Skill fix with stat polarity addressed

[Sadrik]

This tackles multiple problems that I have with the game and deals with them in a concise way.
Those problems are:
• Intelligence being too weak and an auto dump stat
• Stat polarity the disparity between STR/CON, DEX/INT, and WIS/CHA
• Skills with odd stats tied to them
• Endurance and Athletics merged so there is less overlap
• Perception and insight as true defenses

To implement these changes it should be extremely easy. Let me outline the changes so that each one can be viewed separately.
1. Skills are given two abilities, simply use the higher one. This creates a polarity but a skill polarity is far different from a stat polarity.
2. Stat polarity is a big problem in my opinion. Choosing whether your character is smart or quick is not a choice anyone should have to make. So this rule strips the defenses out of being an either or into just being attached to one ability. It also merges Insight into WILL and Makes Perception a new defense. Now, you can make active will and perception checks (as per the old perception and insight skills). This rule requires that the starting classes take into account the new status of perception so a new list of starting class defenses is drawn up.


Strength
Melee and Heavy Thrown Weapons attack and damage bonus
3 Skills: Acrobatics, Intimidate, Might
Constitution
Hit Points/Surges
Fortitude
1 Skill: Might
Dexterity
Ranged and Light Thrown Weapons attack and damage bonus
Reflexes
Initiative (active reflexes) subtract 10 from your reflexes and that is your initiative bonus
3 Skills: Acrobatics, Stealth, Thievery
Intelligence
9 Skills: Arcana, Bluff, Dungeoneering, Heal, History, Nature, Occult, Streetwise, Thievery
Wisdom
Perception
Search (active perception) subtract 10 from your perception and that is your search bonus
5 Skills: Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Heal, Nature, Occult
Charisma
Will
Insight (active will) subtract 10 from your will and that is your insight bonus
7 Skills: Arcana, Bluff, Diplomacy, History, Intimidate, Stealth, Streetwise

[B]Skill	Modifier	Notes[/B]
Acrobatics	STR/DEX	
Arcana	INT/CHA	
Bluff	INT/CHA	
Diplomacy	WIS/CHA	
Dungeoneering	INT/WIS	
Heal	INT/WIS	
History	INT/CHA	
Intimidate	STR/CHA	
Might	STR/CON	Athletics and Endurance merged
Nature	INT/WIS	
Religion	INT/WIS	
Stealth	DEX/CHA	
Streetwise	INT/CHA	
Thievery	DEX/INT

[B]Revised Class Defenses with Perception[/B]
Cleric	+1 FORT, +2 WILL	
Fighter	+2 FORT, +1 PER	
Paladin	+1 FORT, +1 REF, +1 WILL	
Ranger	+1 FORT, +1 PER, +1 REF	
Rogue	+2 REF, +1 PER	
Warlock	+1 REF, +1 PER, +1 WILL	
Warlord	+1 FORT, +1 PER, +1 WILL	
Wizard	+1 REF, +2 WILL

Number of skills per ability pairs
STR/CON 1
STR/DEX 1
STR/CHA 1
DEX/INT 1
DEX/CHA 1
INT/WIS 4
INT/CHA 4
WIS/CHA 1

 

[Sadrik]

Please can I get a comment?

 

[Fredrik Svanberg]

Hm... giving a choice on what ability to use with your skills is a nice idea and I can get behind it, even though I don't really think it's that necessary.

Adding skills and renaming skills seems pointless.

 

[Sadrik]

LOL, changing the name religion to occult is pointless and part of our campaign that we are doing. So ignore that change. (I edited the original post to make it religion)

The other changes are necessary imho.

Two stats per skill (use the best)

Why - Some of the skills are arbitrarily assigned to a strange stat with no consistency. Giving the ability to have two stats tied to each skill you can have each skill essentially done in two ways. As an example Intimidate can be done by threatening with your words or by growling and puffing up your chest. Very concise, the effects are all the same but if your character is stronger than charismatic then the character is probably threatening more through his sheer physicality than through his wit.

Defenses tied to one defense (making perception and insight a defense)

Why - This one should be pretty obvious. Stat polarity is the biggest problem with 4e. As I stated before no one should have to have an unoptimized character for selecting their character to be smart and agile. They stated that races who have two bonus stats tied to the same defense are mechanically stronger than having bonuses in to stats tied to different defenses, evidenced by the Eladrin. That is just poor game design. It is sort of like stats having different power levels in 3e STR is was considered way better than the other stats, yet during character creation they didn't make STR cost any additional points, and then look at the half orc. So we have fortitude/CON, Reflex/DEX, and Will/CHA - what? Will is tied to CHA so that Wisdom can be linked with Perception which is put in to balance out the defenses. The two odd skills are Strength which offers a bonus to hit and damage and Intelligence which gives access to 9 skills. Intelligence is still a bit weak (considering all 9 of those skills are covered under other stats anyway). So I am looking for ways to beef up INT even more. Any ideas?

