Untrained/trained Skills....Noooo!

[kenmarable]

I think it bugs me even more than that. The problem I have with it is that you might as well not have a skill system at all. The old notion for 1st edition of 'secondary skills' where, if the task is in the province of your secondary skill, you automatically succeed and if it isn't then you don't works just as well without the now useless (and time consuming) formality of dice rolling.

The notion of near universal competancy discourages me as a DM from even bothering with skill challenges. Everyone can swim? Well, then swimming isn't a hazard, it's an option. Everyone can climb? Well, then climbing isn't a hazard or an obstacle, it's an option.

Although I wish there was at least a concrete example of this (yeah, previews are never fast enough), comments by WotC R&D indicate that in 4e skills won't just be "make a check, then you succeed or fail" but something more like "make a check, that check impacts how things play out". It's a subtle difference (that might wind up being no difference at all), but to me it sounds like skill checks won't just be "pass/fail", but "how well you did" and probably have scaled results. So if you roll only mediocre, you might still "pass" the check, but don't get any real bonuses. If you roll really well, then you might get bonuses or complete whatever action faster. With a roll giving you a 20 point swing on your final result, even if people are relatively equal in skill bonus, there can be some dramatically different results. So it's not just "I have +10, so I can swim."

For example, with the Climb check you mention - rather than "Can you climb without falling? DC 15", it's more like "DC 15 to not fall, DC 20 to manage the climb at normal speed, DC 25 to manage the climb and give your companions some cover from the attacking bats" or some such. Some 3.x skills have this, but I could see it being built into the system for all skills perhaps. Will they do that? I don't know. But that have mentioned several times that "skill checks impact the action" and especially when one of them discussed social skills being more back and forth with numerous checks rather than just "roll and see if you pass/fail". It's a slightly different mindset that make skill checks *feel* very different.

 

[FireLance]

If there is a real penalty for failure, then smart players are going to avoid the obstacle unless the probability of success is nearly 100% and the loss incurred by failure is less than the reward of success.

This I agree with, and this is why I think that if the character with the poor skills has some way to jump, spider climb, levitate, fly, water walk, or air walk around the obstacle, he'd do that instead of risking a 75% chance of failure, especially if there is some penalty for failing. However, if he's ever placed in a situation where he has no other choice, at least he can hope to roll 15+ on a d20. Why deny him that 25% chance of success?

 

[Nifft]

Damn good points. I just hope that 10th-level Wizards aren't going to end up being inexplicably just as good at picking locks as 1st-level Rogues.

Even in this case, I'm not certain that it's always a problem.

"That little bit of metal? You think that Zog, the Master of Flaming Ruin, could be stopped by some rude contraption that even a street urchin could unlock? Not bloodly likely." FX: casts cantrip, makes untrained Open Locks check

But if it is important, then Open Lock should be a Trained Only use of whatever skill it falls under.

Cheers, -- N

 

[kenmarable]

To me, it's a matter of presentation. When the rogue easily jumps across a chasm due to his athletic skill, the wizard mutters an incantation and summons the Winds of Wahoo to bear him aloft. In game terms, that gives him a bonus equal to half his level on his Jump checks.

I've worked that into other areas of the game, but I love the idea of doing it for skills as well. My thoughts are, if 99% of the time there is no mechanical difference, then describe how that mechanic works however you want.

One example I've toyed with, but haven't used yet is creating a Nightcrawler (from X-Men) style character. On the face of it, that sort of teleporting around the battlefield is some high level magic (or psionics since they have dimension slide). On the other hand, just boosting movement abilities to avoid AoOs and such gets the same basic thing. If the character can get from point A to point B without AoOs or other affects along the way, then it really doesn't matter if its tumbling or jumping or teleporting or the Winds of Wahoo.

 

[Aust Diamondew]

I don't like the way Saga edition handles skills at all. I want characters that have strengths and weaknesses. I don't think every character should be a jack of all trades. As others have said, why even have a skill system at all if you're going to give every character skill at everything?

Big difference between a +10 base (focused), trained (+5) to nothing (+0) plus +1/2 level in Saga.

Even though the bonus scales the specialized character will still be 10 higher than the untrained guy.
The untrained guy is not a jack of all trades because he doesn't have acess to the trained only uses and benefits of a skill, not to mention his lower bonus.

A jack of all trades style character in saga is one who is trained in many different skills but does not have skill focus.
A specialized character instead of spending feats on more trained skills takes skill focus in a few skills.
The guy who doesn't care about skills at all still has a level scaling bonus but he is significantly behind the characters who spent time practing their skill.

In saga at level 20 what an untrained character only suceeds at 50% of the time a trained character would suceed at 75% of the time (before ability/equipment boost) and a skill focused character would suceed at 100% of the time.
In 3.X at level 20 using the same example as above the untrained character (no ranks) will succeed 0% and the full ranks character 100% of the time.
Thats too great a divide.

 

[jasin]

Remathilis: You could make a better example that doesn't debunk itself as quickly, but the basic problem would still be there. If you present a challenge that is beyond that of what ordinary people can do, its always going to be an individual challenge, not a group challenge unless every member of the group plays a similar character.

