New WotC Article - The Role of Skills

[NewJeffCT]

I didn't see this posted yet, but it has some interesting ideas in it.

The Role of Skills

Personally, I like 3E's way of handling skills - but, there were just way too many of them. I like that 4E condensed them, but I dislike that they left out things like Craft & Perform, and I think Trained/Untrained + half level is a bit too simple.

 

[Jack Daniel]

They're definitely onto something here with regard to skills vs. ability scores.

Let me just give you a little background on my own campaigns to clarify what I mean. I play D&D Basic/Expert usually, where most actions are resolved by one of three methods:
- A fixed chance-in-six to open a door, spot a secret door, avoid a trap, etc.
- The thief's d% chance to do something thiefy
- The ability check, rolled under the score on 1d20
For my own setting, I synthesized all of these different methods into an ad hoc skill system where there are twelve skills, and everything is handled by rolling 1d6, either rolling under your rank in a skill (which runs from 1 to 5) or rolling under 3 + your ability modifier, just like the Strength based "open doors" roll from D&D Basic.

Now, I don't have any kind of class-based restrictions on who can take which skills. Anyone can take thieving skills; thieves just enjoy more skill points to spend. So the skills in my campaign wind up serving as both the primary means of customizing characters with similar classes; and the primary method for miscellaneous task-resolution. I found that once I implemented a skill system, I very rarely ever had to resort to a bare ability check. The ability score modifiers still mattered for combat and such, but the scores themselves hardly ever impacted anything else.

So for the last campaign I started, I tried something different. Inspired by this speculation about 5th edition, I kept the skills and the ranks, but instead of having my players make their skill checks on 1d6, I would assign a difficulty level (1 to 5) to a given task, and if the character had a skill rank sufficient to match or beat the rank, I ruled it an auto-success. If not, they rolled a relevant ability check on 1d20 to see if they at least attained some measure of success at the task. And I have to tell you... it's really improved the flow of gameplay at my table. This is a dungeon-crawl campaign, so there's lots of searching for traps and secret doors, lots of picking locks and disabling traps, lots of trying to identify mysterious items and read ancient languages and communicate with semi-intelligent monsters... and having some characters just be skilled enough to succeed at the more mundane tasks really speeds things along. Meanwhile, when a more difficult task arrives, the ability check on 1d20 is pretty solid means of success or failure (and if a task seems extra-difficult, one can always add one or two extra d20 rolls and force the player to compare the highest roll to their relevant stat).

It just feels even more like D&D to play this way, I'm playing freaking B/X already! So... yeah, hearing this about skills in 5e makes me very hopeful. Very hopeful indeed.

 

[Incenjucar]

I prefer 4E's overall skill system, including the lack of craft/profession skills (<3 Martial Practices), but I'd like to see the ranges toned down a bit so that we don't run into the auto-pass/auto-fail issue as much.

 

[kitsune9]

For fantasy games like D&D and PF, I would like to see a skill list of about 20 skills or less. I think my own personal preference is 15. For more modern or toolkit style games, then the more's-the-better.

 

[Dausuul]

Interesting - "tiers of competence" is winning an outright majority in the poll, even though no edition of D&D has had such a system*.

[SIZE=-2]*At least not explicitly. Functionally, it can be replicated in 4E by the combination of skill training and the Skill Focus feat.[/SIZE]

 

[Crazy Jerome]

Just last night, I reread the optional skill system in the BECMI RC. It's rather startling how much of what got used for skills (and not a few other things--e.g. alertness) in 3E and 4E is present in that text.

I wasn't a huge fan of that system, which is basically roll ability score or under on each skill. But I'm beginning to wonder if most of my objections were more about the exact resolution and all the other peripheral stuff around it, than the skills themselves. It's a pretty ad hoc, off-beat system in a game where characters roll 3d6 for each ability score. (The rich get richer, and the poor get--lousy chances to try a few things. Boosting skills is not terribly productive.)

Do a similar system with better math, cleaner ability scores, and smooth off some rough edges, and I might not mind it as much. I especially agree with letting people use ability scores for basic things.

 

[fuindordm]

I've run games at both ends of the spectrum, and they both work.

Generally speaking, using ability rolls for skills leads to a permissive game: players are more willing to just try things and let the DM sort it out. Using skill ranks leads to a restrictive game: players tend to only try what they're good at. On the other hand, they're rewarded for specializing and they can predict their chance of success.

When running AD&D, I tell the players "Your PCs are competent adventurers. You know how to survive in the wilderness, light a fire, ride a horse, and all sorts of other things that make sense given your background and class. If you want some skill like stealth or alchemy that's really useful and isn't normally part of your class, then talk to me about what you're willing to trade for it."

In the game, nearly all skill checks are resolved as a roll under the most appropriate ability score on a d20. For difficult checks, I have them roll 4d6 instead. For nearly impossible checks, I have them roll something like a bend bars/lift gates percentage.

When running 3E/3.5E/PF, I use the skill system as written. I encourage the players to take 10 and try things even if they don't have the skill, because easy tasks have low DCs. The ranks and bonuses are great for things like stealth vs. perception opposed rolls.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I need a little more complexity from a skill system.

Example: a long time ago, in a sorta-homebrewed system, my wife wrote up a human pilot character (SF). She invested a lot of points into achieving the highest level of piloting skill she could purchase - it got more expensive as you bought more ranks.

Another character turned out to be just as good a pilot as she with minimal expenditure, just because his race allowed him a much higher controlling stat. So I had plenty of time to think about what was wrong with this.

I decided it was the all-encompassing roll against a target number. Having a better stat should make him a better pilot than an equally-trained human, but the extra training should count for something, right?

So, and this relates to mastery tiers in the poll, I figured that there should be some cutoff of difficulty where a lesser character can't even TRY to do something. So that, for a D&D example, you can't try to make a masterwork sword with just basic smithing skill, you need at least the second tier of mastery. THEN you can make your skill check. So a dwarf may be really good at smithing, but he still needs to be a MASTER smith to compete with a human master.'

But this may be too complicated for what WotC is looking for here.

 

[JamesonCourage]

For the next iteration of the game, however, we are looking at returning to the ability check as the primary means of interacting with the game world

This is what's going to kill it for me. The skill system in my RPG also has 38 skills (not including different brands, such as Knowledges, Crafts [not as 3.X did them], Professions [definitely not as 3.X did them], and Performs). That's after folding certain skills into existing skills, and adding 8 skills (and completely rebuilding 3-4 others, while tweaking and adding to all of the remaining skills).

Skills are important to me. I want them meaty. One page apiece. I want them plentiful. And I don't want them binary. I'd definitely settle for different tiers, as they offered. I won't settle for ability checks on a d20 with modifiers as we know them from 3.X/4e. So I hope that's not where they're headed.

Admittedly, I'm unlikely to swap over anyways, play it alongside my current system, or buy their material out of curiosity. So, if you're reading this WotC: don't base your decisions on me at all. I'm not your target audience. As always, play what you like

 

[Ranganathan]

I prefer the simple skills system the presented in the DDXP seminars. Ability scores are primary, and skills are a minor boost to those (+2 score / +1 mod) and an unlimited skill list. This makes customizing characters and games really easy and that's what I want: Simple and customizable.