Skills - what is your preference

[Sammael]

As it stands, skills in D&D Next are relegated to minor circumstantial bonuses that your character may or may not get as he or she progresses.

EVERYTHING in the game will depend pretty much exclusively on your ability scores.

So, after 10 levels of adventuring, your ability to climb will still be decided mostly by your Strength score. Sure, I'm certain that they will have ways for you to increase your Strength score - but that will also make you better at fighting, whether you actually did any fighting or not.

In essence, there will be 6 skills in the game: the Strength skill, the Dexterity skill, the Constitution skill, the Intelligence skill, the Wisdom skill, and the Charisma skill.

Even if you do get a circumstance bonus to one minor aspect of a skill (for instance, a +2 to History), your check for everything else will be the same.

An intelligent character will be equally adept at the foundations of magic, monster knowledge, history, geography, architecture, laws, planes, and so on.

Furthermore, if your character is not intelligent, he will never be able to become an expert in any one of those areas. No matter how many monsters he ends up slaying, skinning, and tracking, he'll always be inferior in monster knowledge to the high-Int wizard who spends his whole life in a tower.

Am I the only one bothered by this? Let's find out.

 

[Transformer]

As it stands, skills in D&D Next are relegated to minor circumstantial bonuses that your character may or may not get as he or she progresses.

I would say this is a slight exaggeration based on the article. My impression was that classes and themes (and races?) will grant quite a few 'skill' bonuses to different things; especially classes like the rogue.

But yes, I am bothered by the new skill system, unless we're missing something huge. In fact, this seems like the most controversial thing Wizards has announced so far; controversial enough that I could see it changing before final release if we keep complaining about it.

 

[avin]

I care a lot about skills in GURPS and Storyteller.

In D&D not too much.

As long as characters are able to open doors, disable device, break doors, bluff, intimidate, use diplomacy, etc, I don't really care that much how they do it.

 

[avin]

controversial enough that I could see it changing before final release if we keep complaining about it.

They want feedback.

For sure I will betatest and give mine.

 

[Blacky the Blackball]

I'm certainly not bothered by the system it looks like we're getting.

In fact it's my favourite way of doing skills. When I was writing the Dark Dungeons retro-clone a couple of years ago it's exactly how I did the skill system.

It can be summed up (in much more neutral language) as:

The DM may ask you to perform ability checks in a variety of situations. Some of these situations crop up repeatedly. You may spend skill points to get bonuses on your checks in those situations. Here's a sample list to get you going, but (with DM and player agreement) you can invent your own.

 

[Sammael]

I care a lot about skills in GURPS and Storyteller.

In D&D not too much.

As long as characters are able to open doors, disable device, break doors, bluff, intimidate, use diplomacy, etc, I don't really care that much how they do it.

I don't run or play GURPS (in fact, I don't know anyone who does around here).

I play in Storyteller games, but I'm not interested in running it.

d20/D&D is what I run. And a fully-fledged skill system is essential to my enjoyment of the game.

To be clear, I'd be fine with no skills in the core and an easily implemented skills module. But that's not what they mentioned at the seminar.

They specifically said that even though people expected to see class and theme-based skill bonuses, they weren't there. Classes will add additional features (essentially tricks from Complete Scoundrel), such as the ability to sneak at full speed and so on.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I'm not voting in the poll since I both like the sound of the new skill system but don't think the poll options describe it properly...

There certainly seems like there is a skill system at play in the new edition, just one that is very different from the skill system seen in 3E. Honestly, we don't know much about it, but I like a lot of what I've heard about it. The one thing I wanted was a skill system that removed trivial rolls of the dice and made it a clear system of either being able to do something or not, and they've done that. I wouldn't have necessarily preferred the system to work off of ability scores, but that is perfectly fair and reasonable for D&D, so I won't complain.

I'm looking forward to learning more about this system.

 

[trancejeremy]

That's pretty much what BECMI D&D did - at the time, I didn't like it, but in retrospect after playing 3.x for several years, I realized the d20 system was even worse.

For one, in d20, unless you adventure, you never get good at anything, because the only way to have a higher skill level is to be a higher level.

But by contrast, you could get too good at stuff, so you constantly had to inflate DCs for higher level characters.

I also don't think it weighed the ability enough (since it just used the bonus).

Ideally, I would see something that was based on one half the ability score, then one half the "skill" (which wasn't related to level, necessarily, and cap skills at 10), but this seems good enough.

 

[Teataine]

Furthermore, if your character is not intelligent, he will never be able to become an expert in any one of those areas. No matter how many monsters he ends up slaying, skinning, and tracking, he'll always be inferior in monster knowledge to the high-Int wizard who spends his whole life in a tower.

Am I the only one bothered by this? Let's find out.

More bothered that a character could get better at basketweaving or knowing about religion by killing monsters?

No, I'm not in the least bothered, it's exactly how I think skills in D&D should work. In fact, it's not dissimilar to how Non Weapon Proficiencies worked. If they end up changing the skill system to something else, then I'll probably opt not to use the skill module at all.

Also, I think you could turn your example around. A non-intelligent character can learn about monsters by picking up the Knowledge: Monsters (or whatever) skill chunks. He's still stupid, but he knows about monsters, from experience. Think of it this way: If a stupid character tries to learn about monsters (+2 skill or whatever), he'll know more about monsters than an equally stupid but uneducated character. But if an intelligent character learns about monsters, then he learns more, and more efficiently, remembering more, having a higher total.

"A wizard that spends all his days in the tower" just doesn't happen. PCs are adventurers, they don't live in towers doing nothing at all. Either way an intelligent wizard is someone who reads a lot, studies, is quick at learning and observing. He knows stuff. That's why he has a high intelligence.

You can't have a lot of effective muscle mass if you don't exercise. So a high strength score (effectiveness) implies that those muscles get some working. Same for intelligence. A high stat implies use.

 

[Ahnehnois]

I'm not voting in the poll since I both like the sound of the new skill system but don't think the poll options describe it properly...

...

I'm looking forward to learning more about this system.

I'm going to agree with these points. I haven't seen enough of this new approach to justify the idea that skills are being shortchanged in the system they're alluding to. That may be the case, but I don't think they'd be dumb enough to kill skills. I'll be interested to actually see it.

In principle, it sounds like some more flexible systems I've seen in other light rpgs, which can actually increase the variety of skills available.

The modifiers may be smaller, but I'm okay with that. +23 to a skill was ridiculously good if you ever thought about it. If they scale back the overall pace of advancement, a +2 skill bonus may be meaningful.