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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenada" data-source="post: 8311767" data-attributes="member: 70468">There’s also the default assumption that skills should be reliable while fighting is less so due to the chaos of combat. That’s why skills and attacking/saving use different distributions. Using a d20 would make skills less reliable. You can work around that by letting characters take 10 or by giving them passive skill scores. However, another core assumption is that you only roll in exceptional circumstances.From an OSR perspective, one of the criticisms of skill systems in D&D is that they’re too prescriptive. If the thief has a skill that lets them hide in shadows, then only the thief can do it. If you don’t put ranks in a skill, you’re either completely incompetent at it or incapable of even trying. 3e really went down the path of using the skill system as a simulation engine. It had lots of trivial DCs that could occasionally fail. I once had a character fail a DC 0 check to climb down a ladder during combat. The effect was they just needed to take their time, but it came across as very silly in the moment. In SWN/WWN, you’re never supposed to roll when the difficulty would be less than 6 (standard is 8).Stars Without Number and Worlds Without Number assume PCs are competent at their roles in life. If you’re a sailor or a pilot, you’re going to be good at sailor or pilot things and just succeed usually at doing them. The only time you should be making a check is when the circumstances are exceptional (such as attempting to sail a ship in a storm). The mechanisms for making skills reliable in D&D aren’t really equivalent, and ignoring the check based on background is not normative as far as I’m aware. You should typically want to roll in those systems because it’s a means of demonstrating your investment in that skill.Beyond that skill stuff and what [USER=6670763]@Yora[/USER] said, you’d have to change the monster math. They’d need boosts to their AC and attack rolls as well as hit points. You’d also need to increase the damage monsters dealt, and you’d need to change their saving throws and skills. SWN and WWN are designed to be compatible with other “classic” games, so you’d lose that compatibility. Anything wanted to use (such as monsters, since the bestiaries in those games are a bit small) would require additional conversion work. I expect it’s possible to systematize the conversion, but it seems like a lot of work just for bigger numbers. It just doesn’t seem worth it.I’m pretty sure that’s specific to Worlds Without Number. However, both WWN and SWN have foci for non-human species, which can include bonuses to your attribute modifiers.</blockquote>

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