My take.
- Thread starter Celebrim
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Hussar
Legend
Lizard said:
Gack, that's completely off on a tangent.
The point is, it makes zero sense for any character to spread skill points around to multiple skills. It simply doesn't give you enough chance of success and seriously detracts from your core skills.
The other point about it being poor adventure design is off base as well. The mechanics scale for many skills. And, even if the mechanics only scale for a small number of skills, if those skills are important to the role of that PC, then the PC has no real choice but to max those skills. A wizard needs max concentration and spellcraft. Probably a couple of knowledge skills in there as well. Same with the sorcerer who isn't going to be running around with all those bonus Int ranks.
It comes down to a sort of group game where A picks these skills, B picks those skills and C and D pick up the rest. So, on any given skill challenge, SOMEONE can succeed, but, then the other three players get to sit around twiddling their thumbs.
Remember, the mechanics for SWSE don't mean that you are an expert in all skills. They mean that, as you go up in level, your basic proficiency in given skills will increase marginally. You can climb, but, not as well as anyone who is focussed. Just, your 14th level character can climb better than a 1st level one.
Apparently that's a bad thing.
Hussar said:
I don't think so. Wizards don't need skill points. They can do what they need to do with magic.
For the minute, at most, it takes to resolve a skill check. If you game with people with serious narcisissism or ADD, that can be an issue. For everyone else...not so much.
I agree. 3x already has the problem of characters who never once engage in melee combat getting better at it over time; now, you get better at *everything*. I think this is why they dropped professional skills -- a 16th level character could do *every possible job* at a professional level of competence. (+8 level bonus, assume a +2 attribute bonus, == a 20 if they take 10.)
I'd solve the problem by having 'core skills' auto increase, letting players pick class skills, and giving out more skill points.
Celebrim
Legend
Mustrum_Ridcully said:
Sure, because that's part of thier formal education as fighters and rogues. Fighters excercise thier muscles, rogues learn to get into tight places. Doing those things are directly impacted by thier respective class skills, and conversely directly impact thier improvement in class skills. Learning to climb though has nothing to do with learning to cast magic, unless you are actually casting magic. Learning to recognize a spell completion has nothing to do with swinging a sword, learning to use your body, or climbing a wall.
If your wizard wants to take time out of his discipline, his arcane regime, and learning his core class areas, then it's very simple - he can take a level of rogue and learn lots about climbing and other roguish things. Or he can learn a little bit about climbing on the side, to the expense of say his knowledge of the outer planes, alchemy, or other learning.
Why would I want to do that? That would be almost as bad as making 'cast a spell' an interesting challenge for the whole group. Instead, I'll probably present several alternative paths to victory (and likely the players will discover a few I didn't think of), and I'll allow the players to use whatever skills they do have to get from 'point a' to 'point b'. If they decide that involves getting up a wall, then I'll leave it to thier ingenuity how they will do so. If they are smart, that probably involves sending the best free climber up first - then having him throw a rope back down for the ones less skilled at it. Afterall, that's the way it is done in real life even by groups of people who all have some climbing skill. Everyone in the party has a way to deal with walls, it just might not be through the climb skill. And if they don't have a way to deal with walls, then they'll rely strongly on thier teammates who in turn probably rely strongly on them in other areas.
Climb checks are often undertaken voluntarily. The DC of the wall is what is appropriate to the wall, not what is appropriate to the player's skill.
There is nothing wrong with continuing to challenge the party with basic tasks. If the expert in the party now finds basic tasks to be cakewalks, then that's fine too. Let him enjoy his reward for being skilled. Presenting him with nothing but icy smooth walls with no handholds just because he could in theory climb such a surface is DM metagaming. Presenting him with an occassional obstacle that he and he alone can overcome is not wrong either. That's what teamwork is about. What you don't want is, "Gee, I can't open this lock even though I'm the party expert. Why don't we have the fighter give it a go, he's got only slightly less chance of doing it than I do." That is, unless by, 'Give it a go.', you mean, open the door with a battleaxe.
What I think is that if you scale all skills by character level, what you end up with is a world where no one really gets any better at anything. You might as well not advance skills at all, because you live in a world where every time you do advance your skills the world gets tougher by about the same amount. The flavor is changing, but the actual way you interact with the world isn't. As a player, that bores me to tears, and as a DM that feels cheap.
You talk about how the class system out to require improvement in every skill as if that was somehow logical. No point buy system has a similar requirement. To the extent that you have classes in a point buy system, you have something like templates and they aren't nor do they become skilled in everything. Rather, you either focus on being good at doing what you do, or you sacrifice some amount of skill at what you do to pick up skills outside that of your template. That is to say there are tradeoffs. You don't get something for nothing. D&D handles that by multiclassing - allowing you to pick from several templates. Again, there are tradeoffs - you don't get something for nothing. Could the multiclassing rules be improved? Undoubtably, but the game is not improved by making everyone good at everything. Much of the point of having a class based system is that everyone won't be good at everything.
Hussar
Legend
Possibly. But, many situations require multiple skill checks. If I'm playing a naval adventure, for example, I could have a combat on a rolling deck of a ship.
