Help - Essential Skills Collection

[Razjah]

Mouse Guard and Burning Wheel are skill based systems. Skill systems seem to have better skill lists, or more interesting ones. Plus Mouse Guard is all about a small group of mice (the party) overcoming loads of obstacles to help small communities and a few towns. That seemed to be an excellent starting place for a list of skills for an RPG.

Another list worth looking at is in FATE system used in Dresden Files. I like the way the skills are broad with trappings, one character's contacts skill is different from another character's contacts skill because of background and circles traveled.

 

[Derren]

If we are just talking about essential skills without any specific setting in mind let me be a bit more generic.

- Skills to travel
This includes both skills for physical travel like climbing and traversing difficult terrain and also skills to pilot appropriate vehicles, be it horses, cars or spaceships.

- Skills to interact with others
Convincing or deceiving NPCs. Deceptions are not limited to being verbal but also includes disguises

- Skills to hide your presence
Most of the time sneaking deserves its own skill instead of being rolled into a other skill. This would also include skills to bypass security mechanisms

- Skills to detect things
Skills to counter hiding skills mentioned above but also to notice inanimate but hidden objects

- Skills to know things
This highly depends on the setting.

- Skills to craft things
While some systems get away with not having such skills I personally think they should be part of the system, at least for simpler things

- Skills to fight and do "magic"
Unless the combat system doesn't use skills they are needed in pretty much any rpg as violence is the most basic conflict resolution.

How granular those skills are depends on the system you want to use. Does walking on a rope require its own skill? Does sneaking use a different skill than hiding? Personally I prefer a rather large skill list with some skills (knowledge and crafting) being "fill in" skills as it allows for better specialization/characterization of PCs. But it is also possible to only have 1 skill for each category if you want.

 

[Razjah]

Well this list has all the basics. That is really all you need to play.

 

[Ratskinner]

FATE Core (the December draft, anyway) had the following:
• Athletics
• Burglary
• Contacts
• Crafts
• Deceit
• Drive
• Empathy
• Fighting
• Intimidation
• Investigation
• Lore
• Notice
• Physique
• Rapport
• Resources
• Shooting
• Stealth
• Will

Which seems like a very small number for a skill-based system, but Aspects and Stunts can add a lot of detail in FATE.

 

[GMMichael]

Going through the Mouse Guard list, I see these skills jumping out to the average gamer:
Brewer, cartographer, deceiver, fighter, haggler, healer, hunter, pathfinder, persuader, scout, survivalist, and wises.
d20 counterparts:
Craft (beer), profession (cartographer), bluff, fighter?, diplomacy, heal, survival, survival, diplomacy, survival, um survival, and knowledge.

But to figure out which to use, I have to figure out how I feel about Kalontas's question.

Class-based or skill-based?

I'm leaning toward skill-based, because I want the game system to support organic class growth, with the option of including classes. I also want players and groups to be able to pick their own skills, which would include both hidey-hole-wise OR carousing.

So I'm thinking about using a handful of skills more as demonstration than as an exhaustive list, with players being welcome to add their own skills to personalize their characters.

d20 has about 36 skills, GURPS lite has about 60, and Mouse Guard has about 35, for comparison. So the skills list should probably fall around 30 or less, since the goal is to have something playable, yet leave room for expansion.

So let's say skill-based system, and I'll need at least 18 skills to beat Skyrim's bare-bones skill system.

(Posted late. I have to go back and check out the FATE skills and Derren's post...)

 

[Razjah]

The fighter and hunter skills are the combat skills for Mouse Guard. Fighter allows fighting of anything, Hunter is specific to non-anthropomorphic animals (Mice and Weasels). During the war fighter was emphasized, in the more peaceful time hunter is a more appropriate skill.

 

[GMMichael]

Thanks for the FATE skills, Ratskinner. That's a pretty comprehensive, yet short, list. At 18 skills long, it'll provide a good counterpoint to the Skyrim list (http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Skills_(Skyrim)).

The P&P system starts with three ability scores, and gives bonuses to skill performance based on ability. So there's one reason to sort skills three ways. Skyrim skills can be somewhat divided by class, which is a nod to class-based characters, with three main classes being warrior, wizard, and thief. I'd like to have skills that focus on abilities, since characters are defined first by abilities, and class comes later. (But that doesn't have to be the case, right?)

With the FATE list:
Physical: athletics, burglary, drive, fighting, physique, shooting, stealth.
Mental: crafts, deceit, investigation, lore, notice, will.
Metaphys: contacts, empathy, intimidation, rapport, resources.

With the Skyrim list:
Physical: archery, block, heavy armor, one handed, two handed, light armor, lockpicking, sneak.
Mental: smithing, alchemy, pickpocket, speech.
Metaphys: (6 schools of magic, or skills of magic).

Since there's room for expansion of abilities, there should be room to expand skills, using skills that are specific enough to be useful, but generic enough to be broken-down into more skills, or divided amongst more abilities. Like the Fighting skill could become One Handed, Two Handed, Brawl, Grapple, Shooting, etc.

Derren seems to have laid out the bare-minimum number of skills: Movement, Socialize, Stealth, Notice, Knowledge, Craft, Fight, and Cast Spell. I could use a list larger than that...but how large?

 

[Stormonu]

Just to throw in, the World of Darkness skill list:

Mental
-Academics
-(Computer)
-Crafts
-Investigation
-Medicine
-Occult
-Politics
-(Science)/Alchemy

Physical
-Athletics
-Brawl
-(Drive)/Ride
-(Firearms)/Ranged Weapons
-Larceny
-Stealth
-Survival
-Weaponry/Melee

Social
-Animal Ken
-Empathy
-Expression
-Intimidation
-Persuasion
-Socialize
-Streetwise
-Subterfuge

 

[Jhaelen]

Mouse Guard and Burning Wheel are skill based systems. Skill systems seem to have better skill lists, or more interesting ones.

Well, Burning Wheel doesn't really have a skill list in the most common sense. It just has a (huge!) list of everything that is referred to anywhere else in the book and can be used as a skill _or_ might represent a (binary) feat a character might be capable of.
It also features plenty of overlapping and redundant skills.
In some ways, it's closer to systems that don't bother to list skills, e.g. Over the Edge, in which you simply write down a couple of things (in your own words) you want your character to be good at. It's what D&D Next appeared to do in its earliest beta version, i.e. simply provide a bunch of specific activities in which a character would receive a bonus to an ability roll.

In Burning Wheel, every time you add new races or lifepaths, you'll also end up adding new skills.

I've never read or played it, but judging from the list that's been posted here Mouse Guard seems to take a different approach with a very compact list of professions that each cover a potentially wide set of different skills.

 

[GMMichael]

Alright, I'mma take another stab at it here. But first, here's the theory: skills are what the character -has learned- to do well. Abilities are his inherent ability to do anything well. So skills should be more specific than abilities. The P&P system is the springboard for more complex games, but it is also a hardy, standalone RPG. So the skill list should both guide players toward selecting good skills, and provide interesting (and basic) options for character specialization (very much like FATE and Skyrim).

Physical skills:
Fight (unarmed, melee, missile), parry (physical defense), sneak, movement, larceny.
Mental skills:
Knowledge (nature, scholar), profession (healer, smith, musician, alchemist), detect, concentrate (mental defense).
Metaphysical skills:
Cast spell, spirit (metaphysical defense), repel undead, handle animal, persuade, deceive.

Feels rough. How do you feel about it?

Edit: added types of fighting, and made spell casting a general skill (instead of each spell being a skill).