That looks like it could work, but I think it might be more hassle than the benefit that it gives.
What I did for 3e was 1) give every class a minimum of 4 skill points per level, 2) get rid of the lame class/cross-class idea, and 3) require reasons for why skills were gained.
At 1st level I didn't require the reasons to be given, since the character had an entire life prior to game start to learn stuff. My players tended to pick skills that fit class and background, though. Once game play started, if a player wanted to gain a new skill, it had to be roleplayed out prior to leveling. Joe the Barbarian is learning to recognize spells from Sparky the Wizard when they camp at night. Lefty the Rogue is going to libraries in the city and reading books on flora and fauna, then as they travel he's doing his best to see animals and plants he has read about. Then when they level up, they can put points into Spellcraft and Knowledge: Nature respectively.
I didn't require such justification for raising skills already known, though. Even if climbing wasn't actively used during levels 2 to 3 for example, travel happened, including time skipping like, "You guys travel 4 days with nothing much happening and reach the town of Holy Crap, Not Again, known for attacking monsters..." During those 4 days of travel, the rogue might have climbed some trees or a cliff side to get height to look for trouble or whatever, so I wasn't going to make him justify why he put points in climbing.
Just the simple act of getting rid of class/cross class skills helps out a lot on its own. People no longer feel like investing in oddball skills for their class is a waste of time, so points tend to spread out a bit more, which mitigates having a few skills that are maxed out.
Yeah, I don't like the cross-class skills either, which is why I tried to bury the mechanic behind progression through use. Yes, there are class skills, but rather than costing more points to rank up, it simply takes more uses to learn. I was leaning into the FNFF/Interlok mechanic which uses attempt points to automatically level up skills as the player uses them...but then again, in that system,
everything is a skill check.
On one hand, I love the rank up by using the skill, on the other I've been moving away from XP type systems because play tends to become about just spamming skills instead of engaging the game narratively/organically. In a progression system like Traveller this might go over better as you dont level, so expectations of progress are not expected so rapidly.
It seems this system is concerned about learning skills from seemingly nowhere, it does allow learning which seems more natural. Though im concerned with 3E/PF1 numbers scaling that you actually have time to get good at the pace required to be good. I could see a lot of falling behind in this if the successes dont go your way. I think it would go over better in a 5E bounded accuracy style system where you dont have runaway DCs and levels of competence.
While on the subject of bounded accuracy, ive long wanted to bring that into a 3E/PF1 heartbreaker as its my favorite fantasy RPG to date. It helps make sense of the game world and how things of 0 to 20 level power scale exist in the same world. So, ive had some of the narrative concerns this skill system seems to echo in its construction. However, I've long taken to compartamentalizing the zero to hero power progression of D&D myself. Getting skill "dumping" as you call it, to me is just under the hood mechanics which exist outside the narrative; its simply the game part of the RPG. Though, I get the desire to marry the two. Im just curious how mechanically this system would work, and weary it might lead to metagame irritation.
This. I'm definitely going to have to massage the numbers a bit, I think. Perhaps just use a base 10 + number of skill ranks for successes? I may have to switch it to number of attempts, period, as someone else suggested. That would make it more like the FNFF/Interlok system.
I'm trying to make the focus less on levels because there's so many expandes uses for the skills that it isn't hard to come up with non-magical solutions. This is a low-magic campaign setting, so I have to offer up some other fun solutions to solve problems, combat and otherwise. One of those is by offering more uses for skills (and more varied Craft, Knowledge, Perform, and Profession skills).
Yes, the overnight idiot savant annoys me. I'm trying to make it so the player wants to volunteer to do something cool. "Oh, I'm getting close to my next proficiency tier. Let me come up with something cool!" rather than a hard, fast rule. I was going to tie the proficiency tiers to reputation scores, too, to give players a bit more of a feeling that their actions have an effect on the world around them.
I'm not familiar with the bounded accuracy style system. I haven't read any of the 5e stuff.
One simple way to nerf the 'point dump' is to only allow 2 points per level per skill. So no more going from untrained in Use Magic Device to 10 ranks in one level. 2 points represents spending a lot of time studying vs a 1 pt bump.
I thought about this, too. That's not a bad idea as another option. It does get annoying, though, when the barbarian suddenly decides he's going to be a wizard, too, and tries pumping skills into spellcraft or use magic device. lol
I like the idea of skills advancing through use. The bookkeeping is not onerous and I think it'd work fine to say skills must be used while "adventuring" to count for advancement -- this type of judgement is what DMs are for.
A few thoughts:
- Why only successful uses? I'd lean towards any use, success or failure.
- Might want to adjust the number of uses required by the frequency the skill tends to be used in play (e.g., maybe Decipher Script takes fewer uses to advance than Spot?)
- The required actions to advance a tier don't make sense for many skills (a permanent, world-shaping use of Spot?). If you just want safety brakes for skill advancement, you could give the tiers a required character level (e.g., you must be level 6 to advance a skill to Master tier).
These are valid points. I think I may shift it to any attempted use. While some players may nerf this, I could easily just say it's up to the GM to assign the use point (leaving it up to the GM to determine if it was a valid use or not).
And yeah, maybe changing the numbers would help a bit. I wonder if I could separate the skills out that way by which ability score they're tied to? I mean, Spot and Listen get used so much that they should likely be the first to increase.
And yeah, it doesn't make sense for some skills to require a legendary feat. I'm thinking that would only apply to Craft, Knowledge, Perform, and Profession skills, which would at least give the players other benefits on top of the skill advancement. A thief could make himself a high quality set of lockpicks, for instance, that he can then use in his career and make Open Lock use easier. This is an area that needs a bit of refinement, I think.
This doesn't seem to me to address any problems I actually have at the table. This to me looks like pure theory crafting.
A lot of this reminds me of my theory crafting and design back in the 1990s and I got to tell you, you aren't designing rules for a table top social roleplaying game. You are designing software that runs on wetware. This sort of thing might be fine for a video game but it addresses no real problems that occur at the table.
Not everyone has them. I'm just trying to offer some alternatives for more dynamic or interesting playing that gives it a unique flavor specifically for this campaign setting, which is low-magic. Non-magic users should have some options that are cool and fun to pull off, and even magic users should have some non-magical options. A mage could take Craft (Alchemy), for instance, and craft alchemical bombs he could toss to achieve similar effects to small fireballs or other nasty spells like acid splash.
