Starting the iteration at DDXP: Reimagining Skills and Abilities

[Frostmarrow]

One way of doing it would be to disconnect effect from chance of success. Say you roll a d20 under your score to succeed and then follow up with a d6+bonus for effect. Then it would be equally simple to set up skill challenges for a single character as for an entire group. If you need to swim across a pond with DC 10 you'd first roll under Str 17 and when you succeed you roll 1d6+3 to make progress. Once you reach 10 you've crossed the pond. If your entire group need to cross maybe the DC is 30 but all characters get to contribute to that the pool of progress. Moreover each round the challenge is unresolved something bad happens (time passes, fatigue, hp loss). If you have a Swim feat maybe your effect amounts to 1d8+bonus.

 

[kitsune9]

File 13 is the trash bin, also know as the circular cabinet.

Circular cabinet--I'll have to borrow that one.

 

[kitsune9]

I think an important change that will be introduced in 5e will be a divorce of checks from skills. What I mean by that is that you will have rules section that will explain what a swim check, climb check, bluff check etc. are. Those rules will not be bundled together with skill rules. Skills will probably be optional and checks can't be, they are too important to the game.
Then you will have rules for skills which you won't have to use. For the basic game you will have ability scores cover all checks. If you pick a subsystem that uses skills, then you will use skills for checks.

I think your idea is logical.

 

[Sunsword]

Something to keep in mind, is that Mearls was talking about one "Skill system" and then altered because of a system Monte came up with (I think it was the first time we heard about Monte's presence).

Essentially Abilities get a Rank added to Number & Mod. The ranks were Novice, Journeyman, Expert, Master & Grandmaster. Impossible is another Rank a DM can use. If your Rank was higher than the Difficulty Rank you succeed with no roll. If it was equal to or lower, you got to roll vs 10, 15 or 20 depending on which part of the article you read.

I thought it was cool.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Here's what I HOPE will happen. Stats will be almost completely divorced from combat ability. No stats will provide bonuses to Initiative, AC, Defenses, Saves, Attacks, or Damage. Either that or they will provide bonuses from 0 to 2 for stats between 1 and 20 instead of -4 to 5.

The skill system won't be based on your stats anymore either or will be based equally slightly. Instead, stats should provide some lesser powerful abilities instead. Strength will determine your carrying capacity. Each of the other stats should do something equally useful.

Mostly, stats will be there for roleplaying purposes and as a replacement for skills in most circumstances(i.e, if you are trying to push something, you make a strength check, if you are trying to balance make a dex check, and so on).

Possibly, they will do both. If you decide to not use the "skill module" then you use stats to determine every skill.

This will allow rolling of stats again since even the most hardcore min-maxers will have to admit that the difference between carrying 200 lbs and carrying 250 lbs isn't worth rerolling their stats for. But instead you get the roleplaying benefit of characters being different instead of all the same.

 

[bouncyhead]

How about:

1E/2E style (the basic core game) - no name skills. You add relevant ability mod + (level/2) + int mod to d20 to perform certain tasks. So to bluff a guard the check might be CHA mod + (level/2) + Int mod + d20. No skill block on the character sheet.

3E/4E style - you get skill points based on int and level to allocate as you wish, thus min/maxing between name skills. So you become good at some things and trade off by being not-so-good at others. Skill ranking is thus as in 3E: ranks (based on level and int) + relevant ability mod. So to bluff the same guard you make a Bluff check: Bluff ranking (ranks + CHA mod) + d20. You don't get to make a straight CHA roll as above if you've taken the name skills option.

Thus the 1e style character is equally average at everything, the key variable being the relevant ability modifier for the task at hand. 3E style characters are specialists but net no better off across all challenges? But they can both play at the same table and use the same base mechanic (d20 + mod v DC) to overcome challenges. You could still have take 10 or take 20.

Sorry, hamfisted explanation and of course there's the (dreaded for some) 1/2 level mod in there.

 

[Transformer]

From what we've heard, the developers want a guy with a very simple character sheet (and so, no skill list at all) to be able to play alongside a guy with something more complicated (the skill system). How could such a thing work?

