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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GM Dave" data-source="post: 5899028" data-attributes="member: 6687992">For 5e, is WotC looking to go for a less 'word' defined skill system?  Too early to tell.I say it is too early to tell because it appears they had a system but they've done some re-thinking of their system.  I'm not even sure what we see in the initial Playtest will fully give us a 'clue' as to what the skill system will finalize into.An open skill role system which just uses the basic attributes is an easy to write system.You just write a rule saying the player should make a roll against an appropriate attribute and the GM will let you know if you succeed of fail.That kind of rule when it hits play testing is that it tends to have people wanting to fill in the 'blanks' with 'stuff'.One of the articles that was written was the developers trying to decide if they got feedback to 'correct' this situation if they 'added' a new rule or they 'provided' more clarification and guidance.This goes further to a psychology problem of types of people.  Some people can live happily with vague rules and filling in the bits themselves while other people will only allow what is actually written to occur.I've run into this problem with magic spells and requests to 're-skin' them to provide different themes.  Sometimes I have a GM that says 'sure, go ahead'; sometimes I have a GM that says 'if you pay a feat tax then you can re-skin'; sometimes I have a GM that says 'Magic Missile does what it describes and if you want a different spell then you have to spend Xgp and time to invent a new spell'.It is not just a 'skill' issue but an issue of how people interact with rules.Do you reward and encourage people to do 'stunts' in combat like Dragon Age or do you make such things more difficult to do by imposing extra an more difficult roles then simply thumping the person?It is also a 'game' issue in how people approach the hobby.  If you approach the rules like the rules for a game of monopoly where the dice and rules direct the whole game then you will treat the rules in one way.  If you approach the rules like they are guidelines for how you will have fun and are willing to add in other stuff (land on free parking and collect money or little sister gets to buy park place for half money because she is the youngest).Some people will argue that if you are just going to 'make stuff up' why bother having rules in the first place.Some people will argue that story trumps rules and that rolling for skills at all risks derailing a story (Robin Laws Gumshoe system takes this view).The decision WotC ends up in will depend on the play testers and how Simulationist they demand the system to appear verses how much Story dominant they demand the system to be.-------------------------------------------Personally, I've come to dislike the Simulationist approach of 3e.  If you don't have the correct skill then you have a problem.  If you roll poorly then it doesn't matter that you are 'skilled' with a +12 modifier as you will still find yourself unable to do something 'basic' like stabilize a dying person.There are also issues of skill rolls being needed to repeatedly complete a task that increases the odds of failure (multiple stealth rolls or multiple climb rolls).I don't see this being 'alleviated' with going to a system of attribute rolls as you will see more design polarity among players and more complaints that they have an 8 or 6 attribute and not having several attributes of 16 or more to put into attribute slots.I also don't think the developers are really going to get the full feed back on that side of the situation until the playtest opens up to character creation where the developers will see the 'average' character is being chosen to not have a 'rounded' set of attributes.</blockquote>

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