Are Skills Mechanically Important in d20?

[francisca]

Show me a gamer who says skills aren't important, and I'll show you a person who has never rolled a 1 when they really needed a listen or spot check.

 

[Henry]

Keep in mind also that many MANY feats and class abilities serve no other purpose but to make skill checks more important (track, Rogue's trap detection skill, bard's musical abilities, the mounted archery and combat feats, spells like jump, to name a few). In addition, classes like rogues are shadows of their former selves if skills areeliminated, putting a very different face on the game. I'd say skills are mechanically important, but they are made unimportant by the DM if he doesn't use them.

 

[The Grackle]

Are we talking d20 or just D&D?

I agree w/Voadam for D&D. Spells and class abilities and gear trump a lot of skills. Situations that might require a lot of skill-use can easily be solved w/enchantments or divinations. Also D&D focuses on combat, and most challenges that reward xp (not all, but the majority) are solved by applying weapons to monsters.

 

[Zeit]

Skills are unbelievably important for defining the non-combat aspects of a character. If that isn't important to some DM's, then that's fair enough, but there's barely 5 minutes that goes by in my games without someone rolling a skill check. I like the core set of d20 skills, I think they work well and they open the door to customisation for DM's (Knowledge skills especially). I enjoy integrating them with the roleplaying around the table, and it's very easy to do.

It does honestly grate with me when I read about a DM who disregards Charisma-based skills because 'it should be done with roleplaying'. At the risk of a hijack, I feel it's those skills in particular that epitomise the difference between a player and their character.

Let me elaborate how a skill-based system does stuff... I'm talking 3rd edition Black Eye here, so don't be mad at me if it has changed in the recent edition.
Attack and Defense is measured by a value which is calculated by adding up some stats and dividing by 5, plus the rank in your respective weapon skill, which you need to divide between both values, taking care of the "I hit everything" syndrome on two angles.
In the meantime, magic is skill-based in that every spell is a skill. To do metamagic, for example, you need to cast a metamagic spell (skill check) and then the real spell (2nd skill check). The amount of points you have left over after the dice rolling (the skill system is a bit more complicated than 3rd edition DnD) amounts to how successful your spell is.

That is (or was) a system where skills are important.

 

[DamionW]

It does honestly grate with me when I read about a DM who disregards Charisma-based skills because 'it should be done with roleplaying'. At the risk of a hijack, I feel it's those skills in particular that epitomise the difference between a player and their character.

That aggrivates me no end, and yet I've encountered it often. If I spend the game mechanic's points away from combat and invest them in social bonuses, I should reap the benefit, and not be crippled for a lack of method-acting prowess. I never see a DM say, "So you want to tumble over the ogre and cleave it from behind? Okay, pick up that broom handle and physically demonstrate the maneuvers you would use and I'll decide if it works..." However I've been with several DMs that say "Okay you want to try and convince this guard with your bluff skill that you're really the delivery guy? Role-play it out so I can portray the guard's reaction and that'll determine your success..." If I was that good a bluffer in real life, I wouldn't invest the points in making my character skillful in it. I want him to be exceptionally more quick of thought and tongue than me personally, that's how I devised him.

What's ironic even more is that it usually comes from DMs that say they want less combat in their games so they can focus on role-playing plot. Well if you reward points spent in combat more than points spent on social abilities, how do you think that will result in less combat, pray tell? That comes across to me that you just like hearing yourself role-play NPCs and disdain those who can't equally descend into character.

 

[Quasqueton]

Skills are very important to my games.

Skills didn't get added to D&D because some designer thought they'd be cool and wanted to fill a bunch of hours coming up with the mechanic. They were added because more and more players wanted something exciting beyond just combat. Although there are some skills that are really mostly useful in a combat situation, there are also many that are useful without a combat scenario.

If all a game has is combats in barren dungeon rooms, [many] skills are less important.

they are overshadowed by class abilities, feats, magic, abilities, and equipment.

Somebody give me some examples of this.

Quasqueton

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

Skills run the gamut from extremly useful (Concentration) or even "required" (Search) to useless (most Knowledge skills).

The game rules do not make it easy to use "less useful" skills. These skills require description to be useful, and if neither the GM nor the player know anything about the skill in-game, then it becomes "roll dice".

For instance, I was reading a few weeks ago a book about near-future space exploration. (Exploration is probably not the right word - they didn't even go to Mars. Whatever.) In one scene, a pilot rescues a stranded astronaut. The text went into some detail about the physics of the scene - the pilot was spinning too fast, so it was dangerous (for reasons I don't exactly remember, as I'm not a space phycisist), and he ran the risk of accidentally killing the astronaut while he was at it. As it was, he rescued the astronaut (successful skill check) but damaged some part of his spacecraft.

