Skills?

[hong]

Grumpy dwarf = high Cha + ranks in Intimidate

which is not to be confused with

Unassuming, ignorable dwarf = low Cha + no ranks in social skils

 

[F4NBOY]

The 10th-level Dwarf Fighter would have a +5 bonus to Diplomacy (or Persuasion). The 1st-level Paladin who took Persuasion would have a +5 bonus starting right out of the gate (Untrained Skills get a bonus equal to half your level, rounding down. Trained Skills get a bonus equal to 5 plus half your level, rounding down). And if he has Skill Training, as you say, then that's another +5 for a total +10 bonus! Torduk would have to be 20th-level before he could be as good in diplomacy as the 1st-level Gilberto.

I take it you never got the Star Wars SAGA Edition?

At 1st level character choose a number of skills from the list of class skills to become trained in them. These trained skills get a +5 bonus to their modifier. The character can increase this bonus with Skill Focus, +5 to the modifier.
The only way to get more trained skills is getting the Skill Training feat.

Gilberto did not choose Persuasion as a trained skill at 1st level. He chose others and then got Skil Traning to have another trained skill: Persuasion.

Anyway, this discussion is over for me since it is irrelevant, Mike's blog just showed us skills probably won't be identical as SAGA rules, thank god.

SAGA skills system is perfect for that game. It won't be in 4E. Let's move on people.

 

[Jim DelRosso]

The leap from this:

Mike's blog just showed us skills probably won't be identical as SAGA rules

to this:

It won't be in 4E.

is pretty staggering, especially since what he said was:

...it's a good, cool, solid idea that makes skills more interesting, more important in combat encounters, and more fun.

Which doesn't mention skill ranks vs. Trained/Untrained, or really anything that was being discussed. Just because it won't be identical to SWSE doesn't mean some of the core concepts won't make the jump.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

....Skill Training feat for the new skill you want, and you get all the benefits you get from the Trained skills you select at character creation. So, your bard/ranger PI would easily work: with Skill Training, he can get full competency in the ranger's class skills.

....
As I said, you can take the Skill Training feat at any time to bump a skill from Untrained to Trained. You can also add the Skill Focus feat to any skill you're trained in, not just at character creation.

Spending a feat is not a reasonable cost for me to multiclass or change my character's focus on what she is learning and progressing in. It would be the equivelent to me of starting as a wizard and then if I multiclassed into fighter having to spend my first feat on getting the fighter BAB. Or spend a feat to put my 12 level stat bonus into something different than I put my 4th and 8th into. A system like Saga skills will not work for the kind of characters I like to build in D&D. But it may work well for other characters and other types of games.

 

[RFisher]

Using a Saga-style skill system, though, he's already a competent swimmer, even though he's never received any real training in it and has avoided bodies of water like they're the plague.

Similarly, that same character has dabbled in music, and has 4 ranks or so in Perform (stringed instruments). But he's never done more than that, nor has he shown an interest in being more than a casual player. By the Saga system, though, he'd be able to retire from adventuring and live quite comfortably as a renowned minstrel.

If I'm your DM, I'll let you apply background penalties to as many skills as you wish. The penalties can be as small (without going negative (^_^)) or as large as you wish. Go crazy.

After many, many years of playing skill-based games (my first regular group played Traveller), I've been slowly coming to prefer an "assume broad competence & selectively choose incompetence" approach to an "assume broad incompetence & selectively choose competence" one.

Although, you can get much the same effect by ignore what the system tries to tell you is a competent level. When running classic Traveller, for instance, I assume that for many, many things you don't even need skill level-0. Even skill level-1 represents rather exceptional training or talent. (Although, I think that's no so far from what that game actually intends.)

Still, I think something like the Saga approach might be easier.

 

[Jim DelRosso]

Spending a feat is not a reasonable cost for me to multiclass or change my character's focus on what she is learning and progressing in. It would be the equivelent to me of starting as a wizard and then if I multiclassed into fighter having to spend my first feat on getting the fighter BAB. Or spend a feat to put my 12 level stat bonus into something different than I put my 4th and 8th into. A system like Saga skills will not work for the kind of characters I like to build in D&D. But it may work well for other characters and other types of games.

