Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
White Dwarf Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Nest
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
EN Publishing
Twitter
BlueSky
Facebook
Instagram
EN World
BlueSky
YouTube
Facebook
Twitter
Twitch
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
On 5E Skills (aka How Game System Affects Immersion)
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Jhaelen" data-source="post: 5899156" data-attributes="member: 46713"><p>Dunno. I think the 'problem' isn't solved by dropping skills and relying on attribute checks instead. If you have any kind of check, immersion suffers.</p><p></p><p>To give a fairly recent example from our 4e campaign:</p><p>Our party had been sneaking up on a high cliff overseeing a goblin town. This started a skill challenge to accumulate successes to find a way to enter and navigate the town undetected (although the DM didn't say so; this was just something being obvious to me as a player).</p><p></p><p>So what did I do? I looked over my list of skills to see which of my trained skills lent itself best to the task. I decided to attempt something involving my Streetwise check and told the DM I was looking for patterns in the goblins' movements, particularly the routes taken by patrols and any buildings that seemed to be highly frequented.</p><p></p><p>So my DM said "Fine, please make an Insight check."</p><p></p><p>Naturally, I was a bit miffed by that, since my Insight skill was rather bad. Unfortunately, asking "But wouldn't that rather be a Streetwise check?" didn't sway my DM at all.</p><p></p><p></p><p>There's several things to note here:</p><p>- the rules influenced my choice of actions: basically, as a player I try to maximize my chances to succeed at a given task by applying my rules knowledge (in this case about how skill challenges work)</p><p>- my character's stats influence my choice of actions: rather than thinking about what my character would likely do, I think about what my character's good at (although it could be argued that the pc knows what he's good at, too, and would prefer actions making use of his best skills)</p><p>- describing my actions in non-game-terms can lead to unexpected/unwanted results: I prefer telling my DM "I use skill X to <do stuff>", because this increases ethe likelihood of an expected result. Not mentioning the skill I'd like to use carries a greater risk of being 'overruled' and having to use a different skill.</p><p></p><p>So, yes, I'm apparently a shameless meta- and powergamer <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>As a player I'll always want to maximize my chances to succeed. If the system doesn't have skills, I'll want to use the pc's best attribute instead. If the system doesn't even have attributes, I'll want to use my character's background instead. And if the system is built to only challenge the player's skill, I'll try to use _my_ best skills whenever possible.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Jhaelen, post: 5899156, member: 46713"] Dunno. I think the 'problem' isn't solved by dropping skills and relying on attribute checks instead. If you have any kind of check, immersion suffers. To give a fairly recent example from our 4e campaign: Our party had been sneaking up on a high cliff overseeing a goblin town. This started a skill challenge to accumulate successes to find a way to enter and navigate the town undetected (although the DM didn't say so; this was just something being obvious to me as a player). So what did I do? I looked over my list of skills to see which of my trained skills lent itself best to the task. I decided to attempt something involving my Streetwise check and told the DM I was looking for patterns in the goblins' movements, particularly the routes taken by patrols and any buildings that seemed to be highly frequented. So my DM said "Fine, please make an Insight check." Naturally, I was a bit miffed by that, since my Insight skill was rather bad. Unfortunately, asking "But wouldn't that rather be a Streetwise check?" didn't sway my DM at all. There's several things to note here: - the rules influenced my choice of actions: basically, as a player I try to maximize my chances to succeed at a given task by applying my rules knowledge (in this case about how skill challenges work) - my character's stats influence my choice of actions: rather than thinking about what my character would likely do, I think about what my character's good at (although it could be argued that the pc knows what he's good at, too, and would prefer actions making use of his best skills) - describing my actions in non-game-terms can lead to unexpected/unwanted results: I prefer telling my DM "I use skill X to <do stuff>", because this increases ethe likelihood of an expected result. Not mentioning the skill I'd like to use carries a greater risk of being 'overruled' and having to use a different skill. So, yes, I'm apparently a shameless meta- and powergamer ;) As a player I'll always want to maximize my chances to succeed. If the system doesn't have skills, I'll want to use the pc's best attribute instead. If the system doesn't even have attributes, I'll want to use my character's background instead. And if the system is built to only challenge the player's skill, I'll try to use _my_ best skills whenever possible. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
On 5E Skills (aka How Game System Affects Immersion)
Top