D&D 5E Skills in 5e

[pemerton]

Obviously one mechanical approach is to make "everything a skill", but if you think about it 4e has already effectively done that. If you attack with "Reaping Strike" and a Fullblade you are in effect using a skill, based on STR. It uses SLIGHTLY different rules than skills, proficiency bonus instead of +5 for being "trained" (IE having proficiency) and there are more carefully spelled out conditions for its use and modifiers, etc, but there's no essential difference between the two, and in 4e indeed there isn't too drastic a difference in their bonus progression either (though it could be closer). Personally I think 4e is close enough. I don't see a need for every 'skill' to be 100% exactly the same, but its nice that they are similar. It would be even nicer if they were so close that you could use a skill as an attack, but unfortunately in 4e feats and such cause some variation.

Two comments.

(1) Just like "Reaping Strike" lets you do funky stuff with your Fullblade skill, so skill and utility powers let you do funky stuff with your other skills. So the system is pretty consistent there, although obviously combat gets more love and attention.

(2) I think 4e would be better if the scaling for skills and defences were in synch - that would make it easier to use skills as attacks, adjudicate p 42, etc.

 

[Bedrockgames]

It's not the damage on its own, it's the inability to miss, and the inability to come within cooee of losing that fight, that I'm pointing to.

Another way to look at it is this: a 20th level wizard can kill a commoner in a single blow, but has almost no chance of killing a simulacrum of him-/herself in melee combat. Why not? And whatever the explanation for this state of affairs is, why does it not also explain why the wizard can jump 10' chasms and avoid drowning in stormy waters?

Again 3-6 points isn't gonzo in my book. There are always edge cases in D&D because it simplified but a wizard walking around at 20th level basically doing two more points of damage than your average commoner isn't all that staggering. I just still don't see why I need to agree with you that this means he should also increase in all his skills as he levels automatically. I can certainly increase his jump and swim skill if I want to but I don't think it ought to be baked into the class.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Two comments.

(1) Just like "Reaping Strike" lets you do funky stuff with your Fullblade skill, so skill and utility powers let you do funky stuff with your other skills. So the system is pretty consistent there, although obviously combat gets more love and attention.

(2) I think 4e would be better if the scaling for skills and defences were in synch - that would make it easier to use skills as attacks, adjudicate p 42, etc.

Right, you could look at combat as one extreme where PCs mostly use powers, with some ad-hoc checks (page 42 stunting attacks, etc) and non-combat is mostly ad-hoc skill checks with now and then a utility/skill/theme power thrown in. Point 2 definitely. It ALMOST worked in 4e. It COULD have if they'd have paid more attention to who got what bonuses and how.

Again 3-6 points isn't gonzo in my book. There are always edge cases in D&D because it simplified but a wizard walking around at 20th level basically doing two more points of damage than your average commoner isn't all that staggering. I just still don't see why I need to agree with you that this means he should also increase in all his skills as he levels automatically. I can certainly increase his jump and swim skill if I want to but I don't think it ought to be baked into the class.

Its not the damage, it is the 15x more hit points that he has, and high THAC0, and possibly saves. Said wizard can quite handily dispatch 5 commoners coming at him at once with clubs and swords, long before they would be even faintly likely to do for him. He could also easily leap off a 40' drop onto concrete and then just walk away, take 10 arrows in the chest, etc. These are of course at some level corner cases, but the point is if the wizard advances so much in ways that don't reflect an area of expertise from his class it is just damned odd that only THAT ONE THING gets better. Not that I think it is all that big a deal, just that its no less of a big deal than 20th level wizards being fairly adept at opening level 10 locks (around 50/50 probably, its a DC26 and they'll likely have a +12).

 

[Ratskinner]

At least for my part, I'm not saying that gonzo spells & combat combined with gritty skills must be a problem. But I agree with sheadunne that it means that skills will tend to get crowded out or overshadowed over time. Whether or not that's a problem is a matter of taste, but as I've said I don't personally understand the aesthetic of gonzo combat and spells + gritty skills. I don't see what it adds in terms of verisimilitude, fantasy tropes, ease of play, immersion, or any of the other standard aesthetic criteria for fantasy RPG.

