Help - Essential Skills Collection

[Ratskinner]

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).

Will there be "feats" or some other kind of "tweak" character traits? If so, consider letting that do some of the work specializing skills. For example, let a Profession be a universal tweak, when applicable. Specific professions with possible in-game functions (like Alchemist or Healer), could be broken-out into a unique tweak. Otherwise, let Musician grant a bonus whenever it would help; persuade an arts lover, detect something wrong about a song, concentrate against a sonic attack, etc.

Otherwise, it looks okay to me. You might find gaps or other issues with playtesting.

 

[GMMichael]

Yes, there's a Perk system for improving characters whenever a Skill wouldn't be appropriate. Perks do everything else for characters, from racial features, to class features, to bending rules. (In fact, I'll probably be posting about those next.)

I can see how Musician would be a general-situation bonus. Reminds me of the general bonus gained from ability scores (gain your Mental bonus when doing anything requiring thought or nerves). Is this what you were suggesting for Profession too? Anyway, Profession (Musician) would be more of a general skill (like the rest, hopefully) that allows a character to play a harp, sing, or even use music-magic with increasing proficiency. With a trimmed-down skillset, I was seeing a need for skills that reach out to specific classes, even if there technically are no classes.

In addition, some skills are universal. All characters need to move, find enemies, and interact. Hence the movement, detect, persuade and deceive skills. The rest seem more class-related.

The tough part (or subjective one), is "do these skills cover all standard character skills, without being too broad, and still general enough to leave room for more specialized skills?"

 

[Ratskinner]

Yes, there's a Perk system for improving characters whenever a Skill wouldn't be appropriate. Perks do everything else for characters, from racial features, to class features, to bending rules. (In fact, I'll probably be posting about those next.)

I can see how Musician would be a general-situation bonus. Reminds me of the general bonus gained from ability scores (gain your Mental bonus when doing anything requiring thought or nerves). Is this what you were suggesting for Profession too? Anyway, Profession (Musician) would be more of a general skill (like the rest, hopefully) that allows a character to play a harp, sing, or even use music-magic with increasing proficiency. With a trimmed-down skillset, I was seeing a need for skills that reach out to specific classes, even if there technically are no classes.

Yes, that's what I was suggesting. Here's the problem with a Musician skill: "Which skill does he roll when he's playing his lute to persuade somebody? Musician or Persuade?" Now, that may not sound like much of a problem, but it immediately leads into "skill stacking" or "synergy" as d20 called it.

Basically, when a character attempts something, you have two ways of building the roll: The D&D way is to layer on modifiers from 3 or more various types of character trait, and the....other way(?) The D&D way is much harder to balance, and has the additional burden of making sure that the various traits remain orthogonal to each other within the group and that the groups remain orthogonal to each other. In this system, a character's skill rating is generally seen to represent their amount of training in a certain activity, not their ability to perform that activity.

To me, it sounds like you want to go the other way. That is, a relatively small number of skills, each of which covers a lot of ground, but are all orthogonal things that a character might want to accomplish. In this way, each skill represents a character's aggregate ability to accomplish a task. The tweaks just add some variety and spice.

Cortex Plus as seen in the Marvel game is the only one I know of that successfully does both. It uses some very unusual dice mechanics, though.

In addition, some skills are universal. All characters need to move, find enemies, and interact. Hence the movement, detect, persuade and deceive skills. The rest seem more class-related.

The tough part (or subjective one), is "do these skills cover all standard character skills, without being too broad, and still general enough to leave room for more specialized skills?"

As an old Fudge GM, I'm familiar with the problem. Since you're planning on having Perks, anyway, I'd leave the specialization burden to them.

Taking a step back. I don't know what your motivations are. Is there a reason you aren't adapting FATE or Savage Worlds or some other generic system? It sounds to me like your kinda trying to redo the d20 system "right" to genericize it...and that sounds rather like a fool's errand to me. (Also, to some extent or another, already done with M&M.) I mean, you're kinda re-inventing the wheel, here.

