Untrained/trained Skills....Noooo!

[Merlin the Tuna]

So, I have one response of, "Of course that is true, but it's a good thing not a bad thing.", and the other response is, "That's not what is being said. Don't make strawmen!"

What you have constructed is not a strawman. Rather, it is some kind of chimeric straw man-beast with a heart two sizes too small. Mourn has already delved into this somewhat, but it bears repeating.

Your comments begin with a broad swipe at anyone looking forward to 4E. Not a great start. You then go on to say that we are "clamoring for a system which encourages 'high fantasy heroic'," while at the same time "complaining about the high power level of the game at any point after 6th level and after 12th level especially." "At the same time" kind of suggests that the second half of that sentence were even remotely alluded to during the course of the thread; it hasn't been. Nor has anyone here complained "about the current system being too gritty," nor "about how much can be achieved with the awesome magical power characters wield." Huzzah, you've taken totally unrelated points, presented them as incongruous (which I'm not entirely convinced they are), and used them to take a potshot at an entire community. Nice.

What it actually sounds like is you've listened to every complaint about 3.5 ever and rolled them all up into a self-destructive burrito of 4E doom, patting yourself on the back on how your own beliefs are more consistent than the beliefs of everyone-who-is-not-you are. This is hardly an accomplishment, and the discussion would work a lot better if snark were kept to comments that have actually been made here rather than being directed at comments that some other guy made somewhere else some time ago.

 

[Zurai]

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).

Those can all be done by simply taking 10 in current, 3E rules, even for a character with no ranks in the skills. There's no need to cripple the skill system to make them gauranteed.

 

[Mallus]

The reason it is a bad design goal is that it is unattainable.

That hasn't stopped decades of RPG players from looking ways to emulate/simulate their favorite books, comics, and films. They fact that they haven't given up by now should demonstrate there's been a modicum of success. That goal's been attained --in a workable fashion, at least-- many times. Hell, OD&D succeeded at it as far as some people are concerned. At this point we're talking about refining the methods.

In movies and novels, the protagonist essentially has zero possibility of failure.

Except in Kafka. Also Beckett. Also, that's irrelevant.

What people who are desparately trying to emulate novels want is really to have zero possibility of failure without knowing that they have zero possibility of failure...

I think you're wrong about this, and that's is the crux of our disagreement. "Emulators" don't want automatic success, they want a (very) large set of viable options. They want a chance to get in on the action, whatever the action is, in whatever clever/impulsive way they decide to at the moment. And they want to interact with the environment in interesting... ahem... 'cinematic' ways, which often fly in the face of reason, physics, and niche protection. You know, like action heroes.

Success isn't nearly as important as the freedom to improvise, and a system like SAGA allows 'heroes' to try their hands at a wide variety of actions/potential solutions while still offering a substantial amount of differentiation between characters w/different skill sets

"At this point, you might be wondering why these changes were made. The simple answer is this: Anyone can do anything in Star Wars if the scene calls for it." - WotC Previews

But of course, if this is a game then most certainly the characters can't do anything because the scene doesn't actually call for anything.

Replace 'can do' with 'can try to do with a meaningful chance of success' and see how the quote you pulled reads.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

You just brought up the perfect example of why professions are a failure.
<snip>
Taking Profession: Sailor will do nothing to actually make me a proficient in-game sailor. All it does is allow me a roll to make money each week.

Admittably this is a problem with the core rules, but there are supplement like Broadsides that addresses naval adventuring and places a heavy emphasis on the use of Profession: Sailor to accomplish the required actions involved in being a in-game sailor. Stuff like plugging leaks in the hull of boats, setting the sails right, to rowing a boat.

Well I don't think every profession needs a full blown supplement, I do feel that some professions, such as Sailor, do need solid mechanics.

I also think Profession: Merchant should be used in social bargaining prices instead of diplomancy. Keep them nosy Bards from being better at the life long merchant at selling thing :d

I am interested to see how 4E treats skills and like the idea of following some of the SWSA rules... but it all depends on how it ends up.

