM and say their character knows it?

Late to this, and I haven't read the whole thread to see if anyone has said this yet, but in Daggerheart, there's no skills. However, you have Experiences, and you can spend a Hope to add your Experience to your trait (attribute) roll. The Experiences can be anything, with given examples like Field Medic or Nature's Friend, so you would naturally know more about medicine/doctoring or nature if you have those Experiences.

Plus, there's classes, so you could say that a Warrior would get better information on something related to fighting than a Sorcerer would.

 

[Willie the Duck]

Late to this, and I haven't read the whole thread to see if anyone has said this yet, but in Daggerheart, there's no skills. However, you have Experiences, and you can spend a Hope to add your Experience to your trait (attribute) roll. The Experiences can be anything, with given examples like Field Medic or Nature's Friend, so you would naturally know more about medicine/doctoring or nature if you have those Experiences.

Plus, there's classes, so you could say that a Warrior would get better information on something related to fighting than a Sorcerer would.

If you are a knowledge wizard (special abilities related to spending both hope and stress on leveraging your Experiences) with Expertise like 'Court wizard,' 'survivor,' 'polymath,' or 'I think I took a course on this once...' you can potentially almost-always be able to add a bonus to rolls for any roll, gated only by having hope+stress to spend.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Late to this, and I haven't read the whole thread to see if anyone has said this yet, but in Daggerheart, there's no skills. However, you have Experiences, and you can spend a Hope to add your Experience to your trait (attribute) roll. The Experiences can be anything, with given examples like Field Medic or Nature's Friend, so you would naturally know more about medicine/doctoring or nature if you have those Experiences.

Plus, there's classes, so you could say that a Warrior would get better information on something related to fighting than a Sorcerer would.

I'm sure that works fine, if it's the kind of game you want to play. I'm not a fan of games that leverage FATE-like aspects personally as a core mechanic (which is what these Experiences read like to me), but I'm sure it perfectly serviceable to some.

 

[Faolyn]

I'm sure that works fine, if it's the kind of game you want to play. I'm not a fan of games that leverage FATE-like aspects personally as a core mechanic (which is what these Experiences read like to me), but I'm sure it perfectly serviceable to some.

Well, you wanted to know a way to model a character who knows more about something in a game without skills, and Daggerheart presents one way to do it. I doubt you'd like any game without skills.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Well, you wanted to know a way to model a character who knows more about something in a game without skills, and Daggerheart presents one way to do it. I doubt you'd like any game without skills.

No, probably not. I like specific skills.

 

[soviet]

I don’t know how to explain it better than I have. It somewhat amazes me how many people who play RPGs don’t seem to know what I’m talking about. Either I’m terrible at explaining something common, or a whole lotta people play without an ingredient that I thought was core to the very premise of the hobby.

 

[Bill Zebub]

View attachment 433275

...six / seven...

 

[VHawkwinter]

Although even if a system where XP is not tied to skill use, downplaying skills like Perception and History tends to annoy players who "invested" in those skills.

Could you not remove all skills (or just those skills you don't want in the game) before players build characters? Then they can't have invested in them.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Could you not remove all skills (or just those skills you don't want in the game) before players build characters? Then they can't have invested in them.

Though in some cases they may have chosen a class because they had good skill options. The only games where pulling skills out of an extent system aren't to some degree fraught are those where it was implemented pretty off-hand in the first place.