This will require balance checks. Several balance checks. Now, the cleric and the fighter are totally screwed because they don't have the skill points to put into balance to be able to succeed reasonably often. Since it's only a single adventure, it doesn't make sense for the players to have invested in balance.
So, as DM, I have two choices. Either I make the skill checks ridiculously easy, so the skill monkeys auto succeed or I sideline two PC's for the duration. Or possibly kill the PC's as their repeated failures lead them to being washed overboard.
Basically, I'm constrained by the mechanics in what adventures I can make. I can't make any skill challenge for the entire party because either the skilled PC's autosucceed or the unskilled PC's will always fail. There's no middle ground.
Do you think this is a good thing?
Carnivorous_Bean
First Post
Okay, since my attempt to explain my viewpoint was derided as "condescending" and a "rant," I'll try to make it clearer this time.
Hit points in D&D are an abstraction.
When a 1st level fighter takes 10 points of damage, he dies. All of that damage is physical.
When a 10th level fighter takes 10 points of damage, he is barely inconvenienced. He is the same person, but 9 additional levels makes him able to take 10 times more damage before dying.
This can be seen as implying one of two things.
-- One is that the fighter is taking precisely the same amount of physical damage, but is now, in some fashion, able to sustain a dozen or more previously fatal wounds before dying. This idea also assumes that every hit produces an injury, and that very likely, nobody will ever come out of a fight without multiple serious wounds.
-- The other is that the fighter is no more able to sustain damage than he previously was, and that the additional hit points represent his fighting skill and ability to avoid damage. When he loses hit points, he is losing the ability to defend himself from a killing blow. He is placed at a disadvantage, becomes more tired, shows his opponent his defensive style which his opponent is now better able to counter, etc.
The idea of a second wind and all that appears to be a logical extension of the second assumption. Taking months to heal from being progressively tired out and placed at a disadvantage is, under the second assumption, as absurd as the idea that you can second wind your way out of 8 or 9 ordinarily-fatal wounds under the first assumption.
For an example of this, see the movie "Troy" -- specifically, the fight between Hector and Achilles. Both of them start out with high hit point totals, in D&D terms -- yet Hector is at low hit points before he's even injured, when one blow finally succeeds in killing him. That is why the blow kills him -- his ability to defend himself from the killing blow has been whittled away by the superior skill of Achilles (in short, he's taken more hit point damage, even though he's not physically wounded in every round of melee).
Yet, if Hector had been able to break off the combat before the killing blow, doesn't it seem probable that he would have been able to go into battle again, if necessary, 6 hours later? All of his 'hit point damage' was in the form of exhaustion and tactical disadvantage (and lessening morale, IMO), up to the point when the final attack dropped him below 0 hit points with physical damage.
The second wind/6 hour recovery mechanic seems to be logical under the assumption that hit point damage is mostly this exhaustion/disadvantage type of damage, which is also an explanation for inflating hit points which I happen to prefer.
It is illogical under the idea that inflating hit points represent increased "meat resilience" of high level heroes. But that idea itself is so unrealistic and problematic, that I submit that it's better to include a mechanic which at least implies inflating hit points represent skill from a realism/verisimilitude viewpoint.
I agree that it would be even more realistic to have two different pools of hit points -- one representing skill at protecting yourself from harm, which could be recovered by second wind/6 hour recovery effects, and one representing physical damage which could be healed only by magical healing or natural healing over time, and I might even houserule something to that effect. But IMO, this would be far too complex to include in a system like D&D, which has always tried to streamline damage effects to a single form of tracking (i.e. things that raise or lower hit points).
Hit points in D&D are an abstraction.
When a 1st level fighter takes 10 points of damage, he dies. All of that damage is physical.
When a 10th level fighter takes 10 points of damage, he is barely inconvenienced. He is the same person, but 9 additional levels makes him able to take 10 times more damage before dying.
This can be seen as implying one of two things.
-- One is that the fighter is taking precisely the same amount of physical damage, but is now, in some fashion, able to sustain a dozen or more previously fatal wounds before dying. This idea also assumes that every hit produces an injury, and that very likely, nobody will ever come out of a fight without multiple serious wounds.
-- The other is that the fighter is no more able to sustain damage than he previously was, and that the additional hit points represent his fighting skill and ability to avoid damage. When he loses hit points, he is losing the ability to defend himself from a killing blow. He is placed at a disadvantage, becomes more tired, shows his opponent his defensive style which his opponent is now better able to counter, etc.
The idea of a second wind and all that appears to be a logical extension of the second assumption. Taking months to heal from being progressively tired out and placed at a disadvantage is, under the second assumption, as absurd as the idea that you can second wind your way out of 8 or 9 ordinarily-fatal wounds under the first assumption.
For an example of this, see the movie "Troy" -- specifically, the fight between Hector and Achilles. Both of them start out with high hit point totals, in D&D terms -- yet Hector is at low hit points before he's even injured, when one blow finally succeeds in killing him. That is why the blow kills him -- his ability to defend himself from the killing blow has been whittled away by the superior skill of Achilles (in short, he's taken more hit point damage, even though he's not physically wounded in every round of melee).