 

[The Little Raven]

Stuff like plugging leaks in the hull of boats,

Craft (shipwright) or something.

setting the sails right,

Can't think of a skill to cover this, except maybe Rope Use (moving and tying the ropes in order to set the sails).

to rowing a boat.

I'd consider this to fall more under an endurance-style check (Con), or a Strength-check (for speed).

Having a skill for one possible limited use (setting sails) doesn't strike me as particularly useful in a heroic fantasy game.

I also think Profession: Merchant should be used in social bargaining prices instead of diplomancy. Keep them nosy Bards from being better at the life long merchant at selling thing :d

I don't really see why you should take a number of different tactics for negotiating succesfully and cram them all into a single skill.

Diplomacy is used when you want to play up how sweet your deal is.
Bluff is used when you're flat-out deceiving them about what they're getting.
Intimidate is used when you're pointing out the negatives of not making a deal.
Knowledge (whatever) is used when making a demonstration of a product and it's features.
Sense Motive/Perception is used when trying to sort your way through the other guy's .

Compressing all those possibilities and permutations into a simple "Make a profession (merchant) check" just strikes me as totally lame.

 

[FireLance]

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.)

[snip]

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?

I think that the current skill system favors individual challenges because beyond a certain point, there is no chance for the least skilled character to succeed at a skill check that the most skilled character finds challenging. Granted, this usually occurs at higher levels - 17+ if we consider just the base difference in skill ranks (0 vs 20+) - but it could be as low as 10+ we add the effect of ability score differences and skill-enhancing feats.

You can still have individual challenges in a SWSE-like skill system. You just have to set the DC to higher than 21 + half character level. Barring exceptional ability scores, the least skilled character will automatically fail this skill check, and the most skilled will have about a 50% chance of success.

What the SWSE-like skill system does is that it makes group challenges more viable across a wider range of levels. If you assume that there is at most a 10-15 point spread between the most skilled and the least skilled characters, you can set the DC at a point where the most skilled character is likely to succeed, but has a small chance to fail, and the least skilled character is likely to fail, but has a small chance to succeed. Under such a system, you would want failure to impose a penalty, but to not be automatically lethal. Consider the effect of a Spot check, for example. Failing a Spot check may mean that the character is flat-footed and unable to act in the surprise round, but it does not in itself automatically kill the character. Similarly, an encounter could be set up so that failing to make Balance, Climb, Jump, Swim, or Tumble checks could hamper a character's movement, but need not be automatically deadly.

Of course, you could take the alternative approach of setting the DCs lower, so that in a group challenge, the most skilled character will automatically succed while the others have to make skill checks to avoid a penalty. However, on reflection, that can also be done under a SWSE-like skill system by setting the DCs to 11 + half character level.

I guess the conclusion is, with the current skill system, you soon reach the point where there are only two kinds of viable challenges: the individual skill challenge, which the least skilled character has no chance of succeeding at, and the group skill challenge, which the most skilled character has no chace to fail at. With a SWSE-like system, you can have both these challenges, as well as the intermediate group challenge, which the most skilled character has a chance of failing, and the least skilled character has a chance of succeeding at, across a wider range of levels.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

<snip>
Having a skill for one possible limited use (setting sails) doesn't strike me as particularly useful in a heroic fantasy game.

Sorry, I missed the '...and so on'
Setting the sail may not strike you as particularly useful, but I think that the ability to get a sailing ship....well, sailing might be particulary useful. Just like 'Handle Animal' for carts or 'Ride' for horses, 'Profession: Sailor' {in the supplement} covers the needed skills without having to spread points over half a dozen skills to get the same effect.

I don't really see why you should take a number of different tactics for negotiating succesfully and cram them all into a single skill.
<snip>
Compressing all those possibilities and permutations into a simple "Make a profession (merchant) check" just strikes me as totally lame.

