So...wut's the deal with NWP?

[steeldragons]

I've been here a little while and I've seen postings from people who are radically AGAINST the "non-weapon proficiency" stuff from 2e...or was it 3? I've totally lost track anymore...

Why is that? I truly don't understand what's so bad about it.

We used to call them non-weapon proficiencies...then 3 or 3.5 called them "Feats"...sooooo where's the animosity come from (from system to system). I don't get it...enlighten me.


Guy knows how to tie rope (has rope-whatev nwp)...guy has "tie a rope" (or whatever it's called) feat. Who cares? What's the difference?

 

[Hella_Tellah]

Non-weapon proficiencies are from 2nd edition, and they were mostly replaced with the skill system in 3rd edition. 3rd edition feats are a whole other beast.

I think NWPs are okay, but in retrospect they seem like one step along the way toward having a sheet that says everything a character can do. Before NWPs, you just assumed that a druid had the knowledge to gather herbs, or that a fighter could make a suit of armor. That, or you roleplayed it based on what made sense for the character. With NWPs, you have a set of rules for what you can do, but it can feel more limiting in play. If your druid didn't take the herbalism NWP, he can't go gather herbs. In my experience, many DMs see the books as an exhaustive list of what is possible in the game, rather than a set of tools for describing and adjudicating common situations in a world of endless possibilities. Playing in those games can be pretty frustrating.

I prefer my games to either have much less detail than that, or to give players control over those details by encouraging homebrewing and other forms of creative interaction with the system.

 

[Stormonu]

Feats and NWP from 2E are two different animals. NWP are more like 3E's skills.

However, I don't understand the hate either. I thought back in 2E's day that NWP's were a great addition to the character and a huge leap forward.

 

[Neonchameleon]

They aren't a good rules light system and they aren't a good skill system. They are a clunky compromise between the two that are hard to remember and to apply. There's no systematic basis and not having a specific NWP limits you.

 

[Hussar]

The idea of adding a skill system to D&D isn't a bad one, but 2e's implementation is very, very clunky. For one, the skills were extremely limited in scope (ettiquette, for example) and the classes didn't get a whole lot of them. Plus, the NWP's were based on your ability score, not on your level. So, whatever NWP score you had at 1st level, you're likely going to have for the life of the character.

Yes, you could add a whole plus one every three or four levels, or you could take an entirely new NWP and have a base score equal to whatever your ability was. Not a hard choice really.

Good idea, poor implementation.

 

[Piratecat]

I'm one of the people railing against them. NWPs were 2e's attempt at a skill system. They were set by your ability score and were an "all or nothing" set of skills where you tried to roll low under your ability score in order to succeed. For instance, if you had an 18 strength and had the armorer NWP, even at first level you only had a 2-out-of-20 chance of screwing up. If you had a 10 strength but were 15th level, you had a 50% chance of failing. And if you didn't have the NWP, you had no chance of trying that skill at all.

They didn't bother me much when playing 2e, but once we started playtesting 3e I tried to go back and play a 2e game at a con. The inflexibility bothered me much more than I had expected it to.

 

[ExploderWizard]

I'm one of the people railing against them. NWPs were 2e's attempt at a skill system. They were set by your ability score and were an "all or nothing" set of skills where you tried to roll low under your ability score in order to succeed. For instance, if you had an 18 strength and had the armorer NWP, even at first level you only had a 2-out-of-20 chance of screwing up. If you had a 10 strength but were 15th level, you had a 50% chance of failing. And if you didn't have the NWP, you had no chance of trying that skill at all.

They didn't bother me much when playing 2e, but once we started playtesting 3e I tried to go back and play a 2e game at a con. The inflexibility bothered me much more than I had expected it to.

Agreed. The idea was interesting but the implementation in a level based system didn't make sense.

 

[Henry]

Not that it helped much, but remember that if you spent more than one NWP on a skill, you got an additional "+1" to your target number to roll under. It was either in the rulebook, or in a Sage Advice column, I forget which. Still not a good fix for it.

Were I doing it from scratch, I'd probably do it a lot closer to 4E's skill system, since the number of NWPs you get maps to "trained" or "untrained" pretty well, and every new NWP you stick into the same skill nets you a +3 bonus to your roll. That way, the totals still stay within a +20 range of the die roll, and set an 18 or 20 for the target number.

 

[Henry]

Not that it helped much, but remember that if you spent more than one NWP on a skill, you got an additional "+1" to your target number to roll under. It was either in the rulebook, or in a Sage Advice column, I forget which. Still not a good fix for it.

Were I doing it from scratch, I'd probably do it a lot closer to 4E's skill system, since the number of NWPs you get maps to "trained" or "untrained" pretty well, and every new NWP you stick into the same skill nets you a +3 bonus to your roll. That way, the totals still stay within a +20 range of the die roll, and set an 18 or 20 for the target number.

 

[wingsandsword]

NWP's were better than nothing, but they were a lousy way of having a skill system. Especially when some skills fell under the rubric of "Thief Skills" and thus some classes got automatically on top of NWP's and would quickly go up in level.

The Players Option series (i.e. 2.5 edition) made it a point-based mechanic that let you select more NWP's and made it easier to improve them, but it was still kludgy at best.

Later 2e products started introducing some NWP's that worked more like feats, giving special combat abilities or things outside the normal range of NWP's, like rudimentary metamagic, but they were from some obscure products. (One project I did in the 2e era was to compile a complete-as-I-could-make-it NWP list, so I studied up on this).

The 3.x skill system was far better.