 

[Fredrik Svanberg]

LOL, changing the name religion to occult is pointless and part of our campaign that we are doing. So ignore that change. (I edited the original post to make it religion)

You also changed Athletics into Might. It works for this system, I suppose, but I don't like it personally.

The other changes are necessary imho.

I just don't see why it's that important.

Two stats per skill (use the best)

Why - Some of the skills are arbitrarily assigned to a strange stat with no consistency.

Which ones?

Giving the ability to have two stats tied to each skill you can have each skill essentially done in two ways. As an example Intimidate can be done by threatening with your words or by growling and puffing up your chest. Very concise, the effects are all the same but if your character is stronger than charismatic then the character is probably threatening more through his sheer physicality than through his wit.

Yes, this is true, but I imagine that the Intimidate skill as originally presented is supposed to be about words, knowing what to say and how to say it, and not so much about the appearance of threat. This is of course not an argument against your system where you have expanded Intimidate to include the physical aspect as well, I'm just explaining why I think Intimidate is currently based on Charisma.

Defenses tied to one defense (making perception and insight a defense)

Why - This one should be pretty obvious. Stat polarity is the biggest problem with 4e. As I stated before no one should have to have an unoptimized character for selecting their character to be smart and agile.

So every character should always be optimized? You might be better off by just ignoring stat modifiers and give skills a flat bonus based on level instead, if you want to get rid of unoptimized options. Perhaps all skills should just be [Level] + [Trained bonus if any] + [Skill Focus if any] + [Racial bonus]? That removes the entire hassle of picking the right abilities.

They stated that races who have two bonus stats tied to the same defense are mechanically stronger than having bonuses in to stats tied to different defenses, evidenced by the Eladrin. That is just poor game design.

Eladrin have very nice racial features and available racial feats. I don't see a problem with them. It's obvious that they aren't the absolute best choice for some classes but "not perfect" does not mean "useless".

It is sort of like stats having different power levels in 3e STR is was considered way better than the other stats, yet during character creation they didn't make STR cost any additional points, and then look at the half orc.

Yes that was a bit of a problem but it's alright now.

So we have fortitude/CON, Reflex/DEX, and Will/CHA - what? Will is tied to CHA so that Wisdom can be linked with Perception which is put in to balance out the defenses. The two odd skills are Strength which offers a bonus to hit and damage and Intelligence which gives access to 9 skills. Intelligence is still a bit weak (considering all 9 of those skills are covered under other stats anyway). So I am looking for ways to beef up INT even more. Any ideas?

Well the obvious idea to make Int stronger in your system is to make it the only ability that applies to the knowledge skills. That makes more sense than adding Charisma to History (really, what?) and it means that if you want to know anything about anything you want to be a wizard or put some points in Int.

 

[Nur-ab-sal]

I like the idea of tying skills to multiple stats, because it works well for defenses... but you took that away from defenses.

I think most of the skills fit their chosen abilities quite well, and would, too, like to know what skills you consider to have been "arbitrarily assigned to a strange stat with no consistency". Many of your pairings strike me as similarly arbitrary just to have a second stat, and there are some things that I think were much better without a second stat--e.g. intimidate. I know a number of very physically strong people who despite the ability to crush you like a bug are not the least bit intimidating. It's entirely in how you present yourself, which is charisma. Then there's your new "defenses"--which, why is perception a defense? What attacks it? And more importantly, how can you possibly justify subsuming insight into will? Will is your mental fortitude, more or less, and has nothing to do with reading people, and reading people (insight) should IMO never be based on charisma--there are lots of very charismatic, convincing people who are terrible at noticing when they themselves are being conned, and that's a very useful element to preserve, I think.

 

[Sadrik]

I like the idea of tying skills to multiple stats, because it works well for defenses... but you took that away from defenses.

Ouch, you actually like having three pairs of stats of which is by the rules expected to be high and the other is expected to be low? So far, every "live" person I have played with and have spoken with on the subject has been concerned about it. Since everyone has been building characters (new edition and all) it has been readily apparent that giving yourself a high STR and CON is not as effective as giving your high stat to another like DEX. Simply making the stats equal in power is fundamentally not the solution. The solution is getting rid of the polarity. More discourse here on the subject.

The skills that are wrongly placed are all of the "knowledge" skills that are based on a different stat than intelligence (Dungeoneering, nature, streetwise). Also, heal which is thematically a "knowledge" skill and is not a perceptive, "mental fortitude", or insight skill should be INT based, it takes smarts to heal people not just some lucky intuition or knack at it. Most RPG's make heal an intellect based skill D&D does not though because of the cleric.

