Untrained/trained Skills....Noooo!

[Remathilis]

The thing is, the wizard can't help but become a little better at handling himself in combat as he continually handles himself in combat. He has a choice whether or not "swimming in a storm" is something he cares enough about to improve.

So why not make combat elements "something he cares to improve" I know I'd trade a BAB for the ability to caster two or more levels higher than my level normally allows.

The disconnect is that a wizard HAS to improve his combat ability (its hardwired into the class in the form of BAB and saves) but he doesn't have to improve his skills. Why? What if you gave 4 "points" that could be spend on caster level, Bab and defenses. So he could have Bab +1, caster level 1, and +2 will defense, or +0 bab, +0 saves, caster level 4. Now the PC can TRULY decide if he's an awesome arcanist with no combat ability or a more rounded adventurer. Heck, why not move to a total point system at that point?

 

[Remathilis]

Oh, as the person who brought up the "wizard attacks platemailed knight" element (before the wizard became 20th level, naked, and weaponless) I wanted to emphasize the "wizard out of spells fires his crossbow" element of low-level D&D. The wizard, even at low levels, has a chance to attack the knight and roll a 20, doing damage. The original point was that since the chance of hitting is sooo low (5%) that its hard to hit the knight, would ANY DM be so crass as to say "Sorry Bob, you cannot hit the knight with that crossbow since you're too feeble to do so." The quote I was referring to discussed how some "non-combat" abilities should be flatly denied by the DM. I was asking the question "So, with that mindset, why not disallow combat elements as well?" Stupid barbarians always fail will saves, feeble wizards cannot ever hit a man in platemail, clumsy clerics in half-plate automatically fail reflex saves, etc.

 

[pawsplay]

Oh, as the person who brought up the "wizard attacks platemailed knight" element (before the wizard became 20th level, naked, and weaponless) I wanted to emphasize the "wizard out of spells fires his crossbow" element of low-level D&D. The wizard, even at low levels, has a chance to attack the knight and roll a 20, doing damage. The original point was that since the chance of hitting is sooo low (5%) that its hard to hit the knight, would ANY DM be so crass as to say "Sorry Bob, you cannot hit the knight with that crossbow since you're too feeble to do so." The quote I was referring to discussed how some "non-combat" abilities should be flatly denied by the DM. I was asking the question "So, with that mindset, why not disallow combat elements as well?" Stupid barbarians always fail will saves, feeble wizards cannot ever hit a man in platemail, clumsy clerics in half-plate automatically fail reflex saves, etc.

Hitting with a lucky crossbow shot is a reflection of the chaos of battle. Making a 15' jump in armor says something about someone's athleticism.

 

[pawsplay]

The Wizard could never establish a grapple in the first place. Grappling provokes AoO's, and a hit on the AoO disrupts the grapple attempt. Not to mention that the wizard only has a +6 grapple vs the knight's +4.

Does the 1st level fighter have Combat Reflexes? Cuz otherwise, the wizard pretty much wins this one. Iterative attacks and all that.

 

[Zurai]

If this kind of choice is inherently a good thing, would it be even better if the wizard could choose to not become better at combat? To not advance BAB but advance something else instead: swimming, or Reflex, or spellcraft?

Absolutely.

I actually support having Initiative as a skill, for example.

 

[Remathilis]

Hitting with a lucky crossbow shot is a reflection of the chaos of battle. Making a 15' jump in armor says something about someone's athleticism.

But Bab factors into that "lucky shot" since it might take a natural 20 to hit at first level, but by 15th (+7/+2) hes got a much better than lucky shot odds. Is Bab just a reflection of that chaos working in favor of the wizard more often because he's high level, or does it imply skill and training? I think its the latter. Repetition has given him an edge over lesser wizards. He has better aim, better reflexes, better physical and mental stamina and better arcane mastery over his lower level peers, why not have more applied aptitude in mundane tasks (like climbing ledges or hearing noises) beyond his formal training?

Just as its a gamiest illogical assumption that a 15th level wizard can pick up a crossbow (or any other weapon with a penalty) and have a much better chance of getting a lucky strike against the knight than a 1st level wizard can (even with the penalty!); is it not be acceptable that a 15th level wizard has a better chance of jumping across a pit than a 1st level wizard?

 

[FadedC]

It's amazing how the example keeps changing when people find out that level 20 wizards aren't as indestructable against level 1 fighters as they thought.

Well it's true that some people overestimated exactly how comical a situation the wizard could be in and still triumph over the lvl 1 warrior. That doesn't change the fact that he still fights so much better then him that even in the absolute worst case scenario with the wizard has no weapons at all and the warrior is fully equiped, the wizard still wins some of the time. Give the wizard a dagger and he wins hands down. Put them on equal footing where they both have quarterstaves and no armor (ie a robin hood vs. little john type fight) and the warrior would barely put up a fight.

As before you seem to have missed the main point which is that the wizard is clearly pretty heroic even outside of his spell use.

 

[Celebrim]

"The castle is collapsing, everybody out! Run, across that narrow walkway!"
"We need to get inside that camp without alerting those guards... keep quiet, everybody."
"Watch out, folks. They say there's bandits in these hills, so let's not get caught of guard."
"The magistrate is bound to question every one of us, so we better stick to the story, right?"

I can do that already in every case.

