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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Balesir" data-source="post: 5655804" data-attributes="member: 27160">Hmm.  The "words not numbers" thing strikes me really as semantics.  The system as described is essentially identical to having each level of training give +15 to the d20 roll (and each level of DC be 15 higher than the one below).  The only issue there seems to me to be granularity.A more serious issue to me, which Mike Mearls doesn't really specify, is the scope of individual skills and the scope of the skill list.  Extensible skill lists are lovely in theory - and can work well for specific play styles - but they have an issue with "competence reduction".  What I mean by this is that any system that allows for newly added skills can effectively progressively reduce the competence of existing characters.  The existence of "ranks" in skill tests implies that the whole scope of possible activity must be (theoretically) covered by the existing skills (unless there are possible skills that the characters are simply not allowed to have).  A newly added skill, therefore, must take "territory" from an existing skill.  In 4E, for example, let's assume that handling a raft is covered by Nature skill.  "Joe the Raft Handler", trained in Nature, is then stuffed when the new skill "rafthandling" comes along; suddenly his skill set is suboptimal for the very thing he's supposed to be good at.Free definition of skills avoids this by the implicit assumption that the extant skills do cover all of the possible expertises, but they just haven't all been named, yet.  But this system hides a different issue; the problem of variable potency.  Different descriptions - and different interpretations of those definitions - will have, at least potentially, vastly different utility in the game.  In some, character or story-focussed styles this may work fine.  But a group of optimisers will either have a field day or devolve into nightmare arguments trying to optimise the semantics of skill descriptions...This brings up a different issue.  "Player Ingenuity" cannot be objectively measured.  What is (generally) meant, in practice, therefore, is "whether or not the DM likes the idea".  That is not necessarily a problem, but it is definitely an issue that needs to be addressed.  Adding magic items, feats or whatever to adjust difficulty is one method already mentioned to move away from this, but it can feel like a tightening noose to flexibility.  PrimeTime Adventures addresses the problem neatly by giving all the players a (randomised - 50% chance it counts) vote on "ingenuity" type calls, but D&D creates a problem with this approach if it is intended to be a "team of players" style game; the players vote for "team players" rather than their perception of the quality of an idea.It's a fraught area, but I'm afraid I don't see any radical improvement with this new scheme - just a move from near one end of the scale (+2 for training) to near another (+15 for training).Edit: plus a massive increase (+2 to +15 again) in the bonus given for "situational bonuses", aka DM fiat.</blockquote>

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