Yet, if Hector had been able to break off the combat before the killing blow, doesn't it seem probable that he would have been able to go into battle again, if necessary, 6 hours later? All of his 'hit point damage' was in the form of exhaustion and tactical disadvantage (and lessening morale, IMO), up to the point when the final attack dropped him below 0 hit points with physical damage.
The second wind/6 hour recovery mechanic seems to be logical under the assumption that hit point damage is mostly this exhaustion/disadvantage type of damage, which is also an explanation for inflating hit points which I happen to prefer.
It is illogical under the idea that inflating hit points represent increased "meat resilience" of high level heroes. But that idea itself is so unrealistic and problematic, that I submit that it's better to include a mechanic which at least implies inflating hit points represent skill from a realism/verisimilitude viewpoint.
I agree that it would be even more realistic to have two different pools of hit points -- one representing skill at protecting yourself from harm, which could be recovered by second wind/6 hour recovery effects, and one representing physical damage which could be healed only by magical healing or natural healing over time, and I might even houserule something to that effect. But IMO, this would be far too complex to include in a system like D&D, which has always tried to streamline damage effects to a single form of tracking (i.e. things that raise or lower hit points).
Celebrim
Legend
Hussar said:
Not that I have referred to the differing opinion as mindless hack'n'slash, but if I had it would be no worse than the claim that something I've been doing is impossible.
You can't? Maybe, as you level up, you can't throw a skill test at the party where everyone has a significant chance of failure, but you can still throw skill tests.
It's also worth noting that a great many challenges you might throw at a group don't lend themselves to group solutions. Only one guy can attempt to disarm the trap. If he fails, the trap is sprung. Only one guy gets the initial attempt to convince the mountain giant to let them pass unmolested. If he fails miserably and the giant becomes actively hostile, the oppurtunity for anyone else to succeed has probably passed (unless there is someone in the party much more skilled than the first character to attempt diplomacy). Only one guy needs climb the ice wall. Everyone else need only climb a rope ladder or knotted rope. Only one guy needs to recognize the painting is a valuable antique... or a fraud. Only one guy needs to securely tie the prisoners, while the rest stand around looking intimidating, or grapple the foe, or whatever. Only one guy actually steers the runaway mine cart through the old mine. Everyone else is busy fighting off the pursuers. Only one guy really needs to jump on the horses and bring the run away stage coach to a halt. You only need one guy to craft whatever it is you needed crafted. And so forth. Even when you present a skill challenge rarely is it the case that anyone but the most skillful player's skill is at stake.
The exception are skills like spot, listen, and balance where something is happening in the environment and everyone is to some extent being tested on thier own behalf. That's why these are some of the skills that you most often see being bought cross class.
Yes, I agree. It doesn't make alot of since for a wizard to invest in climb, when he has alternative means of transport and when he doesn't he can rely on the rogue to send down a rope and in the worst case the rogue and the barbarian can pull the wizard up.
Funny, but I encourage fighters and clerics in my campaigns to invest heavily enough in balance to get back to zero so that they won't be falling down continually when under stress in uneven, slippery, or steep terrain. A -4 balance check is good enough when you can take 10, and you aren't too worried about stumbling. But it sucks when you are fighting in a dark muddy cave filled with flowstone and loose breakdown.
How many people need to be able to translate the runes? Can't the one who is good at it report his findings to the rest? Why should the fighter have nearly as good of a chance as the wizard?
If the whole party needs to be disguised, why can't the one good at disguise use his skill to disguise the others? Isn't that how it generally works? The master of disguise applies his skill to disguising his comrades? If you have someone actually good at disguise, why do it yourself?
I don't think people who play differently than me do mindless hack-n-slash. Heck, I don't even denigrate hack-n-slash. Monte does very thoughtful hack-n-slash. But as long as I'm going to be accused of looking down on other people anyway, I might as well risk people thinking that and telling you what I do think. I think that alot of this argument of how necessary universal skill improvement is is just a front. I think its just a cover argument, and that people don't want to admit what thier real problem is. I think that the real problem is that if you want to play a superheroic game, and you want to play a superheroic character that can do all sorts of cool stuff, that you don't want to be inept at anything. I think that alot of players think that when thier character is inept at something, that it reduces the coolness and therefore the fun. I think that what you are seeing is perception of ineptitude scale with ability, so that you see people playing characters with 8 or 10 intelligence with exagerrated stupidity, or 8 or 10 wisdom with exagerrated silliness, or 8 or 10 charisma with exagerrated abrasiveness. And the reason that they do this is that they think of heroic ability as normal, and so anything less than heroic is 'dumb'.
For example, consider the way that the 'less smart' characters in OotS are played to comic effect. You would think that these characters have like a 4 Wis or something, especially given how the wiser characters describe thier ability, but from what we can gather from the narrative even someone like Belkar has no worse than an 8 Wis. That works fine for narrative spoofing the tropes of gaming, but that isn't really what is implied.
In any event, there is nothing wrong with wanting to play a superheroic game where no one is really inept at anything. However, insisting that that is the only way to play flies in the face of my own experience.
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