The 'running away from danger case' is particularly the case I had in mind where you could force a group challenge. But there are only so many collapsing castles or the like you can do in a campaign before it becomes silly. In any event, as I said, I can already do this, it just involves using a lower DC than you'd use if you were running SAGA. Under either rule set, if you set the DC such that the guy with the best balance is even challenged, then if you force a group skill check it is almost certain that someone will fail.

The 'stealth' case you site is almost always going to be resolved in an entirely different way SAGA rules or not, depending on the particular mission. Assuming I had no spell resources to shortcut the problem, at least one of the following courses of action are likely to be smarter than trying to sneak with a party that isn't focused on sneaking:

a) Send the stealthy guy in solo to retrieve the gizmo/coup de gras the BBEG.
b) Disguise (or hide) the party as something believable and then use the party spokesperson to bluff his way in. This turns a group challenge into an individual challenge. Use a wagon if necessary.
c) Bribe the guards, or offer to negotiate, or forge a pass, or otherwise do what it takes to make it one focused character's skill check vs. some low level guys opposed check.
d) Forget about the skills. Plan a careful assault and attempt to overwhelm the camp.

The 'spot' situation is exactly what we have now. The only difference is that the Bandits have to be significantly stealthier in order to have a meaningful ambush. And its not in and of itself a group skill challenge (you don't give out XP for avoiding surprise in addition to winning the combat).

The 'everyone has to talk to the noble' situation is another one I'd already thought of. Again, only so often you can do this before it starts feeling contrived.

We recently finished an published adventure (in Age of Worms) where the central event was a party thrown by the ruler of the city. My character had about +35 to diplomacy. The next highest score was about +5...This meant that the intelligent course of action was for everyone to pretend they were indeed my henchmen or servants, with absolutely no relevant opinion of their own, and just shut it while I talked...It seems to me it would have been both more fun and more realistic if the scores were more like +15 and +5 like they might have been in Saga, with appropriately scaled DCs. Even if we might have still decided that the face-man does all the talking, the DM could have NPCs engage the others in conversation on their own so that it is a challenge, rather than an auto-fail situation.

And if it isn't autosuccess, the intelligent course of action would still be to make yourself unobtrusive, pretend to be a servant with no opinion of your own, and let the diplomat do all the talking of import. Very few characters are going to deliberately play the action movie bumbling side kick that gets everyone in trouble by sticking thier nose in where it doesn't belong, and few parties are going to forgive the player for 'ruining everything' if it is a habit. The only reason that you'd want to throw multiple persuaders at the problem is if you had to talk to multiple people and you were under such a hard time limit that one person couldn't talk to both. This is the 'meet me in the west wing at 5 o'clock' and 'meet me in the east wing at 5:00 o'clock' situation. But again, do that sort of thing too often and it's contrived. The main thing to note is that the DC of all the secondary challenges is still arbitrary. If it's set to a reasonable DC for a 1st level character and it doesn't have lethal consequences for failure, then its still an interesting challenges to everyone but the main diplomat talking to the grand high poobob.

 

[FireLance]

The thing is, the wizard can't help but become a little better at handling himself in combat as he continually handles himself in combat. He has a choice whether or not "swimming in a storm" is something he cares enough about to improve.

I actually addressed this point back in post #80. Relevant part quoted:

... the key issue is whether you take the view that characters have to train or otherwise make a specific effort to achieve greater competence in their skills, or whether the general experience of adventuring is enough to acquire greater competence in certain areas, in much the same way that general adventuring allows the character to acquire greater competence in fighting (BAB) and greater resistance to various effects (saving throws). For some people, it seems strange that a character might have made 100 Spot checks by the time he reached 20th level, and still be no better at Spotting danger than the day that he started adventuring.

If you can accept that general adventuring can make a character better at Spot, then the question becomes one of where you draw the line with respect to improving skills. If Spot, then what about Listen, or Concentration, or Climb, or Jump, or Balance, or Tumble, or Swim, or Survival, or Sense Motive, or Search, or Spellcraft, etc.

 

[Mallus]

I think it very much depends on what you mean by 'in a workable fashion'.

It sure does.

It certainly reads like to me that you've just said, "They don't want automatic success, but they want to be able to decide to do anything, no matter how impulsive and outlandish it is, no matter how it flies in the face of reason, physics, and niche protection and succeed just like action heroes."

Ok, but's neither what I wrote nor what I meant. By 'a chance', a meant exactly that, 'a chance'. As opposed, say, to a mathematical impossibility.

You see, they wouldn't improvise unless they thought it had a strong chance of succeeding, and they are I think somewhat uncomfortable with the notion that whatever they want to do they might not be able to do.

Cel, that's just an assumption. Some players attempt things merely because they're... stylish, not because they offer a better chance of favorable outcome. I game with groups full of these kinds of people, players who opt from 'creative' solutions for their own sake, because it pleases them to imagine their alter-egos doing that daft kind of thing.

This is part of the reason I favor mechanics that offer broad competencies to PC's that also make even challenging tests in the realm of the possibly for non-experts (unlike, say, D&D 3.5). It's also why I like Action/Hero Points. and/or mechanisms that confer limited narative authority to the players, but that's another topic.

But I think the crux of our disagreement isn't over the likelihood of success, but rather what the degree of success inspires in thier imagination.

Now that's an interesting statement. I don't really have a response, except to say that while success is inevitably involved, it's not the crux of the issue. My experiences have been that gamers like an interesting failure more that a dull success. I think your really overstating the typical players desire to 'win' all the time. Or am I misreading that?