Design and Development: Skills

[LightPhoenix]

Those are nitpicks, though. The main thing I don't get is why one would even call this a skill. Just turn the talents into feats and begone with skills, since that's how they work. Why create some alternate feat-like mechanic with a different name?

I suspect that Mearls' reason from separating it from feats was because anecdotally people don't generally take many skill feats.

The purpose of the idea in general seems to be to make skills increase in utility as you increase in level, rather than a (IMO boring) simple math-based increase.

 

[thewok]

Reposted from the WotC forums, since the userbase doesn't necessarily overlap.

Here’s what I propose as a starting point: A skill gives you something new to do or it makes you better at something you already can do. In other words, if you removed the skill chapter from the rulebook, the game would still be playable. You’d be missing options, but the basic functions of the game remain intact. We don’t hide things like the rules for climbing or jumping in the skills chapter. We just have rules for how to climb, and then perhaps a skill that makes you better at climbing.

If this means completely divorcing the skill system from the combat system, then I am all for it. And by that, I mean that there should be separate feat pools for skills and combat.

I should say that I have no problem with a skill-point-based system, so long as everyone gets the same amount of skill points. 3.x woefully failed in this regard, and it's my biggest gripe with the system, and the major reason I refuse to play the system after the release of 4E.

I also believe that in a game as grounded in combat as D&D is (and, no matter what type of campaign you play at home, D&D is, at its core, a game of heroic fantasy combat), having to sacrifice combat viability to increase skills that aren't used in combat seems ... stupid, for lack of a better word.

Under such a system, as a character advances, he gains a certain number of skill points/feats/skill powers/whatever that are devoted to the skill list. This never changes based on class, race, whatever. Everyone of the same level has the same number of resources here. The differences in characters will come from where people choose to spend those resources as they level.

Also as they level, each class should gain new abilities, feats and so on that make them better at combat.

It's perfectly okay (and, indeed, it's recommended) that skills have uses in combat. But, I feel that every skill should have a use in combat. But they should be smaller and more subtle uses than, say, skill powers, which would be major uses of skills.

But, like 4E, all skills should be equally available to all characters. May we never see the return of cross-class and restricted skills.

 

[Saeviomagy]

What I liked:
The non-linear progression of climbing ability.

What I hated:
The rest of it.

For a second I looked at the climb speed table and misread the strength column as DC, meaning that a player could pick how fast he wanted to climb and that would be the DC he'd roll against (plus/minus modifiers), and I thought that was great.

Then I realised it was a flat "what strength score do you have? Well, you go 10ft per round then and you're climbing for the next 8 rounds of combat. Have fun!".

 

[Neverfate]

I can just imagine going from the 16 or 17 skills in the game and rocketing up to the 40s and 50s. That's why I do not like this system. No we need dozens of skills as the numerous ways a simple Athletics skill can be used. I like just athletics applying to most things. Too many other rules and things to do, but I appreciates what mearls is doing.