Just picking this as a good paragraph to drop in my thoughts.

I've noticed the gritty/gonzo problem quite a bit. Its one of the things that keeps most of my campaigns relatively low level. I think basically it comes down to a fundamental problem with the D&D way of doing things (perhaps leaning on Sim too much). In particular, looking at the fiction, movies, etc....gonzo-ness (gonzocity?) seems to correlate with narrative causality (as Terry Pratchett would put it) rather than anything akin to "realism". Supers being the prime example of high-gonzocity and...well I guess history books being the low end? I think that's important, because you need narrative motivations and the like to reign in the gonzo stuff: "Why doesn't Superman just <do X>?"

IME, the rules that handle truly gonzo stuff well are almost all very lightweight and narrative compared to D&D. Can it be detailed and full of fluff and fiddly bits? Maybe, I'm not sure. There are two mechanical functions that the best (IMO) gonzo-handling games have, and that D&D lacks:

The first is some narrative motivational driver beyond just "whatever the player wants at this very moment" or "more loots". Some hook, driver, or limiter to answer "Why doesn't Gandalf just <do X>?" This doesn't have to be very rigidly structured and at least (basic) FATE let's you avoid it depending on your choices for aspects. Capes, on the other hand, dictates the format of the sentence that describes your heroes motivations. (I love Mary, but being seen with her puts her in danger!)

The second is a unified free-form method for generating narrative tags with mechanical impact. By socketing skills, powers, and whatever else into that system, you can get a handle on all of them at once. This is the one that may limit the rules to being lightweight, because having this really cuts down on the need for things like power lists. Again, Capes and FATE are at the opposite ends (AFAIK). FATE has explicit rules for creating and using temporary aspects which involves them in the FATE point economy of the game. Capes does it implicitly by making the fiction players generate non-negotiable (In Capes, if she said it, it happened. Although there are rules limiting what you can say.) MHRP does it too, in very FATE-like fashion: called Assets, Complications, Stunts, or Resources depending on how you create them.*

So D&D fancies that it will take you from zero to hero over the course of your career, cranking up gonzocity as you go....I think that's a very hard task for any set of rules. D&D (3e is the poster child and 4e the outlier) starts you out (in terms of mechanical weight) barely better than the farmhand off the field. Therefore at the start, mundane skills and their functioning is fixed so that these characters have a chance of doing something. Even without a skill system, consider how much early-level old-school games revolve around character/player cleverness, rather than their mechanical abilities. But then you've got a very un-gonzo mechanic set up. How to add gonzocity? D&D does it by adding lessnon-negotiable scripted gonzo elements (most often called spells.) Slowly transferring bits of narrative authority to the players (at least the spellcaster players). However, gonzocity starts to run wild with the rest of the game (still structured around the early non-gonzo levels) and thus...LFQW and @pemerton's issues above. Of course, as he mentions, this is also something of a taste issue, and others won't think twice about it.

*Since I've prattled on about them, I should say that FATE can handle almost any degree of gonzocity with just a few easy tweaks. MHRP uses a rather odd system called Cortex Plus, which seems to be fairly flexible as well, but requires (I think) more effort to bang it into odd shapes. However, those shapes seem to be capable of directly reflecting certain narrative formats (Leverage, for example.) Capes (a little-known indie game) handles gonzo supers very well. Even though it might work mechanically, I can't imagine trying to handle a low-gonzocity setting with it. One of its design premises is "You've got power, do you deserve it?" and it does well with making that central. Hardly an issue when the characters don't actually have power. Could easily see it doing mythology-style stories, though.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=6688937]Ratskinner[/MENTION], interesting post. I know FATE only by reputation and description, and Capes only by your posts about it, but have a reasonable knowledge of MHRP.