In SWSE, everyone gets a lot more feats, so each individual feat "costs" less; the base classes each get one every even-numbered level, plus the standard feats at 1st, 3rd, 6th, etc. So, at 7th level, a non-human has 4-6 feats (plus bonus feats from their class).

SWSE != D&D 3.5, and applying assumptions about 3.5 to SWSE is not going to give you accurate results.

 

[BryonD]

What exactly is "good enough" though? None of us has looked at the system yet; we do not know what the average save DC is going to be at those levels. For all we know, he wouldn't be able to make a equal level save DC; but he's be able to beat those of levels far earlier than his own. (I.E. the Wizards stealths past the mooks, but gets caught by the higher level guards whereas the rogue totally sneaks his way all the way to the head honcho)

Well, the assumption being debated is a straight port of SWSE. I'm saying THAT would be a BAD THING and we HAVE see that.

Now, my point has been that is they make some significant changes to SWSE then it could be perfectly fine. It is the proponents saying that “omnicompetence” would be a great thing

But if all you do is give everyone free ranks and then cancel that out with higher DCs then you are just chasing your tail. You are not omnicompetent, you are just the same level of skill in Kelvin that you had been in Celsius.

So a) I assume that the system will be different than straight SWSE port, b) I have no doubt that it will be more sophisticated than simply upscaling and c) we have seen SWSE so the impact of an imaginary straight port can be discussed

Plus, even if the dwarf gets a pass, doesn't mean other characters can't do it better. (Dwarf is asked to politely stay outside instead of getting his ass kicked for being stubborn and rude; whereas the high charisma, skill focused Elf fighter manages to convince the guards to let the party in to go in with all their weapons.)

First, if everyone succeeds then a lot of the fun is gone. Ultimately you can't win a game that it isn't possible to lose. (Not saying you "win" D&D, just that you can't beat a challenge if you can't fall to it, because it wasn't really a challenge in the first place.)

Second, a scale of major failure, failure, success, major success offers a lot more room for excitement than a scale of success, major success. And in that case being really great at a skill provides a lot less added bang for the buck, so those builds get the short end of the stick.

 

[BryonD]

SAGA skills system is perfect for that game. It won't be in 4E. Let's move on people.

Yep

Maybe it will be an adapted version of SWSE and maybe it will be completely different. But clearly SWSE is way past in the can and 4E is still in early development, so the assumption of a straight port is pretty well out the window.

 

[F4NBOY]

Which doesn't mention skill ranks vs. Trained/Untrained, or really anything that was being discussed. Just because it won't be identical to SWSE doesn't mean some of the core concepts won't make the jump.

I know, but technically speaking, if they use the SAGA skill system, but make some changes to make it fit D&D concepts better, it's not SAGA skill system anymore.

 

[Felon]

To have every mage be competent at climbing, swimming and sneaking would get real old and real boring, real fast.

Not only is it a terrible jarring clash with the archetypes, but it also would make it standard fare and therefore unheroic and dull. Things that every PC can do are automatically no big deal.

Funny, I've been thinking about all the times when a character was completely incompetent at climbing, swimming, and sneaking, and how that got pretty frustrating for everyone involved. I'm not sure why you feel that it's dull and unheroic to have characters that have some nominal ability to participate in any particular encounter.

No, you are just demanding extreme examples only and thus skewing the assessment.

No one said anything about spring up cliffs. But the idea that the assumption would be that a cliff won't make the party wait also means that the cliff is no longer a relavent item in the game.

I don't know what's so extreme about using a cliff as an example. With a +0 Str mod, a wizard would have to be 10th level to get the +5 he'd need to autosuccess a mediocre 15 DC. I don't want to be accused me of putting words in your mouth or providing extreme scenarios, so maybe you can explain what makes a cliff a relevant item in the game? Does somebody have to be unable to make it up in order for it to be relevant?

The screwy thing about taking 10 is that if you don't have enough skill to take 10 and autosucceed, then your chances are less than 50%, and for any kind of extended check, that means your options are autosuccess or an extreme likelyhood of failure. It's kind of an all-or-nothing proposition.