That's not really true. My high-level wizard could dive into acid to save a dying friend. He could willingly drink poison to prove his courage. He could run into a building that's about to explode to help someone out. The barbarian, with his superior hp will be less worried about diving into acid, the fighter with his Fort will be better at second, and the rogue with his Ref and evasion could laugh of the third. But my wizard could reasonably risk any of these three, even though they might mean certain death for a regular person, just because he's an awesome legendary hero.

Yet he will just look at a drowning friend that's been swept overboard in a storm, because jumping in after them to help would be suicide, just like it was when he first made plans to kill kobolds with his pals.

All you've really done is created power inflation.

Not quite, because in Saga the differences between untrained-trained-expert are fixed. As you go up in levels, you face more difficult tasks, but if the trained guy can do it (whatever "it" is at a given level), the untrained guy can at least try.

In 3E, the gap increases with levels. At first level, if the trained guy can do it, the untrained guy can at least try. At 20th, even if the trained guy cannot fail, the untrained guy could be easily be facing an impossible task.

("What do you mean my desert nomad can't swim? Haven't you heard of oasis? Maybe he learned to swim cooling off in the cistern! By the rules I qualify for being just as good of a swimmer as that fighter over there who spent his youth as a polynesian fisherman!").

Why in the world did the desert nomad take swim as a trained skill, and why in the world didn't the Polynesian fisherman take both trained swim and Skill Focus as a feat? In Saga, that would be a 10-point difference between the two, hardly "just as good".

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Celebrim, I hope you'll forgive me for not finding the jumping of 5' pits, the climbing of knotted ropes, and not swimming (DCs start at 10) terribly high-fantasy heroic, and for thus looking forward to SAGA-style skills (should they appear in the + 1/2 level format).

 

[Celebrim]

As for going against the grain of tone and atmosphere, 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.

In terms of flavor, I think you are correct. But in terms of crunch, I think there are two things going on:

a) Can a specific skill check in any system (not just D&D) be considered a group challenge, or do they always tend to be individual challenges. Niches in this sense aren't unique to D&D and its class system. In skill based systems like GURPs or Chaosium CoC you are going to have skill challenges that are essentially individual challenges as well because skill systems encourage specialization. You can't be good at everything, so you might as well be good at something. (GURPS is notoriously even worse in this regard, and the WW WoD rules are as well.)

Returning to Remathilis's interesting disk jumping example again, this is counterintuitive but it's still an individual problem even if the entire party is rogues with maxed out jump skills. The reason is that if all 4 rogues try to approach the problem in the same individual way, one of them is bound to end up in the lava. In sixteen different jump checks, one of them is almost certain to roll a 1 and take a tumble. So the smart party will treat this as a single individual skill challenge, and then do something to reduce the risk of failure to zero for the rest of the party. Maybe the first guy ties a rope around his waist, gets the rope to the other side, and then using the rope, some spikes, and a hammer mitigates the risk for everyone else: "If you roll a 1, just grab the rope."

I don't see SAGA's changes addressing this because I see this as more or less fundamental to the math of skill systems.

b) If you create some amount of universal competancy are you really just creating power inflation, because the DC of the numbers will have to scale up as well to achieve the results you want. If the DC's don't scale up, are you really any better off than you before?

 

[olshanski]

A 20th level (or so) adventurer -often with very high abilities- who has never picked up a sculpters tools in his life will be able to make things like an old master, who, lets face it, is unlikely to advance beyond 5th level cos he won't get any XP doing sculpture!
Adventurer: 10+4[ish] vs 2+2[ish]+5+5
Hopefully it is not happening......
Share your 2p...
M1.9P

I don't believe that experience points are used for NPCs at all. Experience Points is strictly used by PCs as a form of reward.

NPCs neither earn XP, lose XP, or anything else. They are whatever level the DM needs them to be. They advance in level when or if the DM feels it necessary, regardless of challenges overcome, age, or anything else.

I would expect that a 20th level "Old Master" artist had a null experience point total, and that he got to 20th level because the DM said so, not because he was killing stuff or overcoming challenges.

 

[Celebrim]

Celebrim, I hope you'll forgive me for not finding the jumping of 5' pits, the climbing of knotted ropes, and not swimming (DCs start at 10) terribly high-fantasy heroic...

And, Simia, I hope you'll forgive me for not wanting a game system to tell me how to play. What if I don't want D20 to inherently emulate high fantasy heroic (as you see it)?

To a certain extent, I find your comment highly ironic. If you will forgive me for saying so, I don't think you or the people clamoring for these changes in 4e know what you want. At the same time you are clamoring for a system which encourages 'high fantasy heroic', you are complaining about the high power level of the game at any point after 6th level and after 12th level especially. At the same time you are complaining about the current system being too gritty, you are complaining about how much can be achieved with the awesome magical power that characters wield. I think too many people are trying to emulate literature and movies in thier games where in the source material, things moved and acted with the power of plot and not with any coherent framework.

So forgive me for thinking that 'adventurers in capes' are already plenty powerful and that reminders of thier mere mortality like the fact that climbing a knotted rope or jumping a 5' gap while carrying 60 lbs are actually hard won't do them - or thier players - any harm.