Skills?

[DonTadow]

I hope not, because that would suck on a much larger scale than skills.

I doubt they will shackle DMs like this.

Not if Saga and Iron Heroes are any indication. Both of these require skill checks in large numbers.

 

[pemerton]

Not if Saga and Iron Heroes are any indication. Both of these require skill checks in large numbers.

But do they require wizards to make Swim and Climb checks? I assume not - a Jedi, in Saga, can presumably Use the Force to perform physical feats (like Luke in Empire Strikes Back). In D&D a Wizard should be casting spells, not piddling around with physical skill checks.

 

[DonTadow]

But do they require wizards to make Swim and Climb checks? I assume not - a Jedi, in Saga, can presumably Use the Force to perform physical feats (like Luke in Empire Strikes Back). In D&D a Wizard should be casting spells, not piddling around with physical skill checks.

Ok, say you want to cast a spell after your ship has been capsized, the rapids are fierce. You want to cast some type of wind spell but its difficult because of the rapids.

You're running from a horde of goblins. You reach a steep hill that needs to be climbed, in the mean time you as the wizard must create enough firepower to help the escape.

That's kinda how iron heroes is. Only wizards in d and d behave like wizards in d and d. Stand still, throw some bird seed.

 

[The Shadow]

Can someone tell me how Saga handles languages? That's the one thing I can't wrap my mind around - the rest of it sounds great!

 

[Jim DelRosso]

Can someone tell me how Saga handles languages? That's the one thing I can't wrap my mind around - the rest of it sounds great!

Everyone understands Basic. Alien species with a native tongue also gain that for free. Characters also know how to speak a number of extra languages equal to their Intelligence bonus.

The Linguist feat allows you take even more bonus languages, equal to your Int bonus + 1. There's also a droid component that gives you the full-on C-3P0 effect.

 

[The Shadow]

Everyone understands Basic. Alien species with a native tongue also gain that for free. Characters also know how to speak a number of extra languages equal to their Intelligence bonus.

The Linguist feat allows you take even more bonus languages, equal to your Int bonus + 1. There's also a droid component that gives you the full-on C-3P0 effect.

Thank you. Do characters get special 'feat slots' as they advance only usable on Skill Training and Skill Focus? Or does your class only give you a fixed initial amount? (Which can be supplemented by regular feats, of course.)

It occurs to me that in D&D, freebie languages might make a decent racial advancement option. There would also be a niche for feats like,

Learned: You get enhancement x to y Knowledge skills, plus the "Latin" language (or the equivalent in the campaign world - a language of learning. Draconic in 3e, maybe). If you already know "Latin", substitute another obscure language favored by sages.

Some classes (wizard, for example), might even get something like this as a class feature of some sort.

 

[Jim DelRosso]

Thank you. Do characters get special 'feat slots' as they advance only usable on Skill Training and Skill Focus? Or does your class only give you a fixed initial amount?

No special slots, but in addition to gaining general feats like standard d20 characters (at 1st, 3rd, 6th, etc.), the base classes all get bonus feats every even-numbered level, and have Skill Training and Skill Focus on their list of available bonus feats.

As for D&D, I could see having characters either know a language or not if it's "living", but have some kind of skill (maybe a Knowledge area) for "dead" or mystic tongues. But, that might be more trouble than it's worth, depending on the payoff for knowing those ancient languages.

 

[RigaMortus2]

In order to simplify skills, there will now only be 3 skills in the game (much like how they reduced the 7 different saving throw types in 2E into just 3). Those skills are:

Physical
Mental
Social

Physical will cover all your physical-based skills. Balance, Jump, Tumble, Sneak, etc.
Mental will cover all your mental-based skills. Knowledge skills, Search, Appraise, Deciperh Script, etc.
Social will be taking care of skills such as Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Perform, etc.

Simplification and less bookkeeping is key!

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

No problem there. But we also don't want to dumb things down to a one size fits all.


Yeah, I'm with you here.


Absolutely. I've never claimed that a mage should be denied access to athletic skills.
I just think it is a very poor fit to say that every PC mage everywhere learns to climb and swim.

Sweet Jeebus! Learning to climb a rope that someone else puts up there for you or a surface completely chock-full of handholds and ledges (untrained) and learning to free climb Yosemite (trained) are demonstrably different things.

Don't know how swim might be handled vis a vis the trained/untrained divide, but again..... 90% of swimming is nothing more than not panicking. It's bloody instinctive in mammals. I suspect (barring a phobia as discussed above) the guy who has gotten used to conversing with the arcane forces that govern the world ought to know how to keep his cool when he finds himself in the water.

Again, I have to wonder why it's so important to make fantasy heroes unrealistically incompetent at mundane tasks.

 

[Henry]

Sweet Jeebus! Learning to climb a rope that someone else puts up there for you or a surface completely chock-full of handholds and ledges (untrained) and learning to free climb Yosemite (trained) are demonstrably different things.

I've known some people in real life who due to physical disabilities or lack of exercise either couldn't do that dirt-easy rope, or were hard pressed to. Were I making game stats to represent them, I wouldn't give them a +anything in their skills, much less training or focus.

Why should someone like them be adventurers, one might ask? Because some literature has precedent for it. Lovecraftian heroes were often frail or woefully inadequate for some skills; we've seen the Raistlin example.

Again, I have to wonder why it's so important to make fantasy heroes unrealistically incompetent at mundane tasks.

Mundane tasks really shouldn't require a roll, though, meaning characters would be competent enough to do them. Above a +5 is not "mundane" to me however - it's actually as decent a bonus as someone trained in doing the task regularly (in other words, hitting a DC 15 without trying hard.)