You'll never see such description if neither the player nor GM know nothing about flying a spaceship (and, most likely, they won't). Furthermore, if the player knows more about the subject than the GM (there's more players, so this happens often) it causes conflicts. Finally, that bit about the unintended damage... where's that in the rules? If the GM said something about that, the player might complain. (Is that a player/DM problem?)

I've tried to mitigate this by using "complex skill" charts. An example would be diabling a mechanical trap. The trap has three parts, and you must disable all three pieces. If you fail by 10 or more on one check, or fail three times in a row, then the whole trap goes off. Give each a cool description. This only works if you're not putting lots of traps in your dungeon, if you know something about making traps (or at least saw a lot on TV, or have a real good imagination so you know what to do with a magical trap), if you expect the skill check (suppose your players all of a sudden invaded a castle which you hadn't drawn up and didn't have specified traps for it?) and, of course, only one player is making the check.

Skills that require opposed checks are used "all-or-nothing", IME. You either have a high Spot score, or you don't bother putting ranks in it. (This is very important to classes that don't have Spot as a class skill.) Again, description comes into play. If someone narrowly missed a Spot check, should they see something (but still suffer suprise)? If they barely made the check, should they see who is following them, or just know someone is following them?

Diplomacy, as written, is next to impossible to use, as it targets a fixed DC but is much more powerful than, say, Search or Disable Device. I'm disappointed in the effort that went into making that skill. I think Dragonlance tried to make the skill useful, but so far, I've only found Rich Burlew's houserules to be useable.

Some skills are difficult to use, the way they are written, at least for some GMs. I find using encounter distance rules and general Hide/Spot to not be easy to use. As a result, surprise rounds come up less often than they should IMC (screwing over anyone with lots of ranks in stealth or awareness skills).

 

[Voadam]

The following quote is from a thread I started earlier:



I think this is an incredibly interesting point of view. (I'm not like calling you out, Voadam. I've never heard this view on skills expressed and want to see what others have to say - I hope that's alright ).

It is quite all right.

So - basically - I'm wondering if you agree.

Yes.

If you agree with the statement - does your opinion change in a low-magic game?

No. Feats, combat abilities, class abilities, ability scores, class magic, and equipment would still all overshadow skills mechanically IMO & IME.

I once played a mid level gestalt wilderness rogue/ wolf barbarian from UA who started in prison and had a makeshift knife, later picking up a spear after the prison break. His sneak attack, trip attacks, mobility, BAB, hp, and good stats mattered a lot mechanically. Style wise he was a sneaky tribal warrior scout who cared about his buddies. Even though he was sneaking around there were few skill rolls that mattered and they were far outweighed by the combat stats and rolls for effects on the game.

 

[AIM-54]

That aggrivates me no end, and yet I've encountered it often. If I spend the game mechanic's points away from combat and invest them in social bonuses, I should reap the benefit, and not be crippled for a lack of method-acting prowess. I never see a DM say, "So you want to tumble over the ogre and cleave it from behind? Okay, pick up that broom handle and physically demonstrate the maneuvers you would use and I'll decide if it works..." However I've been with several DMs that say "Okay you want to try and convince this guard with your bluff skill that you're really the delivery guy? Role-play it out so I can portray the guard's reaction and that'll determine your success..." If I was that good a bluffer in real life, I wouldn't invest the points in making my character skillful in it. I want him to be exceptionally more quick of thought and tongue than me personally, that's how I devised him.

What's ironic even more is that it usually comes from DMs that say they want less combat in their games so they can focus on role-playing plot. Well if you reward points spent in combat more than points spent on social abilities, how do you think that will result in less combat, pray tell? That comes across to me that you just like hearing yourself role-play NPCs and disdain those who can't equally descend into character.

The flip-side, and this is just as aggravating, at least to me, is when players use these skills and say things like "I bluff him," rolling the dice and expending a minimum of brain cells on what their character is saying. Or coming up with something half-assed and saying "but my character has a +10 to diplomacy, so it works."

There's a balance there somewhere between players putting the work into the role-playing aspect (a clever, or at least believable, bluff) and using the mechanic to enhance (or hamper) the character's performance within the game.

 

[Quasqueton]

Feats, combat abilities, class abilities, ability scores, class magic, and equipment would still all overshadow skills mechanically IMO & IME.

Examples please? Are you talking about core stuff, or expansion/supplement stuff?

Quasqueton