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Even 5e has 18 actual skills, plus the combat skills and a STACK of tool proficiencies (26 in all, not counting specializations). And it's worth noting that spellcasting has no specific skill behind it.

Sorry, too much time on the Pinnacle Entertainment forums. Yes, SWADE is Savage Worlds ADventure Edition. And, for the record, it would make a great system for Star Wars.

I'll also add that SWADE has separated out certain skills that might not be relevant in all settings - they have boating, driving, and piloting as separate skills, for example.

The easy fix for this is what SWADE does. There's 32 skills, of which 5 are the various "use magical powers" skills, and another several are technology-based. So it's about 2 dozen total (of which "Language" is one), including the three skills that cover combat ability. Beyond that, you can...

I honestly think I would favor a system where skills define the character, and attributes either determine how good you are to start with (natural ability counts for something) or make it easier for an appropriately "gifted" character to train a skill (meaning that starting characters can get...

Okay, so I've been kicking around the idea of a home-brew wound system that would work for Shadowdark, 5e, or many other editions of D&D. My buddy and I were having a discussion about various mechanics for damage tracking and noted that the nice part about Hit Points is that they're simple, you...

I honestly think that the degree of success/failure is one of the most powerful tools available in game design. And while I agree that it is absolutely essential to the game's less tangible aspects (social and exploration), it also feels like if it were well-designed, it could greatly enrich a...

Okay, this is another "let's get people talking" post. And I know everyone will have very different answers to this, but I'd be interested to know if there's any trends... Skill systems feel like one of the most divisive subjects in RPGs. The earliest editions of D&D had a solidly defined...

I think that there's a sweet spot between over-complicating mechanics that limit player creativity, and relying entirely on DM fiat for resolution. I think my ideal system would have something like (and I'm just using combat as an example here, but this could apply to any game subsystem): "Your...

I don’t think that encouraging good roleplaying with mechanical benefits is a bad idea. YMMV.

To be honest, I didn’t get that from your post that you were looking to import the casting check mechanic from Shadowdark into 5e to alter how smites work for Paladins. Go nuts. It should work fine. You can just include the failure backlash/sacrifice mechanic.

I probably overstated things with "rarely." While I have encountered that better sort of player a fair bit, I have rarely encountered a game where I didn't have at least one player who tried to bypass a character's mental weakness with good roleplay when their results depended on it.

Do they, and are they, though? Old school gamers are always complaining about "just roleplay it," but I have rarely encountered anyone who deliberately handicaps their own social, insightful, or reasoning skills when playing D&D. And I think that offering some kind of in-game reward for doing...

I think there's an interesting thing here. And it's starting to get at what I was suggesting. If we want the player to be engaged, we have to have a certain degree of benefit from being engaged. So, in your example, the player with the low level oratory skill gets Advantage on the check for...

I just want to say that I'm finding the discussion fascinating, even if it's not actually producing any resolution. It's certainly got the wheels churning in my brain about ways to make resource management a relevant part of the game, and also where and when to abstract things. Just to comment...

I can't speak for anyone else, but for myself, I appreciate both the apology and your willingness to keep an open mind. I don't really have an answer for this conundrum that's been noodling around in my brain for almost a day, but I do think it's an interesting question to ask whether the...

This is the exact conundrum I'm raising, which is basically "is there a way to change how we capture this distinction that will make it more transparent about the distinction between the skills that are part of "game mastery" and those that can be hand-waved away due to "my character would know...

Just to clarify, did you mean "Exasperate" (Irritates and frustrate the people involved) or "Exacerbate" (i.e. make the problem worse)? An "old-school" player who cleverly searches a room based on their own high intelligence score is not properly roleplaying their cleric with an 8 INT. A...

Exactly. And my initial point was both that the "parlor LARP" approach creates a special handling method for mental attributes, and that it might not be possible to draw a hard distinction between player and character without implementing some form of guidelines (with a mechanical carrot and...

See, and I'm just noting that in most "freeform and organic" systems, the result is that the character's mental stats don't actually matter because all the logic, exploration, decision-making, and social attributes are being roleplayed, which means they're coming from the player anyway. That's...