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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5025468" data-attributes="member: 4937">Wait a minute.  Did I miss something, or did 3rd edition only come out about 10 years ago?  When were you doing skill checks in D&D more than 20 years ago?  And how, more than 20 years ago where you playing at tables that all managed to adopt identical house rules regarding skill usage?Proir to 3rd edition, there was no unified skill system resolution and many DMs used none at all.  For those that did have skill resolution systems, the following where common in published works and widely adopted in haphazard ways:1) Save vs. Paralyzation: This was one of the more common fudge mechanics, and corresponded roughly to 'Reflex Saves' in 3rd edition.  This was commonly used as a general check to see if the character was fast enough to escape some hazard that didn't fall comfortably into the rules.  Was the ceiling collapsing?  'Save vs. Paralyzation' or take 5d50 damage.  And so forth.  Loosely, the saving throw corresponds not only to reflex saves, but to tumble checks, jump checks, and so forth in 3rd edition.2) Attribute Check: This is simply throwing your attribute on a d20 or less.  Dexterity checks were the most common since the other skills tended to have other mechanics or subsystems that were more widely used.  For example, while you might call for a Strength Check, more commonly you'd call for a bend bars or open doors check to simulate some feat of strength.   Loosely, this mechanic was used in place of escape artist, balance, and so forth.3) Thief Skills: The only core class with explicit skills was the Thief.  When the party had to do something collectively that was normally the provenence of thieves only, the module would often define a base skill check for non-theives, to climb a wall for example.  In such cases, the theives often got a bonus to their ability to represent that the task was so easy, even an non-thief could complete it.4) NWP Check: Introduced late in 1st edition and expanded on heavily in 2nd edition, this is simply a special case of an attribute check, perhaps with a small bonus or to gain some small bonus or to simulate some 'trained only' skill.I would love to hear the unified skill mechanic that was being used by every 1st level DM you played with and which treated every 'skill' as being non-binary and having critical failures given that none of the above suggest that (and how few skills naturally translate to degree of success instead of pass/fail).  Did you commonly make the results of a saving throw worse when you failed by 10 rather than just failed by 1, and how did you do that when most 1st edition saves were of the 'save or die' variaty?  I should also note that there is a very very big difference between adding additional fluff on a failed by 10 to provide the flavor of a disasterous failure, and changing the outcome on a failed skill check to mechanically create a disasterous failure.  For example, in 1st edition had a thief failed a 'move silently' check by a very large amount, I might have narrated this as tripping over a tin pail, then stumbling into suit of armor that went clattering over the floor.  But while this sounds like a 'fumble', it is not in fact anything but a binary failure dressed up in fluff, since regardless of whether the 'move silently' check is failed by 1 or 50, the mechanical outcome is 'monster is alerted to PC's presence'.</blockquote>

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