So your NPC expert running a storefront needs to spend points on how many skills? Oh.. thats right. NPC merchants being effective at making enough to survive on isn't particularly useful in a heroic fantasy game.... er, nevermind.

Most of the time shopping isn't the focus of the session. I would rather lump those options into the single 'lame' method so that the PC min-maxed diplomancy monster doesn't walk all over merchants with jack-boots. And yet I want my players to be able to affect the encounter instead of just dm-fiat.

anyway,
I want a skill system that balances provides reasonable mechanics for skill intensive professions that do come up in play, like shipboard work, while not requiring a ton of skill points invested into it. At the same time, I don't want an ever exanding list of skills with special rules and DC charts.

Firelance, I think you have the right of it.

 

[The Little Raven]

Setting the sail may not strike you as particularly useful, but I think that the ability to get a sailing ship.

Don't try to put words in my mouth. I said having a skill with a single, limited purpose (just like Intuit Direction on it's own in 3.0), and having others that cover a broader spectrum of capability ( is bad design. Having a single skill that can substitute in for a number of other skills (Sailor encompassing the ability to swim, navigate, repair and mend, tie ropes, balance, climb, etc) is equally as bad.

...well, sailing might be particulary useful. Just like 'Handle Animal' for carts or 'Ride' for horses, 'Profession: Sailor' {in the supplement} covers the needed skills without having to spread points over half a dozen skills to get the same effect.

And turning one skill into some kind of mega-skill that can do all kinds of technically unrelated things (how does tying ropes relate to swimming, or balancing?) is bad design. It's the same problem I have with Martial Arts in Exalted, and it's ability to intrude on the domain of every other skill in that game.

So your NPC expert running a storefront needs to spend points on how many skills? Oh.. thats right. NPC merchants being effective at making enough to survive on isn't particularly useful in a heroic fantasy game.... er, nevermind.

The NPC classes were horrible for modeling crafters, since to make an extraordinary crafter, he is automatically high level. I don't need rules for how many skill ranks an NPC has in Profession (underwater basketweaver). I just need to know what kinds of things he can provide my players with.

I would rather lump those options into the single 'lame' method so that the PC min-maxed diplomancy monster doesn't walk all over merchants with jack-boots. And yet I want my players to be able to affect the encounter instead of just dm-fiat.

And they've said they're coming up with a more intensive social system that will feature multiples roles to manipulate the encounter without just reducing it to either a single roll to simple walk all over people, or reducing the skills required to a single super-skill.

 

[Celebrim]

That hasn't stopped decades of RPG players from looking ways to emulate/simulate their favorite books, comics, and films. They fact that they haven't given up by now should demonstrate there's been a modicum of success. That goal's been attained --in a workable fashion, at least-- many times. Hell, OD&D succeeded at it as far as some people are concerned. At this point we're talking about refining the methods.

I think it very much depends on what you mean by 'in a workable fashion'. In the old Chaosium Star Wars system, there were times when it felt so much like the movies that you expected to hear orchestral music break out all around you. That's as close as I've ever felt any game came to capturing the feel of the material it was based on. But those were moments, and they were the moments when because of the dice it did not seem as if you possibly could fail no matter how crazy the stuff was that you tried - which in the old dice pool system was sometimes not far from the truth in a way that a linear D20 system never will be. At other times though, it didn't feel alot like the movies, and that's because it wasn't the movies. It was a game. And a game never truly emulates the material. It creates something which is inspired by the material, but which has the quality of being - for lack of a better word - 'gameable'.

In the comics, if the author wants to pit Superman against Batman, or some other sort of story, he does so and the story happens even if from a gamist perspective such a story makes no sense. In fact, from a gamist perspective, much of Superman makes no sense. If he can move from place to place nearly instanteously with reflexes nearly the speed of light, how is he ever taken by surprise by his much much slower moving enemies? Power of plot, that's how.

I have Vance's complete works on my bookshelf. However inspired by the text it may be, the 1st edition AD&D wizard is not a reproduction or emulation of what is in the text. Whenever the text suggests something that didn't seem gameable, the text lost out.