 

[Nur-ab-sal]

The only problem with the triumvirate of stats that I've seen is intelligence's uselessness, but I've got house rules to fix that. Fighters had to boost Dex before for Init, and they still don't really need it--their Reflex isn't going to be attacked *that* much, at least until higher tiers when there are feats to compensate.

Healing in the medieval timeframe that D&D draws the majority of its material from was a profession passed-down through folklore, customs, tradition, etc. There weren't organized colleges of medicine yet. That's why healing is wisdom (which, yes, relates to clerics as well). The same goes for nature and most certainly streetwise, both of which are types of knowledge associated with "common people" (wisdom) rather than intellectuals (intelligence). Dungeoneering is (at least as described) indeed a more intellectual skill.

(Just noticed, how the hell is history connected to charisma?)

 

[Sadrik]

The only problem with the triumvirate of stats that I've seen is intelligence's uselessness, but I've got house rules to fix that. Fighters had to boost Dex before for Init, and they still don't really need it--their Reflex isn't going to be attacked *that* much, at least until higher tiers when there are feats to compensate.

Nearly every wizard, cleric and Warlock power is based on a reflex roll. That is not to say that there are not exceptions but the standard seems to hit Reflexes with a smattering of other saves thrown in. Monsters I have no idea. But I would imagine this would be true for them too.

Pumping up intelligence is not the answer that you think. It still does not solve the disparity, if anything it may widen it! Do you think that giving a high INT bonus to initiative is the answer? I assume that is what you are doing with your house rule. The only thing that I can see that will actually make the polarity go away is to actually remove it and make the stats independent of themselves. Once determined as the problem how do you fix it, do you try and balance the stats out to make them balanced six ways? Yes. Right now they are in this weird state mismatched in power and structure – which makes INT for instance an automatic dump stat for every class, save those that need it. There is absolutely no mechanical benefit for having an INT above 3. This is just wrong. It is worse than Charisma in the previous editions.

Healing in the medieval timeframe that D&D draws the majority of its material from was a profession passed-down through folklore, customs, tradition, etc. There weren't organized colleges of medicine yet. That's why healing is wisdom (which, yes, relates to clerics as well). The same goes for nature and most certainly streetwise, both of which are types of knowledge associated with "common people" (wisdom) rather than intellectuals (intelligence). Dungeoneering is (at least as described) indeed a more intellectual skill.

Intelligence is used whether people are poor or rich when healing. I am sorry I am not buying your argument that “common people” use wisdom to heal and intellectuals use Intelligence. Also, look closely at wisdom as a stat it is so many things it cannot also take a slice from intelligence too. It is willpower, awareness, hunches, and intuition. Anything that requires learning I think should be attributed to INT. Anything that is not learned but knowledge-like should be attributed to Wisdom. Call me crazy but I think there is a very clear line there.

(Just noticed, how the hell is history connected to charisma?)

History is attributed to Charisma because a lot of people who are “Charismatic” often know a bit about current events (if they are trained in that skill) and can know a little something about history as a consequence. It is not wisdom, because how I define wisdom is anything that is not learned but mental. YMMV.

 

[Nur-ab-sal]

Monsters I have no idea. But I would imagine this would be true for them too.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?t=229092

Reflex is the most common monster attack after AC, but it's still only 1 in 4 at heroic tier, which means you can likely afford to dump it if you're dumping it for a high Con (= more HP to survive those attacks).

Do you think that giving a high INT bonus to initiative is the answer? I assume that is what you are doing with your house rule.

Well you're wrong. I'm currently using a bonus trained class skill at Int 14, 18, etc. (and considering making it 15, 20, etc. in the future, but for now I'm sticking with what I've already established) (with deductions in the normal number of trained skills for high-Int classes as appropriate, of course). Not as useful as an Init boost, but makes it at least a consideration to go with Int over Dex (or Int and Dex, for rogues who want to still feel skillful).

I just don't see that much of a problem with your supposed stat polarity, or how your solution to fix the defenses to one stat is supposed to help that. Previously fighters had to prioritize Str or Con if they wanted to take Dex and Wis for defenses as well... now a fighter needs Str for damage, Con for Fort and health, Dex for Reflex, Wisdom for Per and some powers, and Cha for Will? Making all characters dependent on even more stats is your solution? I don't get it.

History is attributed to Charisma because a lot of people who are “Charismatic” often know a bit about current events (if they are trained in that skill) and can know a little something about history as a consequence.

I suppose that works with 4E's treating history as a dump skill for all kinds of general knowledge (I am personally considering calling it "Culture" instead b/c it covers so much beyond history).