I think that 4e is trying to be a version of the unified free-form method of handling gonzocity. The relevant tags are skill names (working as pretty broad descriptors), certain keywords (damage types, effect types, at least in some contexts power sources, but not purely mechanical keywords like "full discipline" or "augmentable"), monster types and subtypes, and - more contentiously - paragon path and epic destiny titles (interpreted in light of the flavour text for the path/destiny).

Now if you read what I've just written and start crying, or think I've gone mad, fair enough! It's obviously not the most natural way to go about building a free-form tag gonzo system! But it is the approach you might take if you also want to have long lists of powers, feats, paths and destinies in part because of legacy expectations and in part so that you can sell more splat!

Anway, continuing the madness: the technique that 4e uses to turn all that stuff into some version of or approximation to freeform tags is it's strict scaling rules - attacks by level, damage by level, defences by level, DCs by level, etc. So a 20th level firebreathing dragon has +X to hit for pDr damage, with the fire descriptor, etc; and the targets that damage will be applied to all have their level-appropriate defences, hit points etc. What exactly that means in the fiction - how exactly the gonzocity is interpreted at the table - is left up for grabs, and in the hands of each particular group. But I think that guidance is meant to be taken from the fact that at 1st level you're just a paladin, whereas at 11th level you're a Knight Commander, and at 21st level you're a demigod.

LostSoul had an interesting post a while ago now which I think spoke to this issue:

How the imagined content in the game changes in 4E as the characters gain levels isn't quite the same as it is in 3E. I am not going to pretend to have a good grasp of how this works in either system, but my gut says: in 4E the group defines the colour of their campaign as they play it; in 3E it's established when the campaign begins.

<snip>

In 4E, I think the relationship between colour and the reward system changes: you don't know what it will mean, when you first start playing, to make a Hard Level 30 Acrobatics check. Which means that gaining levels doesn't have a defined relationship with what your PC can do in the fiction - just because your Acrobatics check has increased by 1, it doesn't mean you're that much closer to balancing on a cloud. I think the group needs to define that for themselves; as far as I can tell, this is supposed to arise organically through play, and go through major shifts as Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies enter the game.

 

[Ratskinner]

@Ratskinner , interesting post. I know FATE only by reputation and description, and Capes only by your posts about it, but have a reasonable knowledge of MHRP.

I think that 4e is trying to be a version of the unified free-form method of handling gonzocity. The relevant tags are skill names (working as pretty broad descriptors), certain keywords (damage types, effect types, at least in some contexts power sources, but not purely mechanical keywords like "full discipline" or "augmentable"), monster types and subtypes, and - more contentiously - paragon path and epic destiny titles (interpreted in light of the flavour text for the path/destiny).

Now if you read what I've just written and start crying, or think I've gone mad, fair enough! It's obviously not the most natural way to go about building a free-form tag gonzo system! But it is the approach you might take if you also want to have long lists of powers, feats, paths and destinies in part because of legacy expectations and in part so that you can sell more splat!

No tears, I generally agree. 4e definitely shot for a not-quite-freeform tag system, AFAICT. Definitely the design was set up so that you needed (I guess I'd call it) system-permission to use the tags. Certainly those legacy expectations are a part of what I was talking about. And certainly selling splat is/was a consideration. I keep doing mental experiments to add some of the freeform stuff to D&D...and very quickly it degenerates into another (splatless) system. WRT the recent Legends and Lore article, I really wonder what exactly they plan on selling us, if it won't be rules chatter. In the back of my head, I keep thinking that Basic D&D actually will be a Euro-game style box(es) that they will use to sell mega-adventures....or maybe not.

Anway, continuing the madness: the technique that 4e uses to turn all that stuff into some version of or approximation to freeform tags is it's strict scaling rules - attacks by level, damage by level, defences by level, DCs by level, etc. So a 20th level firebreathing dragon has +X to hit for pDr damage, with the fire descriptor, etc; and the targets that damage will be applied to all have their level-appropriate defences, hit points etc. What exactly that means in the fiction - how exactly the gonzocity is interpreted at the table - is left up for grabs, and in the hands of each particular group. But I think that guidance is meant to be taken from the fact that at 1st level you're just a paladin, whereas at 11th level you're a Knight Commander, and at 21st level you're a demigod.

