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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5889124" data-attributes="member: 82106">Well, the way I see it the 17 skills that 4e has FAIRLY clearly define themselves. Ability scores are a lot fuzzier. Should 'willpower' be a function of WIS or CHA? How about knowing some fact or how to do something? It is always reasonably arguable between a couple of abilities, sometimes you could make good cases for any of 3 choices. Of course it is possible for a task to fall somewhere between or outside the 17 skills, but most of those cases aren't going to unequivocally fall into one ability score either. In your proposed system you have TWO levels of choices. You have a choice of ability scores AND a choice of skills. The more precisely you define the skills the narrower they get too, and the more likely they are to become proscriptive (IE you need skill X to be able to do something at all). That creates a new set of issues. There's also a tendency in an open-ended list for the size of the list to expand to a point where it isn't at all clear what skill to apply when something doesn't quite fall into any of them. Just to be clear, I don't think your proposed system is at all unworkable. I just think it increases the workload at the table during conflict resolution sequences (encounters), which is the highest demand point in the game and thus the one where to you want to decrease the number of decision points the most to allow people to focus on things besides mechanics and to keep things moving quick.IMHO you can get equally interesting class features and feats in 4e's system. There are TONS of feats and powers (and other stuff) that feed into doing specific tasks, all without dealing with extra variables. I don't think your system prevents anything, it isn't a bad system. I just think it increases complexity and I can't come up with a clear advantage. Since it is really impossible to address people's preferences by analysis of game mechanics there's not much we can say about that. Well, in current 4e there's one decision point, which is fairly unequivocal, which skill to use, which is generally made by the DM ahead of time. The player says what he does, the DM tells him which skill he's picked for that, and the player just rolls and adds one number. The set of numbers to add is short and pretty clear. I think 4e's skill system is literally as streamlined as it is possible to get and still have a meaningful system. Your system requires at a minimum looking at a potentially long list of skills, finding your modifier for that skill, adding it to an ability score modifier, and then rolling. That's a bit more work. Not a HUGE amount, but again it is extra work that happens at the table in the midst of play. Almost all the work in 4e's system is (or certainly can be) front loaded to prep time.Both systems can allow for pretty much arbitrary modifiers and specializations, etc. In fact 4e backgrounds pretty much already ARE your proposed skill system as it stands. I don't feel like anyone has convincingly demonstrated a real need for anything beyond what we have now.</blockquote>

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