Mike Mearl's on simplifying skills in D&D

[Justin Bacon]

One thing I really don't want in 3e is the mixing of Hide/Move Silently into Sneak and Listen/Spot into Notice or somesuch. For instance, my brother is a musician. He has a pretty keen hearing, but his sight sucks (shortsighted, like me). In 3.5e terms, he has ranks in Listen, but none in Spot. In a "mixing" version, he'd have Notice +3 (+6 to listen). How is that easier than just writing down Listen +6?

I think the strongest argument for combining the skills is that it makes it inordinately difficult to sneak past people (compared to accomplishing other tasks), since you have to succeed at two opposed checks.

That being said, I find the distinction between Spot and Listen to be useful enough that I'm not sure what the proper solution is.

 

[Gentlegamer]

I'm I am not enamoured of this suggestion, it puts too much emphasis on ability scores.
Right now a 1st level cleric with an 18 Wisdom is equal at first level to a Rogue with full ranks and no Wisdom modifier. However over time no Cleric can hope to compare with a Rogue in the spot department over time and training.

I think divination spells make up the difference in this department.

 

[Justin Bacon]

Are DMs out there really that powerless that they can't come up with a DC for on the fly tasks? I do it all the time.

I think there are literally some people out there who become paralyzed by the support given to them by the core rulebooks. I've never quite been able to understand what the basis for the problem is, but it seems related (at least to me) to the people who become angry when optional supplements are published that they don't have any interest in.

Apparently, having more options is a bad thing for them.

Maybe trying to distinguish between the options is difficult. Maybe they have a group that wants to use the options and they don't. Maybe they're just compulsive collectors. I dunno. I honestly don't understand it, although I've tried.

Maybe it's just approach. Take the Jump skill, for example. I love the fact that I can come at that skill from two directions: I can either decide that I want the jump over a chasm to have a DC of X and then, if the players ask exactly how wide it is, I can check the guidelines given to determine how far a jump that is. Or I can define how wide the chasm is and then come back and figure out how large a DC it takes to jump over it.

 

[Corsair]

Doesn't this sound a whole like like 2E Non-weapon proficiencies?

 

[ruleslawyer]

I love IH, including the skill system My IH game features far more use of skills than my previous D&D games. That said, I think that a *cough* 4th edition could do well to have comprehensive skills as an option, rather than a core rule.

 

[Grazzt]

Doesn't this sound a whole like like 2E Non-weapon proficiencies?

Yeppers. That it does (except in 1e [DSG, WSG] and 2e it was roll 1d20 under your relevant stat instead of adding the stat to a d20 roll).

I don't care for it for several reasons: one being it doesn't really take skill/level (if you consider character/class level as skill = getting better at stuff) into consideration at all.

A better way to do it would be using the option in UA (1d20 + class level + modifiers) which is essentially the way C&C handles it as well (primes not withstanding and all that). At least character/class level comes into play with this option.

 

[Lanefan]

Yeppers. That it does (except in 1e [DSG, WSG] and 2e it was roll 1d20 under your relevant stat instead of adding the stat to a d20 roll).

Which is a very simple and elegant system, when you think about it. Where it falls down in 3e is that stats so often get to 20 or above (extremely rare in older editions) making a stat-check roll pointless. (though maybe in 3e, the stat-check roll could be on a d30 sometimes? Hmmm...) Where level considerations come into play is the DM deciding how easy/difficult the check is; level is just one factor along with situation, conditions, etc.

Rogues/Thieves would be handled separately for their own skills. The stat-check is just a nice catch-all for everything else.

Lanefan

 

[Klaus]

I think the strongest argument for combining the skills is that it makes it inordinately difficult to sneak past people (compared to accomplishing other tasks), since you have to succeed at two opposed checks.

That being said, I find the distinction between Spot and Listen to be useful enough that I'm not sure what the proper solution is.

When sneaking past someone, they might not have ranks in Spot, only Listen, or vice-versa. In a dark area, you have an easier time Hiding, but not so much when Moving Silently. The reverse goes when there's plenty of noise around (like your PC allies staging a mock fight to distract the guard while you tip-toe past him).

IMO, different senses (and the means to defeat them) require different skills. It's only because us humans lack other keen senses that smell, touch and taste can be resolved with Wisdom checks.

 

[buzz]

A better way to do it would be using the option in UA (1d20 + class level + modifiers) which is essentially the way C&C handles it as well (primes not withstanding and all that). At least character/class level comes into play with this option.

This still works towards making the classes less distinct. Some people may like this throwback idea, but one of the things that drew me to 3e was the comparative customization available in chargen. I don't want, e.g., all rogues to look basically identical.

Like Li said, sure, you'll probably just be maxing out certain skills most of the time, but why should you have to? Especially when you figure in multiclassing, you never know what exactly a player is going to do with the various bits provided by the classes they're using. Why hamstring them?

 

[mearls]

First off, the ideas on my LJ have nothing to do with how we develop D&D. This was purely something I thought of while cleaning my apartment on Sunday afternoon while listening to the Seahawks game.

The primary thrust of the idea is the idea that, by adding more flexibility to the system, you might encourage people to become more creative in play. Skills are by no means gone. Instead, you'd only have skills that require training.

Expressing mastery of something that is currently a skill, like Climb or Jump, would fall to other parts of the system. You might have feats and rules like this:

Jumping: Characters can make standing jumps with a distance equal to 1/4 their speed, and running jumps with a distance equal to half their speed.

Jump Feat: You jump twice as far as normal.

There's an interesting side effect of the skill rules for any game. A character who is good at the skill can use it and gain its benefits. On the opposite end of things, a character who is *bad* at the skill can't use it or doesn't see it as a viable option.

The final paragraph in that post is the most important section. Obviously, these rules wouldn't work for a convention game, but they can work fine (and perhaps better than any rigidly defined system) for a group that gets along well.

It's funny that a few people commented on IH. Iron Heroes was an important design for me. There's a famous quote that I'm about to mangle, but it goes something like, "Every artist needs someone in position to hit him over the head when he's done with his work, to prevent him from screwing it up."

There are some things that you simply cannot define with rules, and I think the creative input that players and DMs can have on a game fall into that category. You can build a framework through which people express their creativity, but that framework cannot define their creativity.