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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6147427" data-attributes="member: 17106">The M&M idea is similar to what BSG and Serenity do, and I'm a big fan of that philosophy. Let the DM give the players something as well as take away.Agreed. The way skills are allocated was really cool when 3.0 came out, but it needs a major revision to give players more (as opposed to the direction many post-3e games have taken in giving them less). I'm not really in favor of skill consolidation, but I do think characters are skill-starved.***I think the big-picture solution to this issue (and a lot of others) is to put all action resolution under one structure. Instead of having one set of math for skills, another for attacks, another for saves, etc., have one mathematical standard. Instead of skills, feats, class abilities, powers, etc., have one way of distributing scalable abilities. The best existing approach, and the example I'll use, is 3e skills.So, say that your attack roll, your save, your diplomacy, and your magic were all represented by a skill bonus, which you paid skill points for, and which is rolled against a DC or an opposed roll. Then it becomes easier to balance the game (as opposed to trying to whac-a-mole problematic PC abilities).Let's say that there's one skill for Diplomacy, and one for Enchantment. Clearly, the Enchantment skill can do things that Diplomacy cannot. But now you can look at them side by side. And you can change them as needed, so both are appealing game options, and both work in simulating what they're suppose to simulate. Maybe you shift the DC's to make it clear that it's easier to talk to people than to charm or compel them. Maybe you split Enchantment into multiple skills so casters pay more. Maybe you restrict access to those skills by requiring feats or other prerequisites. Maybe you limit the use of Enchantment per time through some quasi-Vancian model (knowing that you would never do that to Diplomacy). Maybe you have the magical abilities drain the caster's life force. There's all kinds of options.You still have the basic reality that some skills can do things that are better than others. Just as Use Magic Device is better than Craft (Basketweaving). But you can make them at least as balanced as the existing skill system. It's clear what each skill can do and what the number next to it means. And who complains about that?</blockquote>

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