POLL: Would you play D&D without a Skill System?

[Wiseblood]

I voted "I don't care either way."

The 3.x skills were... well, I do not like them. The variety was good at first but as I grew more accustomed to them they just didn't work. Same goes for ability checks and grapple rules.

Don't get me wrong they can be used to resolve things, but one of their most significant setbacks, is actually the use of the d20. With the d20 being touted as their pet dice actual ability scores and often times skills wind up being trumped bigtime by the dice. Take for example two characters (both level one commoners) grappling, one has a strength of 3 the other has a strength of 35 (ok so he's a mediums size fire giant) With the d20 approach Mr. Noodlearm can break the grapple of Mr. Musclehugger. The same goes for opposed ability checks and skill checks. d20 is just too broad of a range given the modifiers that are presented.


The next biggest flaw in them is lumping combat related with non-combat related skills. For instance Spot is combat related whereas Appraise is likely just for flavor. I wouldn't want to see thieves (rogues, sorry about that) being carbon copies as far as statistics go.


2e skills weren't much better (due to incompleteness more than being enslaved by the catchy D20 logo), but success rate was higher from the get-go.

 

[Prince of Happiness]

The next biggest flaw in them is lumping combat related with non-combat related skills. For instance Spot is combat related whereas Appraise is likely just for flavor. I wouldn't want to see thieves (rogues, sorry about that) being carbon copies as far as statistics go.

Appraise being for flavor? Heeeeccccck no! Some DMs would definitely make sure that PCs are encountering fences/gem buyers that work at giving the PCs waaayyyy less than market value for some of the gems and other treasures that they'd sell off. Having someone who can appraise (and therefore know if something in a dungeon is loot or dross, saving you weight and encumbrance) is a very handy skill to have.

 

[Clavis]

I would like to see skills and feats as optional add-ons for the system, but not as vital parts of it. D&D at its heart has always been a class & level based system. The whole "updating" of the rules always struck me as ironic, because the "more modern" games that the designers of 3rd edition were looking to for inspiration were played by far fewer people than D&D.

The advantage of a pure class-based system (like Basic D&D), with strong uncomplicated archetypes, is that it is very easy to bring new players in. All they have to say is what character from fantasy fiction their PC is most like, and the DM can just tell them what character class they should play. You start adventuring within 15 minutes, as opposed to the 1 and a half hours to 2 hours it always seems to take to create someone's first 3rd edition character. It can be quite off-putting for people who just want to role-play around a table to first have to fill out a character sheet that looks like a tax form.

The problem with a pure class-based system, however, is that experienced players get bored with it. Its more a problem with male players than female ones, though, mainly because male players tend to want to "win' the game by having the strongest possible character. In my experience female players don't tend to care about mechanical character optimization, and are more satisfied with simpler rules. Since D&D player base is overwhelmingly male, however, something like skills and feats should be available for them. Skills and feats should be a modular add-on however, something that a DM can include or exclude without damaging the core system.

If skills and feats are core, they shouldn't "kick-in" until mid-levels, allowing new players time to master the basic rules before encountering another level of rules complexity. Also, having skills and feats not be available until mid levels keeps initial character creation fast and simple, making retention of new players (especially new female players) more likely.

 

[Wiseblood]

Appraise being for flavor? Heeeeccccck no! Some DMs would definitely make sure that PCs are encountering fences/gem buyers that work at giving the PCs waaayyyy less than market value for some of the gems and other treasures that they'd sell off. Having someone who can appraise (and therefore know if something in a dungeon is loot or dross, saving you weight and encumbrance) is a very handy skill to have.

I did not mean to imply that Appraise was uselees. I wanted to point out that it is senslessly lumped in with skills that are meant for combat roles (other skill are there too).

 

[Prince of Happiness]

I did not mean to imply that Appraise was uselees. I wanted to point out that it is senslessly lumped in with skills that are meant for combat roles (other skill are there too).

Roger that, over.

 

[pawsplay]

I would tend to consider these class abilities, since you could only obtain them by being a member of the right class.

So... the Star Wars skill system has no skills?

 

[FireLance]

So... the Star Wars skill system has no skills?

Of course it has skills. The class abilities only allow you to get better at the skills. A Jedi can still make a Climb check even though his class does not allow him to be trained in the Climb skill.

 

[RFisher]

Now I gave a very extreme example, but things like this happen all the time when your GM just has to wing a skill system. In cases where there is neither a skill system, nor an extremely robust task resolution system, the GM has to make rulings on many issues off the cuff all the time. Even a very good GM will have his opinions on "the way things should work" and that's something that's perfectly fine in general, but when it predetermines the options that a group has, it becomes a bad thing. It also leads to situations where characters are either far too powerful or can't do anything, even if the GM is a nice and reasonable person.

It's just a game, though. I'm happy to roll with the GM's decisions while he's behind the screen & to expect the same consideration from him when I'm behind the screen.

So how do you decide if that works or not? Abitrary decisions? "Rolling under the ability score" which when the attributes are maxed is a auto success?

Non-arbitrary decisions.

I would consider each action & the circumstances, & it's chance of success. I'd ask the player(s) for their best arguments in their favor. Then I'd fudge in the PCs favor. If I still think there's a significant chance of failure, I'd make a die roll corresponding to that chance. Die rolls would probably be rare. Sometimes (maybe often) I'll just let the PC succeed because it isn't inconceivable & it's more interesting if they do.

And what about a former apprentice to a locksmith? What, my Fighter, Cleric, whatever couldn't have spent a few years learning the basics? (Hey, he started when he was 7, plenty of time to learn something and then switch!)

I've come to the position that I'd rather explore the PCs that I can create in the system the GM has choosen rather than lamenting the one's I can't.

(Which is not to minimize the point that such special cases can be handled as ad hoc special cases.)

Lack of skills was one reason that my friends and I stopped playing DND after being exposed to other systems.

Me too. Oddly enough, the lack of a skill system was also what brought me back to classic D&D.

The 3e system of skills is by no means perfect. But some kind of skill system has to be in place IMO. To me, adventuring isn't just about killin' things and taking their stuff. Its about overcoming challenges in search of a goal. Skills (along with utility spells) define how good you are at defeating challenges you can't quite fix with a the pointy end of a sword.

I have no problem with using a skill system to fill in for the areas that D&D lacked mechanics for.

What bothers me, though, is when people make the mistake of assuming that without mechanics, those things can't/didn't/don't occur. The thing that D&D did--as it evolved from "wargaming"--was to simplify the combat mechanics--thereby de-emphasizing it--& give the referee warrant to make judgements to resolve all the things there weren't mechanics for.

Whenever I hear stories about 1e games, the most interesting parts are almost never about combat or magic.