The first thing that comes to mind is that the skill system will be a simple module. A player who wants it will get a certain number of skill points or trained skills. A player who doesn't will instead have a few ability scores on which he gets a bonus when making ability checks--how many will depend on his class, and will mirror how many skill points he would get if he wanted skills (i.e. a fighter gets 4 trained skills or 1 boosted attribute, a rogue gets 8 trained skills or 3 boosted attributes). All DC's are expressed in terms of ability and skill (so to pick a lock is "DC 20 Dexterity (Open Lock)." A player with skills has to use his open lock skill; a player who doesn't have skills just uses a dexterity check, getting a bonus if dexterity is one of his boosted attributes. I believe Castles and Crusaders does something like this with ability scores.

Of course, Wizards' system could very well be something more creative than that. Could it even involve some kind of throwback to an older edition? I honestly don't have a clue how non-weapon proficiencies worked.

 

[Nivenus]

From what we've heard, the developers want a guy with a very simple character sheet (and so, no skill list at all) to be able to play alongside a guy with something more complicated (the skill system). How could such a thing work?

The first thing that comes to mind is that the skill system will be a simple module. A player who wants it will get a certain number of skill points or trained skills. A player who doesn't will instead have a few ability scores on which he gets a bonus when making ability checks--how many will depend on his class, and will mirror how many skill points he would get if he wanted skills (i.e. a fighter gets 4 trained skills or 1 boosted attribute, a rogue gets 8 trained skills or 3 boosted attributes). All DC's are expressed in terms of ability and skill (so to pick a lock is "DC 20 Dexterity (Open Lock)." A player with skills has to use his open lock skill; a player who doesn't have skills just uses a dexterity check, getting a bonus if dexterity is one of his boosted attributes. I believe Castles and Crusaders does something like this with ability scores.

Of course, Wizards' system could very well be something more creative than that. Could it even involve some kind of throwback to an older edition? I honestly don't have a clue how non-weapon proficiencies worked.

It's also not all that dissimilar (from what I understand) from 2e's proficiency system, which was entirely optional but allowed your character to have specialized skills that made him adept at a particular task.

I never played 2e, though, so I don't know quite how that would work in practice.

 

[Jack Daniel]

I thought that it was somehow going to involve Skill and Difficulty ranks, in order to cut down on the actual die-rolling.

Such that, for example, skills have (guessing here) five ranks, like Untrained, Trained, Proficient, Expert, Master; and tasks have a difficulty class, like Easy, Moderate, Hard, Daunting, and Impossible. If the task's difficulty surpasses your skill by too many steps, tough luck. If your skill surpasses the task's difficulty by a few ranks, you get a trivial and automatic success. If things match up within a rank or so, though, hey presto, check your relevant ability on 1d20 to see if you succeed, with the TN depending on whether the ranks are an exact match (probably TN 15) or a step off in either direction (TN 10 or 20).

The neat thing about a system like this is that it would cut way down on the size of modifiers needed to flesh out the game, the number of "skill points" (or proficiency slots or whatever) needed to make a character, and the frequency of rolling dice for trivial or passive checks during a session.

 

[Terath Ninir]

Such that, for example, skills have (guessing here) five ranks, like Untrained, Trained, Proficient, Expert, Master; and tasks have a difficulty class, like Easy, Moderate, Hard, Daunting, and Impossible. If the task's difficulty surpasses your skill by too many steps, tough luck. If your skill surpasses the task's difficulty by a few ranks, you get a trivial and automatic success. If things match up within a rank or so, though, hey presto, check your relevant ability on 1d20 to see if you succeed, with the TN depending on whether the ranks are an exact match (probably TN 15) or a step off in either direction (TN 10 or 20).

I like that idea. That would save a lot of pointless dice rolling.


On another note, I'd be just as happy to dump ability scores entirely and only have skills and combat stats. That will NOT happen in 5e -- the 6 stats are way too embedded in D&D to ever go -- but they're clunky and old fashioned.