Skills?

[wgreen]

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.

What level were they?

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.

Yeah, but D&D doesn't model fantasy literature. It models D&D. Heck, even Raistlin's original AD&D 1e stats don't reflect the near-cripple the novels make him out to be.

If 4e won't let me play high-level characters who can't do basic stuff, I don't think I'll shed too many tears.

-Will

 

[Someone]

All adventurers of every class, in every edition, have been able, from level 1, to make an 8 hours march on foot over hard terrain, even jungles, rugged hills or mountains, without any kind of effect on their performance in combat at the end of it (an exception may be walking a Dark Sun desert without water - then there may be some penaty). Those guys can surely swim in a quiet pond, or climb a tree.

 

[Jeremy Ackerman-Yost]

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.

In the pseudo-medieval D&D milieu, such people would probably not have made it to adulthood, you know. And if they had, they sure as heck would NOT be adventurers.

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.)

Most characters can't climb a tree without a roll, man. That's a MUNDANE task. DCs are VERY variable. In some skills, a 15 does in fact model something that's hard in real life. In other cases, two 15s in the same skill represent things that are enormously different in their real world difficulty, IMO.

Maybe I'm the one at fault for expecting the system to have some relationship to reality.

 

[teitan]

Torduk, the grumpy 10th level dwarf fighter(that never ever considered learning diplomacy, since it's not even a class skill for him) is as diplomatic as Gilberto, the 1st level noble paladin that trained all his life in diplomacy (he has the skill trainning in it).
Being a sucker is not always bad, it creates interesting roleplaying situation sometimes. If the wizard can't climb, he must find a creative solution for it. It's a challenge, and the game is about overcoming challenges. And solutions that are not in the book are funny too.
And whatever, I just think playing a grumpy dwarf is a lot of fun ,and I wanna be able to keep playing that.

Then think of your grumply old dwarf with half his skill level in diplomacy untrained as simply being the loveable grumpy old dwarf whether he likes it or not... consider also that at level 30 it would only be a +15 if it uses the Star Wars rules...

 

[beepeearr]

The more I think about SWSE skill system the more I think it's not so much the flat bonus to all skills that bother me, it's that your really not that much better than someone who isn't trained, so why not a mix of both systems.

All skills get a bonus equal to half your level (or if you really wanted to tinker each class gets a Base Skill Bonus progression), and then you get skill points to spend on top of that bonus each level. At first level just take the number of trained skills the current system gives you to determine the number of starting skill points, at each level you gain an additional number of skill points equal to the same number. This way you can still customize your character, and stick roughly to the DC's as stated (if the system is like the one in SWSE). Your trained skills will start off lower than what they would have been under SWSE, but can potentially wind up higher if you focus all your skill points on the same set of skills, or you can choose to spend them on other skills instead, negating the need for a skill training feat.

 

[RFisher]

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

What about Spiritual?

You could also replace the saves with these: Fortitude & Reflex become Physical. Will becomes Mental. & you now have a Social save as well.

 

[Szatany]

Being very objective now, what I want for 4E is a skill system in which:

-Characters can be masters in some skills, good enough in others and suckers in others.

-Characters can be masters in a few skills, good enough in most skills, and suckers in a few others.

What I don't want is a system in which:

-Characters can be masters in some skills and suckers in every other skill.(3.5)

-Characters can be masters in a few skills and good enough in every other skill.(SAGA)

Agreed. I would do it like this:

- When you create a character (before you choose your class), you gain Skill Focus with a # of skills equal to 3+Int modifier (maybe more, depending on how big the skill list is in 4e).

- Skill Focus feat gives you a +5 bonus to a skill.

- First level and all other odd levels of any class give you a +1 bonus to all your class skills. Character level doesn't matter. Class skills have no other uses or implications.

- Humans pick 2 skills more.

- Example (using 3,5's skill set): A dwarf fighter with Int 10 takes Ride, Swim, and Diplomacy to receive a +5 bonus. He has 8 fighter levels and 3 barbarian levels. He has +4 bonus to all fighter class skills, +2 bonus to barbarian class skills (total of +6 for skill on both lists, like Climb), and a +5 bonus to Ride, Swim, and Diplomacy on top of that.

Simple and diverse
Any takers?

 

[BryonD]

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

Sounds to me like you may be messing up your DCs.
If it is a mundane task then the DC should not be over about a 5, 10 tops.
A Raistlin copycat under a 3X system with no ranks is not incompetent at these tasks. He is quite realistically somewhat hampered by them.

 

[BryonD]

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.)

Exactly.

If 4e won't let me play high-level characters who can't do basic stuff, I don't think I'll shed too many tears

Setting aside that you have completely ignored the correction regarding what merits being called "basic stuff"..... (and the wild misrepresentation of "can't do")

"won't let" isn't a phrase I'm hoping to see a lot of in 4E.

 

[howandwhy99]

I'm liking skills in the SAGA system. They remind me how D&D worked for 25 years before D&D skills. Roll a d6 and everyone has the same chance to succeed.

How do you change your chances? By changing the situation, the environment, all the RP and specific details about what your PC is doing. Those penalties and bonuses adjudicated by the DM are the only real alteration. Attempting to come up with quite literally a million different core modifiers for a million different situation is an exercise in futility. Codifying and simplifying everything into bracketed single solutions creates tunnel vision IMO. Imagination operates in the realm of imaginable choice, not pick your mechanic choice.

I hope they keep SAGA's "everyone is good at untrained" & "specializing = mastering".