 

[GMMichael]

Yes, that's what I was suggesting. Here's the problem with a Musician skill: "Which skill does he roll when he's playing his lute to persuade somebody? Musician or Persuade?" Now, that may not sound like much of a problem, but it immediately leads into "skill stacking" or "synergy" as d20 called it.

The D&D way is much harder to balance, and has the additional burden of making sure that the various traits remain orthogonal to each other within the group and that the groups remain orthogonal to each other. In this system, a character's skill rating is generally seen to represent their amount of training in a certain activity, not their ability to perform that activity.

To me, it sounds like you want to go the other way. That is, a relatively small number of skills, each of which covers a lot of ground, but are all orthogonal things that a character might want to accomplish. In this way, each skill represents a character's aggregate ability to accomplish a task. The tweaks just add some variety and spice.

Taking a step back. I don't know what your motivations are. Is there a reason you aren't adapting FATE or Savage Worlds or some other generic system? It sounds to me like your kinda trying to redo the d20 system "right" to genericize it...and that sounds rather like a fool's errand to me. (Also, to some extent or another, already done with M&M.) I mean, you're kinda re-inventing the wheel, here.

"Which skill does he roll when he's playing his lute to persuade somebody? Musician or Persuade?"
The key portion there was "playing his lute." But I do see the overlap there, that some skills don't necessarily exclude others.

I'm not having a good grip on the word "orthogonal," unless you're referring to the way in which two skills completely fail to overlap. In the current case, I'm actually okay with the skills being less than orthogonal, because I want the players, ideally, to be able to make up their own skills. The standard set of skills is just to please the Rules As Written crew.

Motivations! D&D Next is my motivation. As is Eamon Deluxe. I want an RPG system, completely customizable, yet stand-alone, that doesn't charge $35 per sourcebook. Eamon was a PC text-based RPG for which anyone could write and publish adventures. Well, you can already write and publish your own adventures for pretty much any RPG. But since every DM has house rules, why not leave the rules themselves open to modification as well? So the P&P system takes the d20 rules, and pulls out as many non-essential mechanics as possible. Re-introduce Skills and Perks as ways to build your character the way you want, as well as ways to interpret other RPGs and make them compatible with P&P. There's the motivation.

 

[Ratskinner]

Yes, "orthogonal" basically means non-overlapping or non-mixing. If you're cool with it, rock on.

Motivations! D&D Next is my motivation. As is Eamon Deluxe. I want an RPG system, completely customizable, yet stand-alone, that doesn't charge $35 per sourcebook. Eamon was a PC text-based RPG for which anyone could write and publish adventures. Well, you can already write and publish your own adventures for pretty much any RPG. But since every DM has house rules, why not leave the rules themselves open to modification as well? So the P&P system takes the d20 rules, and pulls out as many non-essential mechanics as possible. Re-introduce Skills and Perks as ways to build your character the way you want, as well as ways to interpret other RPGs and make them compatible with P&P. There's the motivation.

Okay, that's fine. Sounds like you're on your way. Unless you're really trying to stay very close to d20, I'd suggest looking at FATE. It has a lot of the characteristics you're shooting for already. Also, if you didn't know: FATE and its ancestor Fudge are OGL'd. FATE, at least, has a very active community and easily translates new settings. There are a couple different versions (not all sequential, either) of the FATE family. The new FATE Core version will be out sometime this year and should be excellent at your goals (if a little abstract). There's even a version or two that use attributes (Icons is the best of those, IMO YMMV). There's also free versions. You could probably take the FATE system and replace the die-mechanic with d20's, if you like. It all depends on how close to d20 you want to stay. Good luck with it, I hope you have fun.

 

[GMMichael]

Thanks for the suggestion. I checked FATE 2.0 out. And to be honest, it's not enough like Final Fantasy 1 for me. Which is really the bar to which I hold RPGs. Being like FF1 means that characters have levels, stats/abilities, classes, hit points, attack and defense ratings, and gear which increases those attack and defense ratings. True, FF1 was probably modeled after AD&D rules, but FF1 featured the innovation that D&D 3.0 eventually adopted: up is good.