Yup. And this is where it gets wonky, IMO. First, you get the "numerical treadmill". It worked from a balance/math point of view quite well, it seems. However, I've heard others note that it made advancement feel less special. That is, they didn't feel more gonzo after leveling up, because everything else in the world just leveled up with them. I think this was especially true for magic item bonuses being written in, but I'm not sure (Its not my personal feeling about 4e). Secondly, the initial 4e books seem to have been ineffective at conveying this way of looking at things. Many players coming at it fresh off of 3e, or with the mindset that items on the character sheet must correspond to "real" things about the character, came away disappointed or confused by 4e. Thirdly, at least for me, it was all kind of great new-school thinking, but with all the tedious accounting of old-school play. Whatever the case, 4e seems to have failed to capture the fanbase. ::shrug:: Given that the new-school games tend to be niche within a niche and have sales to reflect that...I sometimes wonder if its just simply less attractive to the gamer audience. (Although blaming it on White Wolf chasing such gamers out of the audience is very seductive. )

 

[Sadrik]

Eh, if a regular old guy in the town is the Mayor and he's been super successful and convinces people to go with him left and right, etc, then sure, maybe he has a +25 Diplomacy bonus. Rules serve play, not the other way around. I don't have to slavishly go by a formula and justify with what feats and level and etc the guy is how he got a +25. He may well be a minion combat-wise. He's not an adventurer is the point, the character building rules are for building PC adventurers. They can be a guideline for NPCs, but they aren't intended to cover every possible character that could ever exist. Norm the Glad Handed is just a super ridiculously diplomatic guy who can charm the pants off an Efreet lord.

This is kind of illustrates my point... Why have a system where you just say what they have, regardless if it fits with the scaling level mechanic, when you can just give them the skills they have and not have to bend an character design rules to do it. In one case you bend the rules and are arbitrarily assigning a bonus and in another case you are not. Some players and DMs feel more safe in the realm of not using arbitrary designations. I mean is Norm +20? is he +25? or is he +30? So you write rules, to help DMs arbitrarily assign the numbers? Why not just say he has an 18 CHA, Skill Training in Diplomacy and has selected a skill focus diplomacy feat? If the DCs for using the skill at the highest levels for this character are now a snap, you essentially did the same thing that you are saying without the added arbitrary designations.

I guess it depends on what you consider 'super heroic'. For a level 30 PC it seems to me that most things are actually fairly mundane. At the brink of godhood your character is pretty far beyond the concerns of ordinary folks. They can swim a mile, climb a mountain, sail across an ocean, etc without really needing to make a check of any kind. If they run into things like low level guards, locks, or bars they are barely slowed down. A feat might be needed by a low level PC to do that sort of thing, it would be pretty fantastic, but for Questioner of All Things, the greatest archmage in an age of the world a pathetic deadbolt lock isn't even noticeable. He'll need a feat to be able to unleash raw magic and rend a hole in the fabric of reality to swallow up his ultimate enemy, but that's pretty deep stuff, even for a near-demigod. I'm not sure how to handle all of that mechanically, but I'd guess 4e already is basically on track there, with feats that allow big bonuses to do certain things.

You know I was thinking about this, and why add just +1/2 level. Perhaps it is a sliding scale. +1/4 level for the lowest super-heroic mode +1/2 for average super-heroic, and +1 per level for the truly super-heroic mode. These bonuses to ability checks (skills, saves, and attack rolls and AC too) can literally be defined as narrative bonuses. Wizard hovers over the tight-rope. Fighter just jumps in the middle of the tight-rope and springs himself to the other side. Cleric of air forms little solid clouds to walk on. Whatever, it does not matter how it is described, they can just do it. I think this is what you are calling for. This would accomplish this. I do want to stress though this is not what everyone wants. So we do not want a system that only caters to this style of game.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@Ratskinner , interesting post. I know FATE only by reputation and description, and Capes only by your posts about it, but have a reasonable knowledge of MHRP.

