Interaction Skills house rule

[S'mon]

I just came up with this at the game tonight: If a player is playing a PC as very insightful, diplomatic, intimidating etc, but they're not trained in the relevant skill, then at GM's judgement they can swap out a trained skill for the relevant skill.

This deals with the issue where eg I love chatting to NPCs but my Fighter can only hit them with stuff. I don't think it's imbalancing in 4e - thoughts?

 

[Quickleaf]

Have an example?

IMO social skills present a unique challenge for synching role-play and rolling dice. Some players, like your fighter, can't help but play smart, insightfully picking up on the duke's wartime prejudice even if the PC lacks insight training or is a general dunce.

Of course, allowing them to use another trained skill (eg. insight) will boost their check by more than +5 due to their secondary attributes (eg. wisdom).

 

[S'mon]

Have an example?

I had statted out a half-elf Ranger for Kimberly Pauley for my Loudwater Forgotten Realms game last night. I made a typical archer striker build. Kimberly was quite a quiet player, she sat there thinking and observing, then came up with lots of great insights to the mystery; read my NPCs like a book, and manipulated the bad-guy slaver into revealing the location of the kidnapped girls the party were looking for. AFAICR I hadn't given her much mechanical support for this, and it seemed to me that it wouldn't hurt to let the PC's stats reflect more the way she was played.

 

[Quickleaf]

I had statted out a half-elf Ranger for Kimberly Pauley for my Loudwater Forgotten Realms game last night. I made a typical archer striker build. Kimberly was quite a quiet player, she sat there thinking and observing, then came up with lots of great insights to the mystery; read my NPCs like a book, and manipulated the bad-guy slaver into revealing the location of the kidnapped girls the party were looking for. AFAICR I hadn't given her much mechanical support for this, and it seemed to me that it wouldn't hurt to let the PC's stats reflect more the way she was played.

Yeah that seems reasonable for a newish player running a pregen PC for the first time. Heck I'd let her move all parts of the PC around as she gets used to/into the character.

At one point I toyed around with letting player have training in anything that fit their character concept. I even considered using different ability modifiers depending on how the check was used; e.g. Arcana as a knowledge check? INT. Arcana as detect magic? WIS. But I couldn't bring myself to implement that radical of a house rule.

 

[AeroDm]

I just came up with this at the game tonight: If a player is playing a PC as very insightful, diplomatic, intimidating etc, but they're not trained in the relevant skill, then at GM's judgement they can swap out a trained skill for the relevant skill.

This deals with the issue where eg I love chatting to NPCs but my Fighter can only hit them with stuff. I don't think it's imbalancing in 4e - thoughts?

I don't fully follow. Are they swapping the trained skill for the untrained skill just for the action, just for the scene, or permanently?

 

[Quickleaf]

I don't fully follow. Are they swapping the trained skill for the untrained skill just for the action, just for the scene, or permanently?

Basically, you're trained in whatever the heck you want to be trained in, so long as it's within your character concept, and on your class skill list (probably).

Checking the player's ability to abuse this system, is the DM's ability to assign a different ability modifier on the fly.

"Do I know how to ride a horse, of course! I grew up on a ranch. So I want to grab our halfling rogue while galloping and lift him into the saddle. That's a trained Athletics check?"

"Sure, but the modifier is Dexterity, not Strength. You're going so fast it's more about coordination and timing. Besides, the halfling isn't that heavy."

 

[Crazy Jerome]

A more radical form would be to not assign any trained skills at all, at the start. Then when the character begins to exhibit enough of the activity to get the skill, it is marked as trained.

I've flirted with that idea in a hombrew (not D&D-like) system. You are what you do--really taken even further than Runequest, which at least gives you a starting place.

We once played a short campaign of Fantasy Hero this way, extending the idea to weapons and skills. Basically, the characters had stats, and a rough concept of what they thought they would do, but they had no points spent on the other stuff. As soon as they wanted to try something, we spent the points and moved on. (And equipment magically appeared. )

 

[Ajar]

I find the best way to get off-class skills is to take a background that makes it a class skill. That doesn't work too well for changing skills once the game starts, but I've found it quite useful.

 

[S'mon]

I don't fully follow. Are they swapping the trained skill for the untrained skill just for the action, just for the scene, or permanently?

Permanently, subject to later retraining of course.

 

[AeroDm]

Permanently, subject to later retraining of course.

Alright, that sounds perfectly reasonable. Basically just allowing adjustments of the class skill list with GM approval. Sounds like everyone wins.