Except in Kafka. Also Beckett. Also, that's irrelevant.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by that, but if the protagonist is a tragic figure then they have a 100% chance of failure. Things still happen according to the demands of the story, whereas random numbers don't care what the story is and I think we'll generally agree that the DM shouldn't dictate it.

I think you're wrong about this, and that's is the crux of our disagreement.

Funnily enough, I'm not sure that this is the crux of our disagreement. Or if it is, it is different ways of looking at the same thing.

"Emulators" don't want automatic success, they want a (very) large set of viable options. They want a chance to get in on the action, whatever the action is, in whatever clever/impulsive way they decide to at the moment. And they want to interact with the environment in interesting... ahem... 'cinematic' ways, which often fly in the face of reason, physics, and niche protection. You know, like action heroes.

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." I'm not sure that that isn't desiring automatic success, but not wanting to know or believe that it is automatic (since if they knew it to be automatic there would be no sense of accomplishment). 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. I understand those impulses, but ultimately they are impossible goals when it comes to game design.

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. It's not really about whether you have a 60% chance of success or a 35% or a 95%. It's about the 5' gap versus the 15' gap. It's about the 'merely' heroic versus the superheroic.

Replace 'can do' with 'can try to do with a meaningful chance of success' and see how the quote you pulled reads.

Except that isn't what it says, and I think the orginal author rightly understood the medium and the audience. Massaged, the quoted material reads less honestly to me. Action heroes really can do anything. Many RPG players really want to be able to do anything, and don't want simply a meaningful chance of success unless by meaningful you mean 'fairly close to 100% but not so close that they are continually reminded that they aren't supposed to fail.' For them, jumping a 15' gap between swinging metal disks over lava really is more meaningful, exciting, and fun than jumping a 5' gap in the same situation. For them, they want to jump across after the bad guy even if they made the decision not to play a character whose thing was jumping. They want to pull the ace of spaces. They want to win and Baccarat and golf and video games. They want to hit the bad guy right between the eyes, even though they are playing the crusty doctor. They want to jump on a cello and slide all the way austria. They want to play the square jawed merc that beats the bad guy at chess, steals his women, and then beats him soundly in a fair fight in which the bad guy cheats and draws a weapon.

But I wonder why we are just confining this to things like that. For the whole, anything with a meaningful chance of success, surely they should need to have super human strength to? Why don't we want to make sure that they always have a good chance of pulling the door off the hinges just like the burly barbarian? Shouldn't strength and constitution and the like also scale upward with level too?

It's not that there is necessarily something wrong with wanting that, but I think it comes with a cost that must be paid.

 

[Celebrim]

I guess the conclusion is, with the current skill system, you soon reach the point where there are only two kinds of viable challenges: the individual skill challenge, which the least skilled character has no chance of succeeding at, and the group skill challenge, which the most skilled character has no chace to fail at. With a SWSE-like system, you can have both these challenges, as well as the intermediate group challenge, which the most skilled character has a chance of failing, and the least skilled character has a chance of succeeding at, across a wider range of levels.

Ok, I'll conceed that. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not sure that I'm truly bothered by "...there are only two kinds of viable challenges: the individual skill challenge, which the least skilled character has no chance of succeeding at, and the group skill challenge, which the most skilled character has no chace to fail at." That seems a very gameable system to me. If there is an individual challenge, then I want that individual to have his chance to shine at 'his thing'. If there is a group challenge, then I want to ensure that at least one character will almost certainly succeed. I don't really feel the need for something else even if we are going for 'cinematic feel', because in ensemble pieces its always the specialist chosen to do his thing anyway. If the specialist was only slightly better than the worst member of the group at his thing, he wouldn't seem very special or very defined. The very presence of the character that is inept at that thing serves to reinforce the specialist's coolness, and in such stories there is always the momment later on where the roles are reversed and the challenge that one finds baffling now the other finds easy.