I think that 4e is trying to be a version of the unified free-form method of handling gonzocity. The relevant tags are skill names (working as pretty broad descriptors), certain keywords (damage types, effect types, at least in some contexts power sources, but not purely mechanical keywords like "full discipline" or "augmentable"), monster types and subtypes, and - more contentiously - paragon path and epic destiny titles (interpreted in light of the flavour text for the path/destiny).

Now if you read what I've just written and start crying, or think I've gone mad, fair enough! It's obviously not the most natural way to go about building a free-form tag gonzo system! But it is the approach you might take if you also want to have long lists of powers, feats, paths and destinies in part because of legacy expectations and in part so that you can sell more splat!

Anway, continuing the madness: the technique that 4e uses to turn all that stuff into some version of or approximation to freeform tags is it's strict scaling rules - attacks by level, damage by level, defences by level, DCs by level, etc. So a 20th level firebreathing dragon has +X to hit for pDr damage, with the fire descriptor, etc; and the targets that damage will be applied to all have their level-appropriate defences, hit points etc. What exactly that means in the fiction - how exactly the gonzocity is interpreted at the table - is left up for grabs, and in the hands of each particular group. But I think that guidance is meant to be taken from the fact that at 1st level you're just a paladin, whereas at 11th level you're a Knight Commander, and at 21st level you're a demigod.

LostSoul had an interesting post a while ago now which I think spoke to this issue:

In 4E, I think the relationship between colour and the reward system changes: you don't know what it will mean, when you first start playing, to make a Hard Level 30 Acrobatics check. Which means that gaining levels doesn't have a defined relationship with what your PC can do in the fiction - just because your Acrobatics check has increased by 1, it doesn't mean you're that much closer to balancing on a cloud. I think the group needs to define that for themselves; as far as I can tell, this is supposed to arise organically through play, and go through major shifts as Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies enter the game.

Right, I think this has been noted a bit in some other topics over the last several years here, and on WotC boards. While 4e has a VERY few spots where it ties DC to specific fluff they are basically the jumping rules. There are a couple other minor instances, the DCs for breaking doors of specific types and some other 'breaking things' DCs and some hints on how much people can lift. You could of course easily muck with all of those. Beyond that is a hard level 30 Arcana check (DC42) required to research the resting place of a dead god? Or to actually read the words of power inscribed on the seal of his tomb and release him to end the world? Can a fighter make a DC42 Athletics check and pick up a mountain, or will it only suffice to lift 500lbs? These questions are pretty much up to the table and the answers will dictate just how 'gonzo' your 4e game really is. Likewise elements like ritual magic are very open-ended and amenable to interpretation. There are plenty of example rituals, but there are also hints that there are or could be much more powerful ones lurking out there, or the DM could just give out only lower level rituals, etc.

I agree that tier breaks were designed to be points where the nature of the fiction could be changed. A Knight Commander can lead armies, a mere Paladin might lead a few foot soldiers or a couple of mounted warriors. A Demigod OTOH can assault the gates of Hell at the head of a legion of Angels.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

This is kind of illustrates my point... Why have a system where you just say what they have, regardless if it fits with the scaling level mechanic, when you can just give them the skills they have and not have to bend an character design rules to do it. In one case you bend the rules and are arbitrarily assigning a bonus and in another case you are not. Some players and DMs feel more safe in the realm of not using arbitrary designations. I mean is Norm +20? is he +25? or is he +30? So you write rules, to help DMs arbitrarily assign the numbers? Why not just say he has an 18 CHA, Skill Training in Diplomacy and has selected a skill focus diplomacy feat? If the DCs for using the skill at the highest levels for this character are now a snap, you essentially did the same thing that you are saying without the added arbitrary designations.

