Rules for improve-by-doing skills

[Li Shenron]

The "Skills in 5e" thread got me back thinking about an old subject.

What is you experience on rules/systems where your skills do not improve automatically by level, but improve only if the character uses them?

What RPG uses something like this? Is there any at all?

Have you used similar rules for something other than skills?

If you've played World of Warcraft, that's an example of what I mean: you improve your "professions" in WoW mainly by using them (although there is an additional "training" mechanic to unlock the next skill points cap).

Notice that this is not really about training rules for skills: you can have training rules e.g. require you to spend time & money between adventure in exchange for increasing some skills, but this is a different thing.

This is not traditionally a way to handle character improvement in D&D which always uses an XP/level system and then you just choose what improvements you get, so there clearly can be problems in trying to make an improved-by-doing rule for skills (or whatever).

 

[Bluenose]

Runequest used to work that way. Any skill you successfully used would have a check against it, and next time you had a chance to rest and reflect on your experiences you would check to see whether that skill improved. It's changed with later editions, partly because of the observed behaviour that people would let every chump try and Pick the Lock/A.N.Other Skill before they let the expert at it, since there was always a chance they'd manage and then their skill would probably improve. Pendragon does something similar. And it's quite a common feature in cRPGs.

 

[Frostmarrow]

The "Skills in 5e" thread got me back thinking about an old subject.

What is you experience on rules/systems where your skills do not improve automatically by level, but improve only if the character uses them?

What RPG uses something like this? Is there any at all?

Have you used similar rules for something other than skills?

If you've played World of Warcraft, that's an example of what I mean: you improve your "professions" in WoW mainly by using them (although there is an additional "training" mechanic to unlock the next skill points cap).

Notice that this is not really about training rules for skills: you can have training rules e.g. require you to spend time & money between adventure in exchange for increasing some skills, but this is a different thing.

This is not traditionally a way to handle character improvement in D&D which always uses an XP/level system and then you just choose what improvements you get, so there clearly can be problems in trying to make an improved-by-doing rule for skills (or whatever).

In Call of Cthulhu (basic) you tick the skills that you successfully use. At the end of an adventure you must roll higher than your score in order to increase the score. As your skill approaches 100% your chance of improving slowly disappears.

I used a different approach in a game I created: Before each session (as a reward for showing up) each player receives 1 insight point. By spending 1 insight point on a check, the check automatically succeeds and the score of the pertinent skill is increased. It creates an interesting conflict of interest where you should spend your points. Will you use your points when it matters or when it suits your plan?

 

[Evenglare]

You sound like you are talking about an elder scrolls way of leveling, I too have thought about this but not very indepth. There are a few ways about accomplishing this, most of which depend on how fast you actually want the skills to level. You could have it level, maybe 5 uses per level or something if you wanted it to advance so first level would be 5 , second level would be 10 3rd level 15 etc. Of course some skills are you more by some classes than others, like sneak for the rogue, or bluff for bard. You might be able to give a bonus, or reduce the points needed to level those skills. I dont know, im sure there is a good idea in there, that's just what popped into my head.

 

[Ahnehnois]

You sound like you are talking about an elder scrolls way of leveling,

That's what I thought as well.

Thing is, I hate that system. Rewarding characters for what they actually do sounds nice, but it encourages players to game the system by swimming into walls, putting a heavy object on the mouse, and walking away for an hour.

In D&D, the risk is that a player would simply search every room to improve his search, constantly try to persuade NPCs of arbitrary things in order to improve his diplomacy, even drink poison every night to improve his fortitude save.

I'm honestly not sure what would prevent that outcome from occurring.

 

[Evenglare]

I'm honestly not sure what would prevent that outcome from occurring.

That's an easy one. The GM. I mean, it's really no different than if a player tried to go and slaughter ... i dont know... rabbits or something till he gained the experience he needed to level. If someone is doing something to exploit the game, its the GMs responsibility for not letting that happen. The GM is the person who controls everything in the world, if a person is just going to jump every where he goes to raise his acrobatics skill I would say no. Perhaps make the leveling of skills only apply when it is used in a meaningful way.

 

[Li Shenron]

I'm honestly not sure what would prevent that outcome from occurring.

Responsible players? Obviously I started the discussion under the assumption that the players are interested in making the idea work, otherwise I wouldn't impose it on them. The behaviour you describe is very possible, but clearly would show that they are only concerned in maxing out their skills, in which case it would be so much more obvious to use the regular rules for skills.

However, I think you point out something very important: that for the purpose of this idea, skills are definitely not all the same!

For instance, lockpicking is definitely going to require something to pick. It could be ruled simply that you certainly won't get a second skill improvement from the same lock or an identical lock, and perhaps not even from a lock of the same general type. This skill seems a good candidate to work with this idea.

On the other hand, something like knowledge skills will require a completely different approach, since you don't really improve by answering questions when you need so but rather when you read and learn plenty of lore beforehand.

 

[sheadunne]

Based on my last CoC campaign, players forgot to mark them and I forgot to end the sessions at certain points so they could roll to increase them (and the players didn't remind me either). I think skill-based systems without leveling are great, but the reward mechanics I find are often forgotten. Players and the GM get so wrapped up in the story, that they don't care that their characters aren't leveling. At least in my experience, as opposed to D&D where every level means something bigger and shinier, and the focus can often be on combat.

In CoC I like the skill mechanic and even the "leveling" mechanic for them, but the combat mechanic suffers as it's forced into the same boat as the other skills. Which isn't that big of a deal in CoC, where you're more worried about going insane than you are about shooting something.

 

[Ahnehnois]

That's an easy one. The GM.

Responsible players?

I see the analogy with combat XP. After all, killing rabbits is easy to ignore as a player, and an easy call to not award XP for if you're the DM. But, let's take this example:

For instance, lockpicking is definitely going to require something to pick. It could be ruled simply that you certainly won't get a second skill improvement from the same lock or an identical lock, and perhaps not even from a lock of the same general type. This skill seems a good candidate to work with this idea.

Say a rogue player simply decides to wait for nightfall and pick every lock he can find in each place he goes. Sure, some of them probably are the same, but the bottom line is you potentially have a player derailing the game to do something that is defensible as in-character and yet is metagaming and is really a problem.

Ultimately, instead of simply giving advancement for skill use, I think you'd have to give XP for meaningful or challenging skill use, but that has to be operationally defined for each skill, at which point there's just too much text devoted to this idea. I just think it's too hard to implement skill training by skill use or the like, which is why people are struggling to name PnP rpg examples.

 

[LostSoul]

Ultimately, instead of simply giving advancement for skill use, I think you'd have to give XP for meaningful or challenging skill use, but that has to be operationally defined for each skill, at which point there's just too much text devoted to this idea. I just think it's too hard to implement skill training by skill use or the like, which is why people are struggling to name PnP rpg examples.

Burning Wheel:

You advance by tests, some of which you are pretty much guaranteed to fail.

After a certain point you can only mark those "guaranteed to fail" tests towards advancement.

In Burning Wheel you don't test unless there's some penalty for failure.

So there ya go.