With the huge explosion of content under the d20 OGL, the subsequent release of nearly-related 4.0, and the seeming return to 3.5 in 5.0, I saw a chance to tie all of it together and create a massive pool of source material. Except there would be no charge. But to do that, I needed something customizable, so I stripped d20 down to its nuts-and-bolts by removing hit points, saving throws, armor class, alignment, class features, action types, opportunity attacks, CMBs, races, spell resistance, and more.

What's left, basically, is this:
Abilities, skills, perks, levels, d20 rolls versus the DM, and rounds with initiative.

And I'm just now thinking about pulling out the dice too: for any die roll, you can choose to take a result equal to half the highest result on the die...

 

[Razjah]

And I'm just now thinking about pulling out the dice too: for any die roll, you can choose to take a result equal to half the highest result on the die...

The "take 10" rule?

 

[GMMichael]

Take 10. But extended to any die: take 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, or 10.

Since P&P has both DM and player rolling, if both start taking half, it's up to the losing side to decide to roll instead of taking 10.

 

[pastshelfdate]

Trying to be diplomatic about diplomacy and such

I honestly didn't think of that. My issues have been PCs that keep a stocked forge at their base, and somehow turn into master craftsmen in their down time. It wasn't a game breaker, just...annoying.


Working off the d20 list, I whittled it down to Ancient, Local, Religion, Magic, Noble, and Nature (which takes over Herbalism, Animal Lore, stuff like that). It's largely a campaign issue - I included Noble Lore because it made sense for knights & aristocracy, and didn't fit easily into other categories.


Intimidate always seemed like a specialization of Bluff, and Diplomacy is pretty much all about lying to people too. Or maybe I'm just cynical. But I am running into the issues of specialization - for my illusionist class variant, I put down "lying, smooth-talking, tall-tale telling, and yarn-spinning". So...can he do "diplomacy" or not?

That is tricky. Professional diplomats operate on a different level, knowing when and how to give the other parties wiggle room for saving face. But adventurers? That "Influence" idea looks good for streamlining. It's broad in scope. As for intimidate and bluff, I guess no matter how big and scary looking someone is, eventually they run into people who aren't that easily impressed. So at some point, intimidating would depend on bluffing.

I've never run a game, so I'm not as aware of the trade-off between fewer broad skills and a longer list of more specific skills. I hope there are enough options to make all groups happy.

I've been working skills out more or less on the fly as I redo the classes into a variant "basic" format. Link to the blog in my sig.; all the classes were posted this year.

 

[pastshelfdate]

For a project that might or might not already be posted here, I'd like some community input:

What character skills do you consider essential to RPGs (medieval or generic)?

Since different RPGs use different names, by "skill" I'm referring to anything that a character can learn to do progressively (continuously) better. Some pretty popular examples are fighting, weaponsmithing, and horse riding.

Thanks!

One guy with whom I've been role-playing has sized me up well, by saying I try to create characters that can't be hurt. So for me, perception generally (the ability to see trouble coming) comes first, followed by whatever helps me avoid it (stealth) or fend it off: dodge (more a maneuver), parry (another), tumble. Knowledge skills can do that, too. This all goes out the window when someone else in the party is in danger, but I'd still like to sneak up on the threat.

I'm not as experienced as the people with whom I play, and I don't have any of my RPG books with me, but I'll offer my thoughts on skills, for what they're worth: short list (with more detailed skills in parentheses).
Perception (passive perception vs. intensive detection; the usual spot/listen)
Survival, maybe including tracking, but not as high as if specialized in tracking (hunting/fishing, camping, hiking, tracking, tanning, leather-working)
Magic/arcana
Socializing/Influence
Martial/Combat/Defense
Knowledge - Magic/Arcana, Science (depending on tech level, mechanics, engineering, math, physics, biology, etc.), Medicine/First Aid, History, Society (high to low), ...
Athletics(acrobatics/tumbling, running, swimming, climbing, ...)
... that's all that comes to my mind, in absence of RPG books or internet searches. I hope it's more valuable this way, rather than less.