Again, character design rules are for PCs, not NPCs. You could of course write a whole set of rules that NPCs must follow but it seems pointless and leads to the sort of thing you had in 3.5 where took 3 hours to write up a high level NPC and they would bite the dust in 3 minutes. OF COURSE you can make up all your NPCs in 4e using PC rules IF YOU WANT, and there are even a set of simplified NPC rules for that, AND a set of elite monster templates to add a "class" to any monster (which can be a human, another quick way to make an NPC). However, in my example of the Mayor I don't need OR WANT an adventurer with boku hit points and powers and things. This guy is just a very very skilled diplomat/politician. Maybe even supernaturally skilled if he's got a +25 skill bonus, but he's still got no appreciable capability in combat, etc. There's probably a story reason to explain why he has this bonus, but to insist on some awkward framework of feats and BS for NPCs seems mighty pointless to me. I want the guy to have the bonus that will make the story work the way I want it to. Again, my philosophy is give me rules that support what I want to do, not rules that tell me what I have to do to follow them. If I make up a super politician "0 level" NPC I want rules that make that work. Setting any bonus I want is that rule, at least in 4e.

You know I was thinking about this, and why add just +1/2 level. Perhaps it is a sliding scale. +1/4 level for the lowest super-heroic mode +1/2 for average super-heroic, and +1 per level for the truly super-heroic mode. These bonuses to ability checks (skills, saves, and attack rolls and AC too) can literally be defined as narrative bonuses. Wizard hovers over the tight-rope. Fighter just jumps in the middle of the tight-rope and springs himself to the other side. Cleric of air forms little solid clouds to walk on. Whatever, it does not matter how it is described, they can just do it. I think this is what you are calling for. This would accomplish this. I do want to stress though this is not what everyone wants. So we do not want a system that only caters to this style of game.

My last post, and I think it was Ratskinner before me, someone anyway, that we've mentioned this. The fiction in 4e is at best VERY loosely tied to any specific DCs. You don't have to fudge with skill bonus. You simply decide what DC the "truly super-heroic" stuff has for your campaign. If you want totally mundane PCs then DC42 (level 30 hard, the highest listed DC) is maybe something like "make a 20' jump" or "lift a 500lb boulder", if you want super gonzo mythology mode then the same DC is "leap over the Moon" or "lift a mountain". In other words the 4e system caters to at least a wide range along this axis. It isn't really unique this way either. 2e's NWP system for example really is similar, but the problem there is without something like half-level and/or 3e's skill points, you are stuck with the problem of insufficient range of DCs to do it effectively. This is one of the primary reasons for keeping half level bonus.

 

[Ratskinner]

@Ratskinner Gotcha. I was responding to "For the sake of chases, would movement need to be wrapped into this system as well?" I inferred from that (obviously incorrectly) that you were questioning whether tracking movement (and all the comes with it) would/should be involved in the system that Frostmarrow put forth.

No problem. Movement rules are, IMO, one inheritance from its wargame roots that D&D could stand to drop. Nonetheless D&D remains a skirmish game at heart. Lately I've been thinking it does better when it remembers that. Although I have trouble squaring that with the "Three Pillars" talk.

Some may see that as incoherent (you've had questions about that before), but personally, given that I considering each of the above to be the primary relevant focus for game resolution for each genre, I consider it coherent.

Certainly different people have different tolerances for different levels of fiddliness. I'm much more tolerant of fiddly bits in a Wargame or strategy game than I am in story-oriented games. In this case, I would like to think of D&D as solid story system (three pillars, etc.) However, I've lately started thinking of it as more a skirmish system with (as you note) combat as its focus. (Don't tell the 4e fans that its focused on combat, they get grumpy about it.) The WotC editions are just a bit outside my preference range for a supposed rpg. 4e has a more consistent level of fiddliness across the levels, but IME 3e starts lower and builds to way beyond 4e's level. ::shrug::